Q: Apple TV HD Rental Streaming Problem

With all due respect, we are not all residents of "merry old england" and its libel laws are irrelevant. When I pay 100 USD for something that does not  perform as advertised, "piece of junk" might be hyperbole, but it is not libel.

Also, by accusing people, a considerable number, who all consistently have the same problem despite widely diverging situations, of "libel" even rhetorically is unhelpful in a user-to-user forum. Your diminution of the facts of the case for those who are having problems would possibly justify someone thinking you are more interested in defending Apple--which I want to defend too!--than in helping people identify their problem. If that problem resides with Apple's service, then users who keep tweaking their home set-ups are only wasting their time and energy. But most of us with the iTunes rental problem have home wireless networks that otherwise function very well for every other task we attempt, only to have ATV2 choke downloading a rented video.

As a user of Apple products since 1984, I'm very impressed with Apple's performance. That is what makes the ATV2 so disappointing. A refund or replacement doesn't really get at the issue for Apple users. We don't want our money back. We want Apple stuff that works amazingly well and that we can show off to our friends and see them salivate all over the living room floor in envy! According to Steve Jobs, Apple doesn't sell "computers" but instead, a special kind of user experience. That's why ATV2, the iTunes story, iTunes, etc are so integrated-it's an ecosystem. A failure in that ecosystem is not met merely by a refund.

If it were just Dell, I'd return it. But we want Apple stuff to work like Apple stuff should work. Apple sets, and therefore must be held, to a higher standard.

While a forum doesn't represent all users, it certainly does represent users of a particular type: users who care, users who communicate, and users who try to understand the digital ecosystem into which they've bought. So I'd say even a few hundred problem reports on a site like this should be a warning flag that something is amiss. These forums are where those who carry the fire for Apple come.

I hope that makes sense.

This isn't a personal attack on you at all. You seem a serious, informed and thoughtful person. I'm just frustrated a bit by your tendency to blame the user when there are hundreds of complaints on this topic, each of which probably represents a great many more who never post.

Dear Macaby

Your insecurity over your nation state is quite understandable but please do not bring it into a public forum that is discussing problems that an ATV user is experiencing and requesting help and advice from a community of fellow users.

The fact is simple.

I have run a side by side test of ATV 1 against ATV 2 on HD movie rentals using exactly the same Internet connection and conditions.

The ATV 1 works, the ATV 2 doesn't. Ergo there is a problem.

Clearly not everyone has a problem but the fact this thread has run for over a year without a satisfactory conclusion indicates that this product has a problem and nobody here, yourself included, is in any position to suggest how widespread this problem is. Not every ATV 2 user will come here to post given that it is a consumer product rather than a computer nerd product that has a tradition of such discussion boards.

It could well be that Apple is not responsible for this problem given that it is Akamai who are responsible for the HD rental streaming as part of the ATV service and not Apple. However because the same files appear to stream on an ATV 1 but not an ATV 2 suggests that there remains a problem with the ATV 2 under certain circumstances. Which by sharing we are trying to understand.

The purpose of this forum is to share knowledge and information not to pretend a problem doesn't exist in a kind of illusory denialism that you seem happy to operate from. Everybody else is here to try and find a solution rather than dump the product and go elsewhere given that there are now so many options.

Enjoy your day.

< Edited By Host >

Never heard that before.  I've got over 150 friends and clients on opendns servers for the past few years and have not had a single issue with them (I have had ISP DNS issues before).  You should really check out opendns if you haven't before.  Major improvement in protecting your network computers and speeding up your browsing experience.

I think i'll stick to what i've got. I've seen many issues that are resolved by changing back. Apple also posts it as a possible cause

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3623

Verify DNS and network settings

If you are experiencing abnormal wait times when attempting to purchase or rent on your Apple TV, it could be due to changes made to your network settings (such as the DNS address on your Apple TV and/or router or base station). You should use the default DNS entry supplied by your ISP, on both your Apple TV and router. Changing the DNS entry may result in a longer time before playback begins. Also, you should configure your Apple TV to use DHCP for the network setup, unless you have a custom network with specifically-assigned IP addresses.

To configure your Apple TV to use DHCP, from the main menu, go to Settings > General > Network > Configure TCP/IP. In the Network Setup page, select the "Using DHCP" option.

Yeah this seems nuts! 39 pages of people saying they have the same issue and no response or solution from apple. My atv2 was working fine streaming hd movies frequently.... This trouble seemed to correlate to the launch of iCloud - I suspect their new infrastructure isn't coping on some level. The fact ios5 took 14 hours to download on the same connection 2 days after release is another clue.

Just tried again and it's telling me I have to wait 5 hours! Looks like the video shop has my business back.

Come on apple!

Same problem here in Canada which sugests it is an Apple server issue. The frustration that we have is that the trailer plays perfectly, Apple collects your money and only then tells you its going to to take two plus hours to download.

I have no confidence that even if you can manage your time to come back in the middle of the night to watch that the count down clock won't still be at two hours since it changes frequently during the wait period.

Have Apple responded to this in any way??

I'm in Canada and all movies start after 5 seconds

I'm in Indiana and all movies Don't start after 5 seconds.

Thnx guys - 5 seconds would be a huge improvement and good luck finding that video store Dubare!

Dubare wrote:

 

Yeah this seems nuts! 39 pages of people saying they have the same issue and no response or solution from apple.

I would venture a guess that Apple is looking at these complaints. However, 39 pages with maybe an aveage of 15 per page = around 500 posts.  While I'm not going to reread and count all the posts, I'm guessing at least 1/3 of the posts are not reporting any problems.  I haven't a clue as to how many ATV2 have been sold, but if it's a million, the complaints here are a VERY small percentage.  Even if it's only 100,000 and every one of the 500 posts were complaints, that works out of less than 1/2 of 1%.

Complaining about any ATV2 problems here is the same as blowing into the wind.  Write to Apple.  Go to the Genius Bar. Try your ATV2 on someone else's wifi. Sell it on eBay or consider the garbage can.

Over a year later and though improving SLIGHTLY, for me at least, still a major problem with Apples "streaming".  And before anyone says "it's your connection" then why is there no problem at all running nextflix! 

The first 3-4 episodes a day I watch stream instant now, runs perfect and thought this was fixed.  Once I pass that number it turns into a 3hr wait time for a 45 minute TV show.  Is there a setting someplace, somewhere that is turning off the streaming capability once the hard drive on the ATV2 gets full?  Cause that's when it slows WAY down.  One workaround is to restore the ATV2 once it slows down and then it streams again.  Huge pain though and for a relaxing weekend I would rather be watching TV not doing tech work on it.  Does a jail broke one work better? Kept mine a virgin just in case Apple actually thought about fixing it's product at some point ;)

Netflix is different. It uses variable bit rate so streams instantly and adapts based on connection. iTunes is fixed. Perhaps there is throttling from your ISP

What is your actual Internet speed www.speedtest.net

Are you on wifi?

Using your ISP DNS?

That's useful insight - we are concerned in our community about throttling from our ISP here in Ontario who have assured us they do no not and that it is illegal Ugh em!!

I have also had an ongoing dialogue with Apple who refuse to answer the direct question (assume they have an Automated reply mechanism). They did suggest downloading to my pc first and playing from there. Assume yr point re Wi-Fi is because it is slower but we have no problem in playing other internet streams.

I suggest trying ethernet when on wifi to rule out interference in certain networks. I am on wifi and have a good speed, using default DNS. All rentals start after 5 seconds.

Read the latest review on streaming devices in MacLife. You will see the appletv had only 2 stars for streaming  other devices faired better. The review didn't cover Roku.