TV shows not loading

Hi everyone,

Apple replied to my ticket and basically acknowledge the issue and that they work on this problem:

"Apple has received other reports of this issue and we are currently investigating. We appreciate your patience while we work to identify and resolve the issue as quickly as possible and get back to you after resolving the issue."

By the way, I also tried watching the show by dowloading it first to the hard disk of my MBP. Then I can watch it of course with QuickTime on the MBP locally. But when I try using either AirPlay with QuickTime or iTunes with AirPlay, I get again various different error messages. One of them is "Media is damaged" and the other one is the same one as on the ATV2. The media is obviously not damaged since I can watch it on the the MBP locally. This could hint towards an DRM related issue... Who knows.

I have the same issue. I also have Apple TV 2nd version. I tried everything including restoring to factory settings. But I can't watch the rental "Hidden Figures". I keep getting the same error message. But for a test, I also downloaded rental "Sea of Trees" movie, I can watch that movie with no problem. I am also waiting reply from Apple Support. I hope that Apple fix this problem soon.

I watched 3 episodes from 3 different Season Passes successfully on my AppleTV yesterday after receiving the usual emails stating the episodes were ready to watch.

The episodes from weeks beginning 3 April and 10 April still receive the "error occurred loading this content."

Me too.

I had three episodes of The Expanse that couldn't be viewed.. All from April. Now two can be watched but the middle one cannot.

No recent response from Apple Support. And no helpful response.. Ever.

On Friday Apple told me that they are still working on finding a solution. We rented new movies this week, which we could watch, though.

Instead of my family and me keep trying to download those April shows, I bought an TV4/32GB yesterday. Topic closed for me. Voice control is pretty cool. "Still" have to get used to the new interface.

Interesting update this morning. Last night's episode of Doctor Who came in. I am able to play it on my AppleTV. Last week's episode is still unplayable. I would bet it is an encoding issue of some kind, which means they would have to re-encode any program already released since it started. Probably something meant to be an improvement.

Apple had confirmed to me (in a response to the ticket that I had filed) that the issue is only occurring for the TV2. Hence I knew that the TV4 was/would be unaffected.

You can also tell indirectly from this thread that there are not that many people left being affected. If the TV4 would have been affected, this thread would have been exploding and the tech blogs would be spilling with "notifications" and complains and s... storms. Nobody really cares in tech blogs for a 6+ year old technology.

Anyway, to blame Apple that they would have put out a little incentive for people to upgrade is going too far IMHO. Apple does such things officially, like changing from 32bit to 64bit apps on macOS or announcing that there are no more iOS updates for older iPhones, which causes reduced functionality and compatibility. They would not be sneaky about it. It's an annoying DRM "glitch" for iOS 6.2.1 for the TV2, the way I see it.

On the other hand, though, this whole compatibility issue might point into a different direction. Meaning, Apple might work on a new DRM altogether and/or on "wrapping-up" their content differently (modified m4v container?). This would coincide somewhat with recent rumours that Apple works on a new Apple TV (Gen. 5) and a new way on how to present & handle their content. ... This is me thinking out loud 😉. Who knows. Maybe an overly ambitious software engineer just "pressed the wrong button". 😝

OK, new twist - I think Season Passes are part of the problem. I watch about 8 episodes of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Season 9 (2008) yesterday, buying them individually without problem. Today I decided I wanted to finish the season and it was cheaper to "Finish my season" and purchased the pass. Well, now I cannot watch random episodes within the season and get the "Error Occurred Loading...Try Again Later." I skipped ahead an episode and was able to play the one after the episode I intended to watch. Finished that one and could not load the next one. Skipped ahead another one and that episode loads. But the previous two I tried will still not work. So it does not seem to be limited to April shows.

Episode 12 of The Expanse (The Monster and the Rocket) was unable to play on my Apple TV 2nd gen. as of the episode air date and has been unable to play since then. On April 25, 2017 the episode is now playable on the Apple TV.

There was no notification from Apple that the episode has been corrected to play on Apple TV 2nd gen. units.

I concur. Doctor Who "The Pilot" episode was equally unavailable and is now playable. There has been no update to the ATV2 software as far as I know, so it seems they fixed the files on the distribution side so they are now playable.

I have the same OS 6.2.1 version and have the "An error occurred loading this content" error. Tried resetting all settings, factory reset and unplugging. None worked. Could this be a DRM / iTunes server side issue with legacy ATV 2nd Gen? Only experienced this problem last month. No solution as yet.

Same problem here! Has only happened with shows that have aired and downloaded in April. Anything older plays fine.

Also, the downloaded episodes play on phone, iPad, mac, etc. Tv is 2nd gen.

Me too. Latest episode of The Expanse came out last Wednesday. Cannot watch it. Very frustrating.

I wonder if Apple will ever respond to this. Very frustrating. Haven't been able to watch latest Expanse despite trying everything.