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User profile for user: ShorePatrol
ShorePatrol Author
User level: 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

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122 replies
User profile for user: Ge0ph
Ge0ph
User level: Level 2
426 points

Dec 31, 2010 10:45 AM in response to vazandrew

vazandrew wrote:
Netflix content is more compressed than iTunes.


Then maybe iTunes needs to learn how to compress their content.

I bumped my connections speed from 3megs to 6megs just for the iTunes content. The result is that Netflix content loads faster with better quality and the iTunes content is unchanged. Still takes forever for a movie or TV show to be ready to watch.

Apple really needs to figure this out, and I'm sure they will.

And the BluRay player the I got for xmas has the VUDU service. VUDU has 1080p movies that start to play almost instantly.
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User profile for user: vazandrew
vazandrew
User level: Level 8
40,366 points

Dec 31, 2010 10:49 AM in response to Ge0ph

Netflix will usually give you 1-2gb whereas iTunes will be double that. iTunes is PPV so I would expect the higher quality.

I'm not the only one with no issue, problem is people come here with their problems so it looks as though there are a lot.

Speed won't be the only issue, sometimes it's throttling, people have noticed the DNS settings, wifi issues, placement etc.
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User profile for user: joudbren
joudbren
User level: Level 1
90 points

Dec 31, 2010 11:20 AM in response to vazandrew

So a cranky Apple technician telling me two days ago, and I quote, "that he gets over 20 of these (slow download) calls every day and there is nothing he can do about as it's an overloaded iTunes server issue... contact iTunes" doesn't enter into it I guess? He didn't even bother trying to troubleshoot it with me as he probably knew exactly what the results were going to be and it would just be wasting my time and his.

And I'll say it again, Netflix and ATV have similar HD quality when Netflix is transmitting at their highest rates. In my case, I'm always getting X-High/HD on Netflix HD movies. The movie sizes are virtually identical between the two services at Netflix's best quality. Netflix is only 1-2gb when broadcasting at lower bit rates on slow connections or SD. They average 3gb or more on HD same as Apple.
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User profile for user: tmartine
tmartine
User level: Level 3
995 points

Dec 31, 2010 12:34 PM in response to ShorePatrol

how many with problems are using Google DNS or OpenDNS?

has anyone experimented with changing their to their local ISP's DNS?

wrote:
Network users are supposed to look up IP addresses from a nearby server, which itself queries and caches answers to name and address lookups from other DNS systems, distributing the workload across the network. CDNs like Akamai, which Apple works with to deliver iTunes downloads, use DNS lookup information to locate where users are, and then optimize content delivery via the nearest available server.

When millions of users all tap into the same DNS server addresses to resolve domain names, as Google DNS does by design, Akamai and other CDNs route content to those users along the same path, preventing the network from working optimally. This causes problems not only for Apple's iTunes, but also any other media streaming or download service that uses a similar CDN strategy to distribute downloads.

http://lifehacker.com/5721591/fix-itunes-and-other-slowdowns-by-ditching-thirdparty-dns-servers?utmsource=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utmcampaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull%28Gizmodo%29

Also how many with problems have "Send Info to Apple" turned to off (Settings > General)?

Message was edited by: tmartine
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User profile for user: tgibbs
tgibbs
User level: Level 1
70 points

Dec 31, 2010 2:06 PM in response to tmartine

tmartine wrote:


When millions of users all tap into the same DNS server addresses to resolve domain names, as Google DNS does by design, Akamai and other CDNs route content to those users along the same path, preventing the network from working optimally. This causes problems not only for Apple's iTunes, but also any other media streaming or download service that uses a similar CDN strategy to distribute downloads.


But if this is the source of the problem, wouldn't people who experience problems streaming Apple movies also have problems streaming Netflix movies? This does not seem to be the case in general.
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User profile for user: tgibbs
tgibbs
User level: Level 1
70 points

Dec 31, 2010 2:08 PM in response to ShorePatrol

If it gives you multiple hours before the movie is ready to watch, that means that it is downloading extremely slowly, so slowly that you could download only a small fraction of the movie in the time it would take you to watch it. As a result, it won't let you start watching until nearly the entire movie is buffered. If the Apple TV is working properly, it should get the movie from Apple about as fast as it is able to stream a movie in comparable quality from Netflix. In this case, it will let you start watching with only a bit of the movie buggered, because it only needs a short time to download enough to let you "stay ahead."

It is still not clear whether the problem is due to a bug in the Apple TV software, overload of Apple's servers, or misconfigured routers, modems, or firewalls that are interfering with the specific way in which Apple streams content.
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User profile for user: tmartine
tmartine
User level: Level 3
995 points

Jan 1, 2011 7:06 AM in response to tgibbs

No because Apple and Netflix use different companies for their content distribution.. Akamai and I think LimeLight in the case of Apple and LimeLight and Level3 in the case of Netflix.. so you could see that some Apple customers (e.g. the limelight ones) might experience no problem at all while others (e.g. Akamai) ones might have problems..

each company will have a different method of determining your location and the most efficient way to get content to you, what is the closest mirrored media server to you etc... and that method may be interfered with to a greater extent given how much the rely on DNS information..
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User profile for user: newagemac
newagemac
User level: Level 2
245 points

Jan 1, 2011 7:16 AM in response to ShorePatrol

Anyone claiming that Netflix content streams in the same quality as iTunes content clearly does not know what they are talking about. The difference is easily seen when you watch it but you can check the amount of bandwidth being used during both streams as well as check the file sizes downloaded to confirm that iTunes streams in substantially higher quality than Netflix. There isn't a single knowledgeable person that does not confirm that.

If you claim otherwise, you either don't know what you are talking about or you are just plain being dishonest.
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User profile for user: tmartine
tmartine
User level: Level 3
995 points

Jan 1, 2011 7:29 AM in response to tgibbs

why i ask how many with problems have "Send Info to Apple" turned to off (Settings > General)? is that this might serve to override any DNS or other issues..

appleTV gen 1 also has these issues, then Apple included a request for info and the report of problems magically when away..

any show of hands of people having problems..

A) are you using googleDNS or openDNS?
B) do you have "Send Info to Apple" turned to off?
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User profile for user: Mike Root
Mike Root
User level: Level 1
70 points

Jan 10, 2011 9:32 AM in response to tmartine

I have experienced good days and bad days with Netflix streaming. Sunday it was perfect. I have to think it has to be due to varying conditions of the internet. I have tried both Google DNS and my own ISPs DNS and it varies as to which works best. I currently have it set for my ISPs DNS and I think I will leave it set that way. I have checked my speed with Speedtest.net and some days are better than others. Cox says "up to 20 Mbps", but it's been from 16 down to 4, so not sure if I should ***** to them about that. I would think as a "Premier" subscriber, that it would be better than that.
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Renting Movies is less than ideal

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