Q: Can you watch Apple TV while a movie is downloading?
We purchased a rental movie and the "time remaining" jumps around from an hour 13 minutes to 9 hours, 47 minutes, and several places in between. We had no idea that we wouldn't simply be able to watch the movie tonight! Well, we've given up on that, but we wonder, does the download continue while we go over to Netflix and watch something else? Or will it have to be done after we go to bed? And, each time we return to the movie to see how it's doing, it appears that less rather than more has been downloaded. Can someone please tell me how this works? We don't have an HD TV so we set our itunes store preferences to the not-HD option which is said to be for slow internet connections. Tonight our internet download speed tests at about 2.6 mbs. How long should it take to download a 2 hour movie?
Thanks for whatever info/advice you can give these aging, non-techie users.
iPod classic
Posted on Apr 20, 2016 6:22 PM
Netflix and traditional streaming services use a variable compression based upon the internet connection of the end user. Itunes has a fixed rate. Basically a speed versus quality question...
one thing you may want to look at based upon your internet speed is to rent/purchase iTunes content from your iTunes computer and then homeshare to the ATV. As vazandrew notes, the ATV doesn't actually "store" the movie it's just a cache. But on the PC/Mac iTunes it would download...
Use Home Sharing to share iTunes content with other devices - Apple Support
Posted on Apr 20, 2016 7:46 PM