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ShorePatrol Author

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

Ge0ph

Level 2

426 points

Dec 2, 2010 1:06 PM in response to Bruce Hanson1

Bruce Hanson1 wrote:
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.

I went to my Chevy dealership to get my oil changed. I was amazed at how many Chevys were broken and in the shop being worked on. Chevys must really be bad and they are all broken because that's all I see there.

This is a forum where people with problems go to try to get answers so that's about all you will see here, is people with problems.

That being said, the way Apple does streaming is all kinds of wrong and doesn't work very well.

Dec 2, 2010 5:04 PM in response to Ge0ph

On the one hand, I would definitely agree with you, but if I took my Chevy to a Chevrolet Service Center and founf that every car was having work done on their transmissions, then I would begin to worry about my car's transmission. I got a call from Apple Care today about this issue. They walked me through a number of checkpoints but after seeing my download connect speed was 15,000 Kbps and after seeing that Netflix worked fine with instant viewing and the ability to pause, they ended the call by telling me that they were aware of the problem and were working on it.

Dec 3, 2010 11:32 AM in response to tallrad1

You can instantly rent but not instantly watch. 😉

It appears that you cannot use your AppleTV for AirPlay while you are waiting for your movie to download. It took 7 hours for me to download an HD Movie. I didn't want to watch the movie until the evening, and wanted to use AirPlay during during the day. Finally when I was ready to watch the movie it started the download again. This time the AppleTV reported that it would take 60 hours to watch. The rental expired without an opportunity to watch. I wasted my money.

I'll never rent a movie through AppleTV. It is just an AirPlay box.

tmartine

Level 3

995 points

Dec 3, 2010 11:57 AM in response to joe engineer

I've rented several movies and they all started to play in max. 30 second.. this is not a problem for everyone.

Crimguy

Level 1

4 points

Dec 3, 2010 11:57 AM in response to joe engineer

Joe - relax, I agree there's a problem, but I'm hearing from numerous people that Apple is aware of it. With some more publicity, such as the news posting at Appleinsider.com, there will likely be a fix of some kind. I'm not entirely convinced it's the ATV itself, but may also be a combination of the ATV and another piece of hardware. There have been people with HDMI connectivity issues, and this might be related. I'm going to try a different HDMI cable tonight and see if it has any effect. Doubtful, but you never know.

swerve99

Level 1

0 points

Dec 3, 2010 12:17 PM in response to vazandrew

I have had no issues with my Apple TV neither has any of my friends that have this unit. Once the firmware update was installed it fixed and issues that I have seen. When I rent a movie from Itunes through my Apple TV it is ready to play within 30 seconds (worst case).

ShorePatrol Author

Level 1

7 points

Dec 3, 2010 1:01 PM in response to tmartine

People, really...

I think everyone gets it that not "everyone" is having this problem - so stop posting that "I'm not having the problem"...

To equate that with the car shop example used earlier - it's like you going into the car shop where everyone is having their transmission replaced, and you announcing that there's nothing wrong with your transmission...

Ok - we get it - but for those of us who ARE having the problem, this is the place for us to discuss it, and hopefully, eventually get a fix.

So if you're not having the problem, please continue driving 😉

newagemac

Level 2

245 points

Dec 3, 2010 1:57 PM in response to ShorePatrol

I totally disagree. Especially since some people really do think that "everyone" is having problems. It seems some people don't understand that at a "support" forum you're going to mainly get people who uh... how can I say it... +need support+.

Of course, the hundreds of thousands of people not having problems aren't really going to be here. They're somewhere right now enjoying that Toy Story 3 movie they just rented on iTunes for the family, busy catching up on old episodes of 30 Rock through Netflix on the Apple TV, or on the couch Airplaying their favorite albums to their home stereo while they browse the internet on their iPads.

The few unlucky souls here having issues should contact Apple about their problems if they have not already. The overwhelming majority of us hope you are able to get your issues resolved and can enjoy your purchase like the rest of us. That's why some of us come here to help from time to time. 😉

Dec 3, 2010 4:26 PM in response to newagemac

I should explain a little why this can be more than an inconvenience for me. I have an adult son with a serious mental illness, schizo-affective disorder, and additionally, a serious panic\anxiety disorder. Distraction can at times almost be about survival. If I convince him to sit down and try to watch a movie and then it says our movie will be ready in 3-6 hours, that is really not a good thing. Yes, I can rent from Comcast or X-Box Live, but I was really excited about Apple TV, and as a retired teacher with not a lot of money, if I invest in something, I want it to work. I just got off the phone with Comcast and my official available download speed is 16 Mbps. That should be plenty fast enough for this to work. When I spoke with Apple Care, they could find no explanation at my end that could explain my difficulties. At first I thought it might be my unit, but after coming here and seeing so any toes with similar problems, I decided it was probably not my ATV.

iBigBird

Level 1

0 points

Dec 3, 2010 6:29 PM in response to vazandrew

As an end-user, I can give a rip about the protocols being used!!!!! It's the experience that matters. Maybe Apple needs to change their protocol because the one they're using doesn't work. You are the exception. I'm currently in the email back and forth game now with them to get my money back, and no where are they saying they see the problem. I too have never had an issue until the new ATV2...

vazandrew

Level 8

40,366 points

Dec 3, 2010 8:07 PM in response to iBigBird

I am not the exception. If you are simply basing your opinion on the forum of course it will look that way. You may not care about the protocol but that's how it works.

If you have a slow connection, you will have a poor experience anyway. Netflix degrades content, apple simply takes longer to load.

Dec 4, 2010 4:23 AM in response to ShorePatrol

Is this just an HD rental issue?
I have had no problems but I only rent the SD versions as they are cheaper.

tgibbs

Level 1

70 points

Dec 4, 2010 8:42 AM in response to newagemac

newagemac wrote:
I totally disagree. Especially since some people really do think that "everyone" is having problems. It seems some people don't understand that at a "support" forum you're going to mainly get people who uh... how can I say it... +need support+.

I agree. If only people with problems post reports, it is easy for new visitors to get the idea that this is a generic limitation of Apple TVs, and that there is no point in trying to fix it or diagnose it. But in fact, if you read through the forum, you will find quite a few cases of people who have had similar problems and ultimately tracked it down to problems with their router or modem. So it is good to have reports from people for whom Apple TV is working properly, so that visitors know what sort of performance they should be observing, and that they should take contact Apple's tech support if their unit is not functioning as it should:

http://www.apple.com/support/complimentary/

Dec 4, 2010 9:41 AM in response to tgibbs

"Once you find what you’re looking for, simply press Play, and in seconds, you’re watching the opening credits with theater-like Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. SD rentals start at just $2.99, and HD rentals start at $3.99."

That is a quote directly from the Apple website. Neither of these assertions are true, both in regards to speed and cost. Neither I nor vzandrew have the data to assert which is the exception, those for which ATV2 is working, or those for which it is not. Also, it is misdirection to blame slow connect speeds as the source of poor streaming. While it it is clearly true that a slow connection would radically affect streaming, I haven't read a post where the complainer has said they are using dialup or very low end ISP services.
The wild card here may be the wireless connection. I have a feeling that a fair number of Apple TV users may be techies like me. I have an X-Box 360, a PS3, and Wii in proximity to each other along with my Apple TV. Combine this with the 3 or 4 wireless networks that show up when my iPad searches for a wireless connection, and you have plenty of potential for interference. I am going to purchase Ethernet cable this weekend and hardwire mat Apple TV. I will come back here and post the results.

Dec 4, 2010 4:07 PM in response to ShorePatrol

Hello Folks.

I´m having the same problems with rental movies.
Takes hours to load, even in 10mbps connection, and if anything happens wile movie is loading, it flush´s out the memory.
Anything means, watches a different preview of other movie, watches YouTube, plays some content from airplay, etc…
Even if the movie is completely load, and accidentally you fast forward to the end of the movie, it´s unload from the memory and I have to wait all over again.

Renting Movies is less than ideal