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taking too long to download a movie

Rented a movie and it says it will take over 2 hours to download. What's the problem?

Apple TV

Posted on May 14, 2011 9:29 PM

Best reply

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Posted on May 15, 2011 2:28 AM

Most likely you internet connection speed. Even if advertised by your provider as fast or 'up to X Mbps' in practice it is often less.

Go to speedtest.net from your computer browser and test sustained transfer speeds - you're probably getting 2-3 Mbps.

HD movie rentals are huge 3-4GB in size. Sd is much smaller, starts faster.

In AppleTV's settings got to itunes Store and change from HD to SD rentals - won't work with currently made rental, only future ones which are a little cheaper in SD

Netflix etc work differently and adjust quality to your network speed whereas Apple rentals are constant quality.

Also - be aware that if your download speed is slow then AppleTV 2 is effectively unusable for anything else in the interim, as if you do it frequently flushes the rental so when you go back to check download time it will start from scratch and redownload even the portion that had previously been downloaded. This is stupid memory management which IMO could be handled better for slow connections by protecting rentals partially dowloaded and warning the user if an action would delete it. Feedback to:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

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18 replies

RDfromSF

Level 1

0 points

Feb 1, 2013 9:27 AM in response to randifrompasadena

Here is my take on this Apple TV slow movie download thing. If I purchase a movie even in HD and download to my iMac and then once fully downloaded I then go to my TV in next room and start Apple TV and stream the movie from My Computer on Apple TV the movie buffers fast enough every time seamlessly. Now on the other hand if I try to play the same exact movie that is Purchased and on my Apple TV but which is streamed from the Apple Store in SD Standard Definition it tends to have lag and snags depending on the time of day and worse on weekends when i am sure the Apple Store is overwhelmed with rentals/purchases then it is much worse. ie 2 hrs to download. It is even worse in HD. I have placed my laptop set up wireless next to Apple TV and completed a Speed Test and get 25-30 Mbps which is ample to download, even an HD movie, so when I put this all together it tells me that without a doubt that since Apple has been selling the new Apple TV for 1080p that they have sold so many of these little units that they didnt anticipate the high demand for apple content and they need to make a fix or I am going back to renting DVDs from my local store for 2.99 with 48 hour time limit.

wooley88

Level 1

0 points

Feb 2, 2013 7:57 PM in response to randifrompasadena

Having same issue with 22MB Down connection and ethernet connection from my ATV into the router so something must be up with itunes throttling the download. Apple hardware and software great! Cloud infrastructure still needs a lot of work.

Frustrated customer!

Feb 2, 2013 9:49 PM in response to randifrompasadena

Yes. 2 plus hours to download a rental on Apple TV. Then when it says it's read to watch. It pauses about every 20 minutes to buffer and catch up. This is the worst service. How do I get my $4.99 refunded. Next time I'll rent a DVD from RedBox.

taking too long to download a movie