I rented a movie under the Movie column on Apple TV. I assume this means I rented it from the iTunes Store. The movie won't load, so I want to cancel it and not have to pay for a rental that I couldn't view. How do I cancel this movie? I have a new second generation Apple TV.
Thanks.
John
Thanks! Apple did reply via a 'canned' message with some instructions on what to try to get it to load but no offer of refund. I think I'll try to follow their suggestions because I just bought the Apple TV and want to make sure it's something I want to keep before the time to return it runs out. But, it is annoying that they didn't offer me the alternative of canceling the purchase.
As to your question of error message - no, there are no error messages at all. Just a short message on the TV screen saying something to the effect of 'this movie is not loading. Try again later.'
Thanks for your comments. I'll post the final outcome, once I know what it is!
John
You can't actually cancel, but if you go to Itunes and log in to your account details and find the 'purchase' in your purchase history, you can then Report a Problem - explain the issue and I would hope they'd refund.
Alternatively go to Apple's support pages for itunes/itunes store, you may be able to strike up a live chat to discuss the issue.
Also, why will the movie not load? Any error message or is it just taking ages?
OK, if you genuinely fail to get it to work though I think they should offer a refund or renew the download period.
Occasionally Apple's servers can play up, but often download problems are down to slow user internet connections - do you know what sort of sustained speed you can get?
Try speedtest.net from a computer.
OK, I just followed the Apple instructions which consisted of making sure that I have the latest version of iTunes. I checked again just now and I do have the latest version. But, I know I have had the latest version since before I tried to download the movie. Apple said that after making sure I have the proper version of iTunes, the movie "will load and appear in your Purchased list. It did not load and does not appear in the purchased list. I have not yet tried going to the Apple TV to see whether it will now download there. Since I've never done this before with Apple TV, I don't know the answer to this question, viz. will purchases made via the Apple TV interactive screen show up in my iTunes Purchased list on my computer??
Re connection speed. Yes, that may be an issue, and is one of the things I want to 'test' as part of this trial run with the Apple TV. My stated download speed from my provider is 1.5 Mbps. I just checked via the web page you provided (thanks!) and it read 1.66 Mbps. I know that's at the lower limit for Apple TV and I can buy more band width from my provider. But I wanted to see whether I really needed to. How much would you recommend? I can go to 3 Mbps for an additional $2/month or 8 Mbps for an additional $10/ month over what I'm now paying.
I should also note that I subscribed to Netflix as part of this trial run and downloaded a movie from them with no problems at all. However, the Netflix movie was a short documentary not in HD. The movie from iTunes is the most recent Harry Potter movie. I don't think it's in HD but it's ~2.5 hours long whereas the documentary was ~55 minutes.
I'll try the download from the Apple TV later when I have time to watch the movie if it should download. If it doesn't work in the next 24 hours I'll get after Apple for a refund.
Thanks again for your weighing in on this!
John
OK, a couple of points.
The latest version of iTunes is to some extent irrelevant for rentals made direct on AppleTV, if you rent in itunes the rental will appear in one of the itunes menus, if you rent on AppleTV it appears in the top left icons on AppleTV.
Not sure if you rented on AppleTV or itunes.
Netflix works differently.
Netflix adjusts the videdo quality to take account of your internet speed so often works and plays quickly with lower quality on slower connections.
Rentals from iTunes store are fixed quality - either in SD or HD. If you've not altered AppleTV settings and rented there you've probably rented HD.
SD rentals weigh in around 1-1.5GB, HD 3-4GB.
In AppleTV Settings menus there's an itunes store menu that lets you choose if you want HD (default) or SD rentals. Won't work retrospectively for something you've rented.
If you're getting 1.66 Mbps steady rate I'd say it would be 4-6 hours at least for AppleTV2 to load enough of an HD movie to play without interruption while the rest downloads in the background. The problem is that if you do other things with AppleTv in the interim it can flush the download from the AppleTv2 solid state memory requiring the download to start from scratch.
I have a 3-4 Mbps connection currently, it takes 20-30 minutes to start watching HD after renting, under a minute for SD.
For an extra $10 I'd go for the 8 Mbps, but do check your ISPs terms and check they don't throttle usage at certain times or to certain places like itunes - no good having 8 Mbps if they only allow 500MB download between 7pm and 7am before slowing your speed.
With slow internet connections you cannot expect instant rentals from AppleTV 2 (or AppleTV 1). AppleTv 1 had the advantage of having a hard drive that could store a download until it expired regardless of what else you did with the unit. I prefer my AppleTv 1's for renting as i have a slow connection - if i had a fast connection it wouldn't matter unless I had a monthly download cap.
AC
OK, NOW I understand! I have Apple TV 2; I have not reset the defaults in settings; I rented via the Apple TV, not iTunes; and, I didn't have any idea that it could take that long to download, so I didn't give it more than a minute or two to load. But since I got no indication whatsoever that it was even trying to load, I assumed something was wrong. If what you (and now I) suspect was going on is the real reason for the problem, then Apple TV needs to display a much better message to the effect that 'the movie you've ordered is downloading but it will take several hours to do so'.
One other point that got me confused is the fact that the sales person at the Apple Store told me when I bought the Apple TV last week that the movies would automatically adjust the band width they required depending on what I had, within some limits, of course. He made no distinction among the movie providers, so I assumed they all did the same thing. Now that I know that rentals from iTunes are fixed quality, it all makes sense.
Many, many thanks for sorting this out for me. I'll check with my ips about upgrading to the 8Mbps, making sure they allow that bandwidth at all times.
Regards and thanks again,
John
How do I cancel a movie I rented but have not watched?
