unexplaind intenet usage by my apple tv

It would be easier to just let it properly apply and be up to date but that's up to you, however there is no way to disable the check.

Again at 4:00am this morning, it downloaded 575MB. ***, apple? It makes no sense that it would keep downloading this update everyday. Not everyone has an uncapped connection to the internet.....

It's something related to your setup that is causing this, either update or look into the cause.

I had exactly the same problem. And with a cap it really bothered me a lot.

The only solution is to accept the update. I did it and after the update, it stopped the crazy downloading and things went back to normal.

However I found very annoying that nobody in Apple warns you about that and they even try deny the problem to exist.

I thought it was appletv as well, but turned out to be the photo streaming option set on my Macbook and iPhone. Together they were eating up around 13 Mbps of bandwidth. Photo streaming is a good idea, but obviously has some serious software and/or design issues and should never have been made available as is. It just degrades trust in the brand.

Photostream was also the problem for me. You nailed it on the head! Thanks!

It makes no sense that it would keep downloading this update everyday.

Depending on which model you have, AppleTV has limited internal memory (no HD). Just like OSX on the desktop, it's likely pre-loading updates so that the upgrade time will be shorter. If you choose to not install the update on your next use, and then put other demands on the device, it may have to dump the upgrade package in order to make space.

I guess the moral may be to apply upgrades the first time they appear, and to shake our fists at the ISPs and their absurd data caps.

I have noticed something else about the Apple TV regarding usage. I have an ISP that has usage caps, so I set everything to use SD instead of HD. I have the settings at 480p - 60Hz for my tv resolution, and I have iTunes store set to use standard definition. HOWEVER, whenever I watch a movie from the iTunes store it seems to display in HD (very crisp image and sound). I did an expiriment. I watched Cloud Atlas from the iTunes Store last night after work at about 5:20pm and after that I watched the first season of Sherlock from NetFlix. According to the usage, Netflix is using standard definition to stream video, but iTunes is still streaming HD video.

Here's the usage I see (time stamp is the end of the usage reporting period):

Something is wrong here, I checked the settings before and after watching Cloud Atlas to make sure that iTunes was set to not use HD. My best theory is that Apple streams the HD video to the Apple TV, then lets the Apple TV decide which resolution to display. This makes the settings on the Apple TV usless if you want to avoid high usage when watching iTunes content.

It would be much higher usage if iTunes was streaming HD. Netflix will look at the setting but it also adapts to the connection which could reduce things further

I too am glad I found this post, I only installed the AppleTV last night, and have not got it working right yet, Didn't even think I was properly connected to the Internet yesterday, but my Usage shot through the roof.

I have no unplugged it, and will have to try and find out how to fix it.

It could be the Apple TV screen saver that is downloading images from the net.

Try to disable it!

Even though i had the Automatic Update option selected as "off" i have gotten massive surges from just watching movies and tv shows on my apple tv through the airplay option off my desktop hard drive. Just did the update. Upon completing the update, i found a new setting in the "Airplay" settings which says "play from iTunes in the cloud". That wasn't there before the update. I just set it to "off".

Hopefully that resolves my issue. Fingers crossed...