Apple TV 2nd Generation slow streaming for Movies from my iTunes

Me too. I am no techno genious but I just hooked up Apple TV wirelessly and found that movies from iTunes take the length of the movie time to download! I didn't expect that as Netflix downloads almost immediately. It make apple movies too hard to watch. Not very satisfied...

Hi all

Same issues as all here, i have found some other forums stating that this issue could be down to peak download times from the apple servers??

I suppose the proof there is that via apple tv you can access netflix with no issues/download speeds

Myself i had various download times quoted. 3 hrs-3days....yep 3 days.

Personally i can only suggest once you receive your invoice you report that particular item as having a problem.

Im sure someone will soon listen if they are not earning revenue due to you asking for money back.

Thats what im doing at the moment as clearly on that particular download i defo did not get on demand...and thats the idea of the little black box!!

I have noticed a way to spot this issue before buying a film mind. simply view a few trailers and watch the download speed!!! you must do this on trailers on itunes though...you tube and other services appear to not be effected.

good luck all

One fix that I have seen mentioned is to disable Dolby Digital in the Settings - Audio & Video. This appears to fix slow streaming issues from an iTunes library (through Home Sharing) that some people have.

Up until two weeks ago, I had no issues whatsoever. Now, my download speeds are an absolute and utter joke. At this point, the product is completely unusable.

Can we just get back to the very basics for one minute. We have some utterly brilliant people here coming up with some remarkable work arounds and fixes and they should be thanked for their hard work. But are we all failing to see the real issue here. Michael just posted it in such a brilliantly simple way which was where I was comng from in my original post. Up until two or three weeks ago most people were loving their Apple TV - UNTIL (it appears), Apple did something somewhere and stuffed it up. When are they going to fix it for us? We must be a small sample of those having problems with Apple TV. What about all those average Apple TV buyers who don't post and blog and go on sites like this. There must be thousands of people out there with completely useless Apple TV units. We shouldn't have to fix this ourselves. This is Apple's problem. Their product doesn't work, so when will they recognise this and fix it?

Sorry for the rant, but this is starting to get me just a little hot under the collar.

I have an Apple TV 2nd generation and since I updated it to the latest firmware available, that came out last week with the announcement of a new Apple TV, streaming content from iTunes servers, Movies and TV Shows, has become a nightmare. I don't think it is due to the firmaware update as I think it is due to the lack of capacity of the servers. As recent as last week everything worked fine. I would just press play and the TV Show would start almost immediatly and the streaming was fast enough that all the TV Show, past the point I was watching, was downloaded, without any delay or having to stop to rebuffer. The first time I noticed it was on monday this week and since then I have been testing streaming directly from iTunes every now and then and it never came back to work the way it did. I know the problem isn't my network. I have a 20 Mbits connection and download content at 2 Mbytes/sec on avarage.

And I don't know if it has something to do with the fact that Apple has made available content in 1080p, and that maybe it is stressing its servers even more. What I do know is that the way it is working right now undermine the entire concept of what Apple TV should be like. It has to work just the way it did when Eddy Cue gave a demonstration of the new Apple TV on Wednesday, the content played authenticated immediatly and started playing, without long time buffering. "People are going to love streaming movies and TV shows in 1080p with the new Apple TV", said Philip Schiller. But I can't even stream 720p content.

My experience is different. Different is the only word I can use to describe what is happening. because when I first bought the appletv and used it, I wasn't very happy. I would use the xbox 360 to stream shows from zune before the apple tv. The xbox would play but the quality would drop as my connection dropped. When I started using the apple tv, it would take 45min to download show before I could watch it.

But since apple started using icloud, shows will instantly start. The issue I see now, is that it will begin to play and freeze while the player bar pops up and spins. The trick is I can quickly rewind and hit play and it will begin again. So there is something happening, and rewinding plus play fixes it. That is until it happens again. BTW I haven't been able to upgrade my appletv to new update yet. It keeps saying it wasn't able to download at this time.

I figured I would report the same problem to add to awareness. HD movies from my home library, already downloaded, no other devices powered on, reports 20 hours until play. Granted it only takes about 30-40 minutes, however this is unexceptible considering I had a 1st gen in the exact same spot which worked flawlessly, with as many as 4 other devices draining bandwith. Also, AirPlay seems to be troublesome as well... We all should know better than to purchase the first or second distributions of a new product, lol, kidding. Who could resist?

Message was edited by: tharris84

Rented 'Ben Hur' a 3 hour and 12 minute movie - did this on Sat night.

The screen showed that I am allowed 30 days to watch it....

It is still downloading and it has been 2 days and still tells me I have 97 hours and 7 minutes to go....

Everything else at home works well, iMac, iPad etc all great speed on the internet.....

The question I have - "Will it download in time so that I can watch the movie before it expires ?"

Please make this product easy and fun and something I can recommend - right now - I am not as much of a keen supporter I was....

Ok

First things first... The device is not at fault. clearly it does what it says... It downloads movies music content etc.

I imagine somewhere in all the terms and conditions that apple sends us on updates theres a clause with regards 3rd party. Apple TV works as can be seen by either trying netflix or streaming a movie on your mac to Apple tv. So can only leave 1 problem left which would be the servers. There has been some talk of the HD content being upgraded from 720p to 1080p so this could be one of there issues and is something being bounced around.

I have seen some discussions that issue was reported many months ago, it would appear that in the UK more have occured since the last update! Myself last Saturday.

GAZZADUB

Personally i would suggest re-renting the film, im sure it download straight away, once you receive your invoice for the original film click report a problem and explain the issue and request money back.

i done this and within 1hr received a appoligy and account credited. (we like apple service)...

Funny again this was on a Saturday where the servers would be at peak on itunes side!!!

Monst importantly we must remember why we by Apple products.......because there better than all the other cr*p out there, who by the way have much worse issues. agrea its annoying mind.

And all, make sure you add feedback on the Apple TV page explaing this issue, Apple wont respond but feedback is monitored.

"Monst importantly we must remember why we by Apple products.......because there better than all the other cr*p out there, who by the way have much worse issues. agrea its annoying mind."

Look, we don't need comments like this to ever be posted. Besides the spelling and grammar errors, something being "better" is relative. I can tell you it works, but it doesn't work all that well. I could say my XBOX 360 is better. The Xbox 360 gives you the choice to watch in HD or SD at the purchase screen. Apple TV doesn't do this. You have to go into the settings to change it to do SD or HD. The Xbox 360 also streams instantly at purchase. Plus once you buy or rent a movie or tv show, it is instantly available any time on any device associated with your live ID and is capable of streaming.

I am platform agnostic. I enjoy each box I have for different reasons.

So, we don't need to over praise something, just because it's apple.

Mr/mrs lancaster

Many thanks for pointing out my spelling and grama

Myself I was here to try and help and learn from others the issues currently around apple tv!!

I am not here to go to school !

If there is a issue with a apple product this is the best place to find a resolve

If you don't like my comments go back on your Xbox and beat someone up about it!

Your not helping resolve the issue

Hence to add "I could say my Xbox"

You didn't

So name better for £99

Untill then good luck.....yawn

Thanks for feedback.

Interestingly enough - I raised the issue with Apple Express lane support (my Apple TV is under 90 days old) at the same time I posted here last night.

Movie suddenly downloaded overnight. No questions asked but I have 3 hours and 32 minutes (20 min more than I thought) of movie waiting for me when I woke up this morning. 🙂

There are obviously issues with server downloads for movies and it pays to raise the awareness. Txs for all the posts

On several occasions during the past week, I have noticed that the service was back to normal, only to once again return to dreadful.

Same thing here. It is very intermittent now. The tricky thing when you are having problems streaming contet to your Apple TV is that the problem can be a broad range of things. There are too many variables.

If you are having problems streaming content from your iTunes library, using home sharing, it's very likely that the problem is in your local network. The configuration, the quality of the network your router provides, interferences in the signal etc. or even you Apple TV, what is the least likely, but sometimes can happen. For that, you should test it using a different local network to find out if the problem is really your own local network. Try using it in your friends house once, or a family member, in the same situation that you have been having problems with, that is, streaming from a local library, via iTunes and home sharing.

Now, if the problem is streaming from Apple's servers, from the iTunes Store and iCloud, the problem could be your ISP, Internet Service Provider, your broad band speed or even the lack of capacity from apple's servers to deal with the quantity of requests it is having in that particular moment. In this last situation, it very likely that the problem is only transitory, simply because the service can't work so unstabel and erratically like this. To stream content in HD, 720p or 1080p you will need a good broad band speed. I don't know the exact number, but I will use my case as an example. I have a 20 Mbits connection and never had problems streaming 720p content. Apple TV never had to stop to rebuffer, in fact, it downloaded the whole movie or TV Show past the point it was playing. Maybe a 10 Mbits or 15 Mbits connection is more than enough too, people in this post who have these speed could tell about their experiences.

But it could also be your internet service provider, but this is very difficult to happen and very hard to prove. This is the least likely hypothesis ‐ or maybe I'm just too naive. ISP sometimes cap the streaming capabilities of your connection. To learn more about it, read this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_cap

In clonclusion, you have to go through each and every one of these variables to find out waht is the real problem. In my case, I never had problems streaming from my local library or Apple's servers, but since last week I have been experiencing problems streaming from their servers, with very slow speeds. So it could be my ISP or Apple's servers. In the meantime, I'm waiting to see if the service comes back to normal before I try to find if it is my ISP. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But I think it is resuming its normal behavior. Let's see...