Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

Has anyone called their credit card company after being denied the rental?

I'm having the same issue; tested my network, getting 10 mbps download speeds, no problems with Netflix, so AppleTV seems to be the problem. I at least was able to watch the movie after a couple of minutes, but it's got 1'30" to go, so hopefully no more interruptions.

Have had my apple tv since November. Has worked beautifully until last week when I too experienced buffer delays with netflix movies. Have had no trouble with itunes HD rentals at all. Once I also got the"ready to play in 220 minutes" but it only took about 5 minutes to start the rental so I don't know what that is all about. Someone on the thread mentioned it being an apple problem and that they need to work out the streaming kinks with the now millions of users!

What has happened?!

Rented ELF in HD on Christmas Eve. Started watching almost immediately. Now everything seems shot to ****. Rented The Town, says I can start watching in 22 hours! The next day I tried watching it and the spinning wheel just kept spinning. UnPlugged the AppleTV and restarted, no help. Rented another movie tonight. Says I can watch it in 7 hours. Network speed is exactly the same as when I rented and watched ELF in HD instantly.

WHAT HAPPENED?

Wow! Now thats a lot of people with problems! I have had an ATV2 (with latest OS) since Dec 27 2010 and it has had no problems. Based on reading over the forums, something tells me a lot of people have decided to rent movies - presumably on their new iOS Device.

Perhaps it could be said that Apple or Akamai (the used Content Distribution Network \[CDN\]) are changing where the actual movies are stored while at the same time, there is very large (huge if you like) jump in the number of people renting movies (as a result of a receiving a new toy for Christmas). With this is mind, you could say that the servers of Akamai cannot handle the large number of downloads and/or Apple's iTunes Server's cannot handle such a high volume of transactions.

I don't know if this helps but I thought I might point this out. Something tells me if you wait until all the younger people are back at school/uni/college (whatever) in the coming weeks, then less people would be renting movies, leading to an improved service for the rest of the ATV2 users experience renting problems.

-AllSeeingMac

Sorry but if you read the entire thread the problems of download time, movie start time, and buffer problem has been on going since it's release. Buffer was supposedly fixed on last update but DL still ridiculous on some users post with crazy downstream speeds. You can't blame it on the out of school crowd.

Same problems here. Cable modem speeds on Airport Extreme Wifi network: 23-25 Mbps download, fairly consistently, regardless of time of day or whether children are present or have returned to college.

Typical ATV2 response to a movie rental: 3 hours 35 minutes. Have tried working on this and my network so much and for so long, it's like I now have a second job.

If you have found this forum topic you may be currently pulling your hair out and ready to give up on your Apple TV. I was there and tried everything, anyone has ever, ever, ever suggested to deal with the incredible slowness of my 2nd gen Apple TV. Before you skip the box across the living room table you might want to consider the fix that I believe to be the root cause of my woes. If you have Direct TV and have the on-demand service you may noticed a small box called a broadband adapter connected to your router. It allows the DirectTV service to reach the net. I disconnected it and restarted my router and my AppleTV is now working like a charm. Has anyone experienced a similar problem and used this fix?

I have had the same issues with hd movies having crazy long load times until I upgraded my Internet service with CABLEVISION to 30 Mbps download and 5 upload for an additional 10 bucks a month. I don't have direct tv. I rented Machete last night and it worked great. The white bar was completely full after about ten minutes but I started to watch it right away. I was scared to pause it because that usually created a long wait time, this time it did not. If you run speed test to check your internet speeds you will see that your nearest server gets the best speed score and when you try running the same test say from NY to La you will get a much slower score. From 25 Mbps down to 5 mbps. That is a huge difference, so it could be all kinds variables as to why the movies timeout, how many people are online in your area to how many people are trying to watch the same movie to how far you are from the server that is serving up the movies. Netflix has almost never failed but apples rentals have more data especially because they have the 5.1 audio track. I do wish you could have the option to dowload the movie first then play it as well as stream it, the apple tv could give you a message and say your connection is too slow to stream this movie would you like to download it instead. O corse then you can't watch the movie right away but I do hate watching a new movie and getting a half way and getting a message saying it will be 13 hours before it will resume and I have found it really has never taken that long but it usually would glitch more than once. I'm going to rent The Walking Dead HD version tonight and see how it behaves.

Oops forgot that tv shows are purchased then downloaded not streamed so will have to wait for my next hd movie rental to see if my faster internet speed worked like it did for Machete.

Hi All,

After experiencing the same issue and trying different changes ie DNS settings, wireless position, channels etc the solution was the following:

1) Switch off "Send Data to Apple". This is under Settings-General. Give it a few minutes.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Greg

Add my name to the list, too. Long leads and many stops to buffer. Last night we made it two minutes into the movie before it stopped to buffer. We took a 30-minute break to let it get ahead of us, and when we came back, we noticed it had gone to sleep and we didn't gain anything. I think I'll avoid Apples movie rentals until they get enough server power to hand the load. Thanks for the messages in the forum. They're a big help

Add me to. I will rent movies from netflix or comcast. I would like to know when this gets fixed but not willing to take the plunge again for a while.

_*Potential solution_:*

Have you checked if the following: "Send Data to Apple". This is under Settings-General.

If it is, disable it and try your downloads again a few minutes later. This worked for me.

Regards,

Greg

I just logged into this site to complain about the same thing. Our Apple TV is connected through a wireless connector so I was thinking that was the problem. We started downloading ""Salt" last night and after an hour it was still on 220 minutes remaining. So we went to bed and the download was finished this morning. We also have Comcast and "Salt" was available on demand for the same price and we could have watched it immediately. So far I'm not impressed with Apple TV.