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Level 1

7 points

Renting Movies is less than ideal

1st let me say, I love the Apple Tv. But as I discovered over the weekend holiday, renting movies through the Apple service is, well, terrible. This post is meant to be constructive critisism - I love all the features of it, except the rental process - here's why...

I expected the service to work like Netflix - streaming, able to watch right away.

Not so - we had guests over, and didn't feel like running to RedBox, so we rented a $4.99 movie through the Apple TV. I have a 10Mbit cable connection, so it's not a connection problem, but the movie said "loading...." and then eventually said, "ready to watch in 3 hour, 45 minutes"....eventually it went up to 7 hours...we were eventually able to watch about 2 minutes of it, and then it paused, seemingly because it had to download more.

Needless to say, we couldn't watch the movie that night...so I let it "download" overnight. We were expecting more guests the next night, so we waited to watch it until the early evening.

When we were ready, we starting watching - about 1 hour into the movie, my kids interrupted us, and we had to pause the movie. Mistakenly, I hit the MENU button instead of pause (on my iPhone remote app)....this mistake appararently empties out the cache, because we had to redownload the entire movie....which I might add, we were not able to do, because when we tried to do it, it was past the 24 hour period.

Most frustrating. Someone on another post said the AppleTV doesn't "store" anything - but I disagree - since it would not allow us to start the movie until the entire thing was downloaded. If it truly doesn't store anything, it should, or, at a minimum, "warn" the user if they hit the menu button that they will lose everything if they proceed.

Thanks for listening.

iPhone 4, Windows Vista

Posted on Nov 29, 2010 11:46 AM

122 replies

tmartine

Level 3

995 points

Dec 1, 2010 11:43 AM in response to joudbren

I haven't seen any of these problems either.. i've noticed a little quirkiness in network speed.. think streaming habits of people have changed in the past little while with Neflix getting so popular.. sometimes i get some slowness and reboot my router and it magically disappears.. you might want to try that..

James, have you tried to hook up both appleTVs at the same time and see if there is a really a difference.. not sure you are considering all possible scenarios... what might have changed is the streaming habits of users in your ISPs network (and not yours).. i.e. Netflix.. in Canada, the 1st week that Netflix was active, Netflix traffic max out at 95% of network traffic.. 95% of all traffic running through all the pipes where Netflix streams.. that's pretty incredible.. don't know if you've heard of the net neutrality debate going on at this time between Level 3 and Comcast... on average more than 25% of traffic on Comcast pipes is from Netflix.. these changes have happened in the past little while and have happened quite rapidly.. depending on time of day these numbers can go up wildly.. what you might try doing is hooking up both devices and seeing if this is really a AppleTV 2nd gen problem.. also, this set up gives you a backup incase either version fail to work as you'd like..

but honestly, 1st i'd try just rebooting your router.. 9 times out of 10 this solves any network quirkiness i have..

vazandrew

Level 8

40,348 points

Dec 1, 2010 11:52 AM in response to Merged Content 1

gesmanec, this is a streaming device. There is a small flash drive for caching content, but if you press, menu streaming has stopped. When you go back to the movie it has to download from where you left off so it can attempt to stream uninteruppted, these times vary depending on internet speed.

tmartine

Level 3

995 points

Dec 1, 2010 12:01 PM in response to Bruce Hanson1

+When I look on these forums, I see evidence only of people having problems. I don't see posts saying ATV2 has radically improved the quality of life.+

But you're on a user forum where people who are having problems come to get help.. if you were not having any problems would you ever come here? what do you expect to see here? lol.. it's like going to a hospital and concluding that the heath of people has drastically deteriorated in a short amount of time based on the percent of sick people you saw there.. lol..

try rebooting your router.. checking firewall settings etc..

Dec 1, 2010 12:28 PM in response to newagemac

Thanks for your reply, newagemac. The answer is something more obscure than the standard things. Everything works perfectly except for movie rentals on Apple TV. Netflix on Apple TV opens righ away, as does You Tube content. Everything works fine except for this issue. I have a PS3 and an X-Box 360 on the same network and everything works fine except for streaming iTunes movies including streaming movies from several other sources. Something is happening with my iTunes streaming. Is there some way to actually talk to someone from Apple? I am beyond the 90 days and it seems silly to pay 25% of the purchase price to get phone support. The Apple e-mail respondent was someone from another country named Arup who wasn't even aware that the new Apple TV didn't have a hard drive. He told me to download it and save it on my Apple TV hard drive.

newagemac

Level 2

245 points

Dec 1, 2010 12:54 PM in response to Bruce Hanson1

You might want to check your iTunes account then and make sure everything is up to snuff. Here's what someone in a similar situation said they did to fix their problem with iTunes rentals:

Go into Account in ITunes store on your computer.

1). Update credit card info.

2). In edit apple account - make sure email address is properly entered.

3). Click Reset Warnings at the bottom of the page and hit Done.

Spazoo

Level 1

0 points

Dec 1, 2010 1:25 PM in response to ShorePatrol

it's just a hobby.

joudbren

Level 1

90 points

Dec 1, 2010 1:27 PM in response to Spazoo

It's just a hobby for me too but I'm the one who's paying for it. Thanks for your insight.

James

tgibbs

Level 1

70 points

Dec 1, 2010 1:41 PM in response to ShorePatrol

If everything is working correctly and you have a reasonably fast network connection, your Apple TV should be almost as fast in starting Apple rentals as in starting Netflix movies.

hipnetic

Level 1

9 points

Dec 1, 2010 5:54 PM in response to tgibbs

Not happy right now. My wife had the bright idea that she wanted to watch a new release tonight (Knight and Day). It was pouring rain outside so I didn't feel like driving out to try and get a copy of it at the Blockbuster 12 minutes away. So I gave in and said we could rent it from iTunes. My wife's one request is that I get everything "ready" before we all moved up to the movie room (I've experimented with several other streaming devices and things don't always go smoothly, so she's gotten a bit impatient with it all).

Anyways, so I buy the movie, and get it going on downloading. I've got a 12mpbs+ connection, but I waited about 15 minutes before telling her we should be good to go. We all settle in and I hit play, only to find that the progress bar looks like it's only downloaded about 5 minutes worth of the movie. What?!?

Anyways, I hit play and it starts to play. About 5 seconds in, I hit pause. Then I hit play again but instead of it starting up, I see the spinning circle. I wait. And wait. And wait. No luck. I switch over to play a Netflix movie and it starts within 10 seconds. I go back to try starting my iTunes rental, but still the spinning circle. I reboot it. No luck. I reboot my cable modem and router. No luck.

Finally, I wait a bit longer and enough has buffered so that it lets me start up the movie. Great. Then 10 minutes into the movie, it pauses. And the circle spins. And I wait. And wait. Then I get my laptop and run an online speedtest (here: http://speedtest.vudu.com/cdn1/). It says I'm currently getting 12mbps down.

So what is the problem?!?! Did I mention that my wife is now asleep? I want my money back for this rental, and I will never rent from iTunes again.

joudbren

Level 1

90 points

Dec 1, 2010 6:48 PM in response to hipnetic

Boy does that ever sound familiar. Rented a movie Saturday night with no problem and then rented another one immediately after and it was exactly as you described. We almost never had this kind of streaming issue in over two years with our original ATV in close to 200 rentals. Yes you can get your money back. Go into your iTunes account, find the movie rental then click on "report a problem". I did that on mine and they ok'd the refund. I hope everyone does that and then maybe Apple will get the message. Cheers!

James

Dec 1, 2010 7:38 PM in response to newagemac

In my estimation, there are too many similar posts for this problem to be fixed by reboots and similar fixes. I have tried everything, but since I switched to ATV2, movie rentals just don't work. I tried all the easy fixes, updated software, even on my pacemaker, but nothing works. My connect speed s certainly high enough, 20, but movies just don't work. They always say your movie will e ready to watch in 2-6 hours. For me, it has been worse since the update. I can download streaming movies instantly from X-Box Live and Comcast OnDemand, but not Apple TV 2. Netflix works fine on my Apple TV so that points to some problem out there in Apple cyberspace. There are obviously those for whom ATV2 is working perfectly, so Apple techies ought to be looking at what the differences might be between those that work and those that don't. I have honestly eliminated everything from my end besides something in Apple cyberspace so an answer needs to be forthcoming from Apple. I have got to think that Christmas is a prime movie rental time so from Apple's point of view this probably needs to come soon.

vazandrew

Level 8

40,348 points

Dec 1, 2010 8:45 PM in response to Bruce Hanson1

Some ISP's have been known to throttle connection, also more people are purchasing internet tv/set boxes (there are so many coming out now) so higher traffic and bandwidth usage could also cause problems in some areas.

Message was edited by: vazandrew

Dec 1, 2010 8:59 PM in response to vazandrew

My ISP is Comcast. It would not surprise me to find them doing it, but why would they throttle down Apple TV and not my X-Box 360. I downloaded the same movie that was a 2-6 hour one on iTunes on X-Box Live and it was immediately available. They are both connected by means of Comcast. If there is difference in the nature of the data transfer, that could be true, but if Comcast was to throttle one it would seem reasonable that they would want to shut down the other. I do believe that the ultimate answer is something like this though, infighting between technology giants behind the scenes.

newagemac

Level 2

245 points

Dec 2, 2010 4:48 AM in response to ShorePatrol

I hope everyone is reporting this to Apple. If you are having problems with iTunes rentals but not Netflix rentals there is a very good chance the problem is on Apple's end and the more people who report it the faster they will be able to find a solution. Since the new software update seems to have triggered the problem, it should be just a software update to correct it.

vazandrew

Level 8

40,348 points

Dec 2, 2010 9:24 AM in response to newagemac

I don't think it's simply the update, people have been complaining about this for awhile.

Renting Movies is less than ideal