Q: Apple TV 2G "An error occurred loading this content. Try again Later"

Ray sharpe's solution is overly elaborate and time consuming...why would I want to do all that every time I got that error? As I said before, when I get that error I go to my Blu-ray player and it streams just fine. This is a ATV problem and it's an outrage Apple won't fix it. 

This problem just reared its ugly head on my family room apple tv yesterday.  As a test I tried loading the same content (movies and netflix) on my home theatre apple tv and there was no issue.

In my case the fix was to reset the family room apple tv by simultaneously holding menu and down buttons for 6 seconds until apple tv led flashes rapidly.  Upon restart I am able to watch all content once again.

Hopefully this problem is a one-time thing.

So this is what I tried just a minute ago:

I turned the wifi off  my macbook, unplugged the modem and router, and the ATV2.

Waited a minute, then reconnected the modem, then router, then ATV2, then macbook.

Then, i selected a TV show to stream, and paused it as soon as it started to make sure it loaded. Once the gray bar had gone along enough, i hit play. No issues yet!

fingers crossed that this fixed it.

Omeed

I'm having a problem with the same message. I purchased "The Walking Dead Season 1" on iTunes and watched episodes 1-5 on my AppleTV 2G without problem. Went to watch episode 6 tonight and got the message" "An error ocurred loading this content. Try again Later." Tried over and over to get it to work without success. I unplugged and replugged my ATV and then the episode played fine. I had a similar problem last week streaming from Netflix. Again, rebooting the Apple TV fixed the problem until it happened again tonight.

I read elsewhere that the issue is a cache issue and the last update was supposed to fix it, but rather it increased the cache size/limit.

The user mentioned that restarting the apple tv by holding menu and the down button for 10 seconds on the remote should do the trick.

I did a manual restart by unplugging the ATV2 like you rob, and it's worked for now. I haven't tested the restart by remote (menu and down button together for 10 seconds). If you get a chance to try it let us know if it works out!

Funny thing is that I changed the Audio output as recommended earlier and now the error message has gone away and my series are showing correctly BUT now there is no sound . I'm starting to get fed up with my ATV...

Everything was working fine up until the last iOS update which I NEVER should have done.

Apple has become too big for their own good. Things used to work flawlessly until the masses began to buy their products...

I just bought the ATV last week as I'm converting our home to "Apple only" products.  I talked my wife into the ATV because "everything just works correctly" with Apple.  Thus, you can imaging my embarrassment when we were watching a Netflix movie and I got the dreaded loading error telling us to try again later.  In shame, I went back to the menu and tried restarting the movie which worked....for about 2 minutes!  After doing this a few more times we gave up on it.  She took the opportunity to rub in the "works correctly" discussion.  I'm going to try the reset trick to see if I can get it working again.  I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed - in general we've been pleased with our other apple products.  We've own the ATV for 6 days, and already having issues (yes I did all the updates when I initially hooked it up).

I ran into the issue again last night trying to watch a movie.

I tried holding the menu and down button together for 10 seconds. When I let go, the ATV2 restarted itself.

I was able to play whatever I wanted.

On a side note: after teh restart, I had moved one of my movies to an external HD and pointed itunes to the correct location, but the ATV2 still couldnt find it. After another soft reset with the menu and down button, ATV2 took a second to locate it but it did find the new location.

Looks like the solution for now is, if at first you don't succeed...just restart!

I'll add my name to the list.  Having the same issue; I'm also having problems with AirPlay quitting in the middle of playing a video. I've restored the AppleTV and rebooted but neither fixes the issue.  I have to watch Netflix on my Xbox.  Bad form Apple, I might just decide I don't need an AppleTV.

I picked up my Apple TV for my birthday last January - I've hardly watched a thing because I get the error all the time. Honestly, I forget about it most of the time, but today I thought I'd give it a try. I was happy to see I can access my purchased TV Shows, however I still get the error. I found the HD setting and changed it to SD - even though we pay to have faster internet speed than previously...

But still nothing. I always find movies I'd like to rent, but I just can't see wasting the money.

All I have is an expensive paperweight that ***** electricity...

Haha, it bleeped my other word for "drains" electricity ... Thankfully, I also have an Xbox so I can use Netflix on TV.

I had this problem with iTunes purchased content on Apple TV. Unplugging the Apple TV unit for 15 seconds worked. Thank you!

Rebooting fixed the iTunes streaming problem for me.

I just got this error message again "Netflix is unavailable at this time try again later." This time I rebooted the ATV and it didn't fix it. As usual I can steam the stuff just fine with my Blu-Ray player streaming mode, so obviously it's not to do with iTunes or Netflix. The error message I get says "Contact Netflix for this problem" (I'm paraphrasing) which is totaly bogus because it isn't a Netflix problem. In my experience rebooting works sometimes but not others. In any case why should we have to be rebooting all the time? 

In case Apple is monitoring this I wanted to say this error also now occurs if I pause something and leave it paused long enough that the screen saver comes on.