TWalkerPolk

Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

I wanted to create this topic to ask if others are running into the same issues I am with streaming rented HD movies. I go to play the rented HD movie and am transferred to a screen that says "Loading...." for about a minute or two. Then, that message is replaced with one that says "Ready to play in [xxx] minutes"...with horribly long times listed (my movie was rented last night, and as of this evening, it shows "Ready to play in 232 minutes").

This seems like a MAJOR flaw with the Apple TV. I have no problem viewing YouTube, HD Netflix movies, HD trailers, etc. I have even been able to watch an HD TV show rental within about 5 mins of selecting it. Seems like there may be a major flaw in the streaming process for HD Movie rentals over the Apple TV.

If you haven't tested this yet (or if you have no issues), please post what is happening with your HD movie rentals.

TWP

Note: I have rebooted everything, used my Airport Express with the ethernet cord directly into the Apple TV, over wiFi, adjusted the distance between my router and the Apple TV. Nothing has worked.

Dell Laptop m1330, Windows 7

Posted on Oct 8, 2010 9:05 PM

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Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

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  • by CraigMac,

    CraigMac CraigMac Mar 3, 2011 7:34 AM in response to Pawcio
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 3, 2011 7:34 AM in response to Pawcio
    The N will give you better wireless performance, but not with the Apple TV. It stink with N too, and if every other service there is can stream to you at half your speed without a hiccup, it shows apple being thin skinned.

    You shouldn't have to switch to standard def on a high def box. Unlike Netflix, the Apple TV will buffer the stream which should give you a BETTER experience than Netflix, and with the exception of 1 or 2 people in this forum, no one is having Netflix issues. Unbuffered reliable Netflix. And when Netflix has a service issue, they email you an apology and a 10% refund. Apple insists it's our fault, even though if you Google Apple TV streaming issues you see millions of people are having the same problem.
  • by George Mcgee,

    George Mcgee George Mcgee Mar 4, 2011 6:35 PM in response to TWalkerPolk
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Mar 4, 2011 6:35 PM in response to TWalkerPolk
    What solved it for me was going into Settings> General> iTunes Store > Rent High Definition > and setting Rent High Definition to Off. This has at least helped. While I know this defeats the purpose of being able to rent in true HD, at least it returns the Apple TV 2 to a serviceable state and allows us to rent movies easily again. Its also cheaper.
  • by Brennan Hildebrand,

    Brennan Hildebrand Brennan Hildebrand Mar 5, 2011 8:21 PM in response to TWalkerPolk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 5, 2011 8:21 PM in response to TWalkerPolk
    ***** that this is "not answered". I PAYED for my first movie "rental" on my ATV2 tonight and found that I couldn't actually watch the movie I wanted to for 1.5 hours. I switched to something else, streaming from my iTunes on my ATV2, went back to the "download" 2 hours later and discovered nothing had changed. Apparently there aren't multiple processes on the ATV2. Lame.

    I was hoping to have things streaming. I'll stop for a while while it buffers, but this is absurd. I guess Amazon streaming on my TIVO is the route.

    Come on Apple, I expect better. Being a fanboy means my expectations are higher, not lower.

    -Me
  • by Brennan Hildebrand,

    Brennan Hildebrand Brennan Hildebrand Mar 5, 2011 8:24 PM in response to Brennan Hildebrand
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 5, 2011 8:24 PM in response to Brennan Hildebrand
    Wow, sick s, yet with a u instead of an i and without the space is censored by apple on the forums. Beware.
  • by Josch bites into an apple,

    Josch bites into an apple Josch bites into an apple Mar 6, 2011 2:31 AM in response to TWalkerPolk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 6, 2011 2:31 AM in response to TWalkerPolk
    Yeah, i´ve got the jackpot. I´ve HDMI handshake problems with my philips tv and also i´ve problems to stream HD movies (loading up to 7 hours and more). Let me comment this with Steve Jobs phrases: it´s "really amazing", it´s "dramatically" behind other devices. And my last hope is the iOS update at 3/11. If this not will fix this problems i´ll give back this unfortunatly ATV2. By the way, i´ve some good experiences with some other companys they´ll give some restitutions to clients if they had have some unsolved problems with their products. I´ll think it will be a good sign if apple will give some iTunes coupons to clients with significant problems like this. But sometimes i think we apple users are all stupid dependents of the big master apple and we are waiting with humbleness until the master will give us an advice.
  • by tadcrawfordmv,

    tadcrawfordmv tadcrawfordmv Mar 6, 2011 3:08 PM in response to Josch bites into an apple
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 6, 2011 3:08 PM in response to Josch bites into an apple
    While the problem I have been having is Netflix streaming-related, not iTunes; I have found Apple Care' Senior Advisors outstanding, once you are connected to one who has experience with ATV's and Apple network devices.

    In my experience there are a lot of contributing factors. In our case, one of them was noise generated at one of the TV splitters in our house. Another was our cable modem. Yet others were sub-optimum network settings.

    Patience paid off.

    Had it not been for Apple's support, I would have given up long ago.
  • by cyellow18,

    cyellow18 cyellow18 Mar 6, 2011 6:18 PM in response to TWalkerPolk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 6, 2011 6:18 PM in response to TWalkerPolk
    I am having the exact same problem right now. Very irritated. What is being done to fix this?
  • by Lone VVolf,

    Lone VVolf Lone VVolf Mar 9, 2011 11:31 AM in response to cyellow18
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Mar 9, 2011 11:31 AM in response to cyellow18
    There's a software update out now...people should test and see if anything has changed...
  • by Adrian_W,

    Adrian_W Adrian_W Mar 9, 2011 5:42 PM in response to Lone VVolf
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 9, 2011 5:42 PM in response to Lone VVolf
    Ok now that ATV 4.2 (iOS 4.3) is officially released, please report back as to if this is fixed.

    I've being using the AppleTV 4.2 (iOS 4.3) Beta for the last 4 weeks, rented numerous films and all have rented and ready to watch in less than 30 seconds. Before the software update it was taking anything from 6-14 hours to "be ready to play".

    Since I installed the beta, I've rented some 10 movies, and not once did I run into the slow download issue again.

    So my experience was .... the iOS update fixed the issue.

    I hope it does the same for you.
  • by Gob Bluth,

    Gob Bluth Gob Bluth Mar 9, 2011 6:41 PM in response to Adrian_W
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 9, 2011 6:41 PM in response to Adrian_W
    Finally!

    The 4.2 update fixed my slow downloading issue. Would have been nice if Apple just admitted there was an issue in the first place instead of stringing us along for so long.
  • by YoungTurk,

    YoungTurk YoungTurk Mar 10, 2011 10:23 AM in response to Gob Bluth
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mar 10, 2011 10:23 AM in response to Gob Bluth
    Had you changed the DNS settings to Google's?
  • by YoungTurk,

    YoungTurk YoungTurk Mar 10, 2011 10:25 AM in response to Adrian_W
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mar 10, 2011 10:25 AM in response to Adrian_W
    Had you changed the DNS settings to Google's?
  • by Gob Bluth,

    Gob Bluth Gob Bluth Mar 10, 2011 10:30 AM in response to YoungTurk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 10, 2011 10:30 AM in response to YoungTurk
    Yes. I tried everything posted in this thread and everything that AppleCare asked me to do. Also returned and tried 2 different ATV2s. Nothing helped. My original ATV worked fine throughout. I had wait times of 6-20 hours. After the update yesterday I started watching a HD movie in 1 minute using my isp's standard DNS servers.

    FYI: ATT DSL 6.0 in Chicago
  • by Adrian_W,

    Adrian_W Adrian_W Mar 10, 2011 2:16 PM in response to YoungTurk
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 10, 2011 2:16 PM in response to YoungTurk
    All those suggestions about DNS changes and changing settings so that AppleTV didn't send diagnostics back to Apple were complete non-sense. Then there was all the suggestions about WI-FI settings, even though many of us had hard wired the device anyway.

    The fact that the original Apple TV was not running into issues renting HD movies (being served from the same Apple iTunes servers as Apple TV 2) ... and the fact that the original firmware worked perfectly renting HD movies from iTunes on Apple TV 2 ....

    Meant everything was pointing to faulty firmware in the Apple TV 2 itself with certain network configurations.

    Admittedly in some situations, some people didn't seem to be affected, but the majority seemed to be.

    During the beta, you could return to the original 4.1 firmware. I did that, and tried renting a movie. Surprise surprise ... the HD movie rental time went back to 12 hours !

    That confirmed it was a software issue in the unit itself.
  • by jclorden,

    jclorden jclorden Mar 11, 2011 6:33 AM in response to Adrian_W
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 11, 2011 6:33 AM in response to Adrian_W
    Last night I tried to download Inception at a time when my cable modem is crawling (serious bandwith issues in my 'hood). In the past this was a recipe for disaster. The movie download started by saying 1 h 30 min - which was actually an improvement since I was usually at 5 to 20 hours. Then something odd happened, after 2 or 3 minutes it said "30 min". In a few months of testing I had never seen the time go down - once the machine was in "slow mode" it was stuck there. And then two minutes later it said "start watching". One test obviously doesn't prove facts, but these are promising signs.

    Message was edited by: jclorden
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