Playing Rented Movies Problem

Question

Level 1

9 points

Playing Rented Movies Problem

Here’s my scenario: I rent a movie on my MacBook in iTunes. It takes a few hours to download. Then I go to my AppleTV, I have file sharing turned on and locate the rental movie in my library and press play. It takes a few minutes to start and it will play for a bit then it stops. I can see that the status bar on the bottom is not loading the movie. I give it a few minutes, sometimes it appears to be loading and I press play again and it starts up but I go through this start and stop start and stop to the point that I just leave the movie to load OVERNIGHT and play it finally without the start and stop the next day.

What in the world am I doing wrong? I thought when I ordered the movie and it takes forever to download that there should be no streaming/buffering when I play a movie. BTW, purchased movies do not do this.

Is it better to rent movies directly from my AppleTV? Is the fact that I am sharing my files from my computer to play on AppleTV making this the issue. I have wasted money now for 3 movies that my rental period ended before I could watch the movie through because once I hit play I have 24 hours to finish it. SO FRUSTRATING.

And I wasn't even sure where I should post my question: AppleTV or iTunes or FileSharing.....

Any advice?

AppleTV 2

Posted on Feb 26, 2012 6:45 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 26, 2012 7:00 AM in response to redcookie

I wouldn't worry about your file sharing settings they have nothing to do with download times.

The first thing to check would be your internet download speed, you can do this at www.speedtest.net.

HD movies require a recommended speed of 6 Mbps, while SD movies require a recommended speed of 2.5 Mbps.

If your internet download speed is fine, we may need to look at your internal network, if it's slow, you may want to rent movies via iTunes on your mac/PC, they will need to fully download before you can play them and you would need to think about rentals in advance, but once on your computer, they will play uninterrupted and you won't need to worry about turning the Apple TV off or using it for something else and losing what you have already downloaded.

If you do have a slow service, you may also want to consider upgrading it to a better one.

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Answer 2

ssls6

Level 4

2,879 points

Feb 26, 2012 9:25 AM in response to redcookie

It is probably your wifi at home. What do you use? I do what you do all the time (it's the only way I rent movies now and consider the extra $1 worth it). I have a airport extreme base station.

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Answer 3

redcookie Author

Level 1

9 points

Feb 27, 2012 4:31 AM in response to redcookie

I guess I should have asked my question different or stated my assumption: It is my understanding that you need internet connection to start the play of your rental movie (after you have completely downloaded it). You can start the play and then pause it and pick back up play even without internet access. You need to start with internet so iTunes can mark the time of your rental. SO, my question is, what would my internet speed (which is quite adequate and fast for my area) have anything to do with playback of something that has been completely downloaded? I don’t start to play anything until it has been completely downloaded to my computer. Thanks SO much for your help. Maybe my pea brain just can't understand the rental process of play.

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