Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

fusquine wrote:

Apple really doesn't care.

Did you ever consider that it might not be Apple's fault?  From what I've read here, the problem seems to stem from router/wifi problems with perhaps a bit of internet provider faults thrown into the mix.

I haven't had ANY problem downloading movies to ANY of my gear including a Windows laptop, a MBP, an iPad, an ATV1 and an ATV2, all using iTunes. Most of the movies I download are for later view.  However, a few days ago I decided to "test" the live streaming ability direcly on an internet connection.  I fired up my ATV2, selected a HD movie, clicked on pay and after about a minute, I got the popup that said the movie was ready to view.  At that point, the ATV1 showed that only about 1% of the movie was downloaded. 

I clicked on play (thinking that perhaps I would "catch up" to the stream before the movie end, but I never did.  There was absolutely no stuttering or pausing. I don't think my Qwest DSL is that fast compared to what's available.  Speedtest.net reports that I usually get 6-8 Mbps.

If my system runs so well, why is Apple to blame if your network can't cope.   I suspect that this problem is just like any other glitch that  affects maybe 1% of the ATV useres. 

I'm glad for you that the one movie you rented worked well for you. I have rented around 10, and in 3 of those I had the issues reported here. Same ISP, all connections working, YouTube working, etc.. I wouldn't waste my time and energy writing here if I didn't know this is actually a bug in the product. Having said that, I also have an iPad, Macbook Pro, iMac, iPod and love all my Apple products. And that's why my expectations are so high when I buy an Apple device. Is this affecting 1% of the users? Maybe even less. But when you are among this 1% and can't use the service when you want to, you need to acknoledge the frustration involved. I also understand that this type of issue can happen in any new technology. However, seeing so many people complaining about this issue for a while, I would expect Apple to deal with it in a different way.

Fusquine,

I agree with what your saying.  There could be many varibles and that includes the ATV2 as well as the network. Something is going on becasue it appears that many have the same issue and it has been going on for months. The profit margin for the ATV2 can't be that much therefore it probably doesn't get as much attention compared to other apple products.  Your expectation is like mine and probabyl many others (High) becasue our experience has always been so profitable.  Now as an experiment.  I had a friend fo mine come over and he brought his new Roku2 and picked the same movie from different sources of course.  The ATV2 choked and the Roku didn't on a HD movie.  So from our 2 experiments, something is amiss.  Since it is the same broadband connection/router/switch.  The experiments would then lend themselves to either the ATV2 or the Source. I find it troublesome becasue I want to keep all of my stuff Apple..

This is incredible. I am also a victim in the false advertising of renting movies on demand. Has anyone verified that the charge was actually made on the credit card even though the movie never streamed?

Has anyone heard back from apple? What are we to do?

Rob.Noxous wrote:

 

This is incredible. I am also a victim in the false advertising of renting movies on demand.

A tad extreme to say the least.  Victim?  I suspect only a few have problems in streaming movies.  Once, a few months ago, a movie failed to stream for me.  A short note to Apple via iTunes resulted in the charge for the movie being refunded.  No argument, just a polite "we're sorry for the problem." 

Just wanted to add my 2 cents.  I've had a ton of trouble with HD content lately on Apple TV 2.  On the Netflix front, the following titles:

Memento (1999)

The Resident (2011)

Iron Man 2 (2010)

Dead and Buried (1981)

all play fine in full HD through my TiVO HD and through my mom's new Roku when hard-wired to the same router (Verizon DSL, 3MB).  But when played through the Apple TV they get downgraded to SD quality.  Same internet connection, same TV, same HDMI cable, but very low video quality JUST on the Apple TV.  Have tried using my ISP DNS and the Google DNS (008) and get the same result with both.

I also just tried my first HD movie rental (Alien-1979) and had the same problem many here have experienced with the extremely long download wait, followed by multiple stops and starts after the movie started playing.  And then it locked me out of the movie a full two hours before my "24 hours" was up (and I'm basing that on the onscreen "ticker" that claimed I had two hours left).

I did a lot of bragging about this unit to my friends based on my initial use, but this product has been a pretty big let down lately.  I don't know if it's related to the latest software update or what, but this kinda ***** right now.  I do appreciate all the responses on this thread.  It gives me a sense of camaraderie with my fellow Apple geeks, if not an actual solution.  :-)

It does seem that collectively, many ATV users are experiencing issues streaming movies under many variable conditions. It appears the issues are not related to ISPs or modems or locations or newness of the movies. (Apple support told me current movies are streamed from different servers.)

I have, like many others, received refunds on movies after getting the stock iTunes email telling me how to troubleshoot. I have logged a comment with Apple and suggest others do the same because adding comments to a forum thread is going to have limited benefit, other than to serve as assurance to other users that they are not experiencing unique problems.

I have read Apple home tv units are impending and guess the ATV service will be integrated. As Apple customers, we have had a great deal of positive experiences with other Apple products no doubt and the ATV service has been an unusual blip on user-experience horizons. Yes, it's been publically touted as the Apple hobby product and AirPlay has some redeeming qualities but ultimately, this is a revenue stream Apple are messing up for themselves; I don't rent movies from the ATV store any more. Bet I'm not alone.

Seriously, post some feedback for Apple about this and collectively it might make a difference.

Same issue for me - always had it with apple tv

in the uk, on virgin media. tivo works fine but streaming stops halfway through the film.

Its now at the point where i'm choosing not to rent..

I'm with Virgin Media too. A visit over to the forums shows various issues over their Fair Usage Policy and streaming Apple TV rentals. See this for example: http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-30Mb-and-50Mb-broadband/50-Mbps-total- joke-more-hopeless-than-ever/m-p/522727/highlight/true#M53159

Hi, just to add my $0.02 regarding this issue. We just got the ATV2 and were able to watch two movies and that was it. The next two movies rented would not download properly with the streaming issues mentioned in this thread. We however, have a home network with multiple DNS servers. I just shut down the servers acting as DHCP/DNS for an internal home network, so now the router alone is handing out addresses, gateway and DNS information itself (Netgear Dual band WNDR3700 wouter). It works now - the same tow movies are now showig in a flash after selecting play. The randomness seems to fit the luck of the draw as to which DHCP server the ATV2 picks up on boot.

This may not be the answer, but if you are running a home network with your own DNS/DHCP servers internally, maybe this could also be your problem. Check to make sure the ATV2 network settings shows your router as the DNS server and not one of your internal machines.

Hope this helps some. I will report back if it all stops working again and this is just a "good luck" glitch.

My streaming issues have not eneded with fw updatesand factory restores!!!!! But............

Since Jailbreaking it I have had no issues with streaming or any other multimedia. Sure there is the odd glitch, but compared to what this was like when i first purchased it, it is a 1000% performance increase......

Jailbreak if you dare! You may be pleasently surprised.

Hello.  Purchased my first AppleTV rental movie tonight.  Previously, I had watched quite a few Vimeo HD movies and a bunch of YouTube movies without issue.  Upon purchasing the movie, I waited approximatly 25 minutes and the ATV2 stated that it would start playing the movie in another 28 minutes.  Checked my internet connection on my computers and it was screaming fast (I have a 99Mb connection).  Jumped on google and caught this thread.  Read through some posts and quickly realized that there was not a simple solution to this issue.

Thought I'd start with what has worked for me in the past on a similar issue on a client computer.  I changed the DNS setting on my router from my ISP to point to OpenDNS.com (208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220)... I also manually changed the setting on my ATV2 (no reason to do this, but I wanted to make sure that it would take immediately on the ATV2).

Went back to the rental section and chose my movie and, to my initial disappointment, it still stated 28 minutes to wait... didn't have anything to lose so I opted to wait.  Well, in about a minute, it jumped down to 13 minutes and another minute later I was watching my movie.  Not sure if my ISP is limiting the port(s) that the ATV2 is using but I seemed to have fixed the issue on my end by doing this.  I watched the movie and no stuttering or freezes at all (and I stopped to check a few times and it was buffering way ahead of where the movie was playing).  If things change, I will update my post.  For now, I'm happy that I got it going in a relatively short amount of time.  Hope this helps someone out there.

"I changed the DNS setting on my router from my ISP to point to OpenDNS.com (208.67.222.222 & 208.67.220.220)."

I've heard of this before.  Is this change of DNS a long term thing or just when you want to rent iTunes movies?

Same problem, 7 hours loading time for one movie, but on the same Apple TV, Netflix streams perfectly and is very fast. This is a MAJOR Problem!!!!!!!!

While it hasn't been a problem for me (I've never seen more than 20-30 go by before the popup says I can view the movie), are you comparing NetFlix SD movies with Apple HD rentals?  If so, it's a bad comparison.  A HD movie is about 3 times as big as a SD NetFlix movie.

Apple has always said their Apple TV is kind of like a "hobby" since it's never been much of a seller.  And because of that, maybe they just don't have the server capability that NetFlix has.