New apple tv, slow downloads?

Am having exactly the same problem. I haven't actually tried buying a movie yet but have tried numerous times to download a trailer. I seem to get as far as the green US certificate screen and then.... nothing. The buffer bar seems to grow slowly, and the only time I actually seem to get a picture of the film is if I manually drag the timeline to a point further on, and even then it just shows a still frame from wherever I drop the timeline pointer.

Not impressed. My internet connection (Sky Broadband) is not the quickest, granted, but I was expecting SOMETHING at least....

toptekjon said:

If things don't improve, I'm going to return it for a refund. I like the potential of the apple tv, but right now I can't even use it.

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Kind of defeats the purpose.... If I have to wait two hours to start STREAMING a movie

It's definitely the renting part from Apple because AppleTV streams Netflix just fine. Let's hope they fix this soon.

BigHonkingDeal said:

Kind of defeats the purpose.... If I have to wait two hours to start STREAMING a movie

It's definitely the renting part from Apple because AppleTV streams Netflix just fine. Let's hope they fix this soon.

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Have you guys tried restoring the appletv or taking it to the genius bar for inspection? perhaps there is something wrong with them if you don't have issues with the services on other devices...

Same problem here.

Convinced it's an iTunes store issue - YouTube seems to be working fine. Streaming from iMac works perfectly.

I have always been convinced that time warner throttles download speeds from apple. Because everything from only apple downloads slow as can be.

tried again this morning - everything working fine!

Suspect it has to be a store problem.

Its the same for me. I have slow broadband however I would like to at least play while still downloading but if I rent off apple tv it seems to download the whole thing first.


Still love it I just download off the macbook

I've had TV since launch and when HD rentals were first made available they would spool up maybe a minute longer then a SD version.

Over the last year or so, the HD rentals continue to get worse. It took 15 minutes for "Get him to the Greek" to start and that was only after I unplugged the unit, waited a few minutes and then rebooted it.

I long suspected it was Comcast throttling back my connection to Apple since other things worked fine. But more and more I think its on the Apple side.

Rooskibar03 said:

I've had TV since launch and when HD rentals were first made available they would spool up maybe a minute longer then a SD version.

Over the last year or so, the HD rentals continue to get worse. It took 15 minutes for "Get him to the Greek" to start and that was only after I unplugged the unit, waited a few minutes and then rebooted it.

I long suspected it was Comcast throttling back my connection to Apple since other things worked fine. But more and more I think its on the Apple side.

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I have changed to show sd rentals on the apple tv and I am going to rent one to see if it works any different

Apple TV speed

I have no real problem downloading films and TV progs as generally I leave it to do it at night. My biggest grumble is that when I want to watch one I have to leave the Apple TV connected for a very long time (30 - 45 minutes) before I can start watching whilst it loads it's buffer. Makes it useless, the old version of Apple TV had it's problems but not this one

well I just got mine today ... I hooked it up to my TV as soon as I got back home, then me and the wife wanted to try to rent an HD movie (I had showed her a tech demo about how fast the streaming was when renting .... tech demo from the unveiling of the new apple TV in september .... that was my selling point to the wife).

We select a movie ... and then BAM ... 218 minutes till we can watch our movie ... I was shocked ... We have a pretty good internet connection here, so I tough ... "maybe its my wireless connection".

I look up the signal and its top notch on apple TV ... I then stubbornly hook up the ethernet cable to see if its better then wireless ... and that test proved me that NO it wasn't better at all ...

If renting movies will always be like that ... then this service is a giant fail ...

We then decide to look at some movie trailers .... to our surprise ... they take as long to load as to watch them ... again .... a giant fail ...

We then try to sign in to Netflix .... we got error after error after error about netflix not being available ... Then after an hour of trying ... we finally login to Netflix ... who then takes longer to load a movie then the PS3 version of Netflix !!!!

Hardware .... Software problem ??? Who knows ...
Its got bad loading times .... incredible .....

Our apple tv (original) always did the same thing, it had improved a little, but it still remains a pretty big problem.

I get the same problem with rented movies or tv shows. It takes a very long time to wait for it to play.

I get 3 Mbps to 4 Mbps internet speed.


Netflix no problem. I get instant stream. No waiting at all.

Ok ... So ... So far from my understanding from this forum tread and my experience with the new apple tv ... It seems that what Steve demonstrated at the september keynote as a demo for the speed from wich you can rent a movie or tv show on the new apple tv ... Is complete false advertisement ...
I have yet to rent an hd movie without waiting 2hrs before watching ...

come on Applr open up that north carolina server plant and use it to help the streaming time for itunes movie renting .... Why they cant have streaming times like netflix is beyon me ...

I don't know why yours are so slow but I rented an HD movie from iTunes a couple nights ago and it said it was ready to play literally two seconds after I authorized payment. Maybe I got lucky with a good night or the older movie I picked was not a popular one (Land of the Dead Unrated) but I've also watched some movie trailers and short free episodes of new tv shows at different times and they all have been instant for me. I have Comcast "up to 12 Mbps" service and when I do speed test I get from 4 to over 12 depending on the server I test with. Maybe I get some help because I have a signal booster on the cable coming in because spitting the signal to three rooms gave me a bad picture on my tv in the living room.

Maybe test your connection by renting an older HD movie and see if that's instant for you. The iTunes store might just be overwhelmed with new ATV traffic trying to view the latest movies

Never mind. To test it, I rented "Get Him to the Greek". After I authorized payment, I counted to 18 and the ready to play message came up. Maybe you guys should look into a signal booster or something.

One fast, one s-l-o-w

The first movie we rented on TV loaded in a few seconds and my wife was so impressed, and felt the $99 wasn't a bad investment after all. The next night we rented a $3.99 movie and it said it would be ready in 193 minutes! After a while it went clear down to 114 minutes and stayed there. So I tried the next night; 153 minutes. I unplugged everything, etc. and it said 37 minutes, but never budged. I joined Netflix and got my movie almost instantly (3mbps down). The next day I upped my download to 5mbps for $10 more a month. My iTunes movie loaded in a few seconds and we were pleased again. But I don't think it was the extra 2mbps; I think it is an iTunes problem. YouTube loads in a couple seconds and shows all the videos. Netflix hasn't stuttered yet. I think maybe iTunes is overloaded or whatever. I believe it is Apple's server and not us.

makes sense that its on apples server side that the problem is ...
But come on ... I mean ... Apple did say that they sold about 250 000 new apple TV 2 during their financial report this week ... And 250 000 new people is causing a major lag to renting movies ? ... They really need to ramp up networks are else this problem is going to grow on them and word to mouth will follow about this issue and hurt them ...

Just as a comparison point, I haven't had a single issue with Netflix (I didn't try to access it when it went down the other day).

I don't use the iTunes Store for any video content, so I can't give any feedback there.

It has to be an itunes store issue. I begin having this issue about a week or 2 ago. I do not use an apple tv I have a mini wired into my tv. It is also wired internet not wireless. When I use netflix and hulu they download very fast yet anything from the Itunes store crawls. I also run netflix through my PS3 that is wireless and that runs way faster.
Apple will loose a lot of business if they do not fix this issue. I will take my business to Vudu if need be.

comovartia said:

It has to be an itunes store issue. I begin having this issue about a week or 2 ago. I do not use an apple tv I have a mini wired into my tv. It is also wired internet not wireless. When I use netflix and hulu they download very fast yet anything from the Itunes store crawls. I also run netflix through my PS3 that is wireless and that runs way faster.
Apple will loose a lot of business if they do not fix this issue. I will take my business to Vudu if need be.

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Like has been said many times, you can't compare Netflix download times to iTunes download times. If you have a slow internet connection, Netflix lowers the quality of the movie to a stream you can handle, iTunes doesn't. I guarantee if you can't download an HD 720p iTunes movie decently, you won't be able to download an even larger 1080p movie from Vudu. I (and others) don't have any trouble watching movies on iTunes because I have a decent internet speed. You need to look into that first.

laurim said:

Like has been said many times, you can't compare Netflix download times to iTunes download times. If you have a slow internet connection, Netflix lowers the quality of the movie to a stream you can handle, iTunes doesn't. I guarantee if you can't download an HD 720p iTunes movie decently, you won't be able to download an even larger 1080p movie from Vudu. I (and others) don't have any trouble watching movies on iTunes because I have a decent internet speed. You need to look into that first.

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It is not my internet speed. I have great internet speed. Everything I download every where else is super fast, just Itunes is slow. And that is just with in the last few weeks. Before that the downloads were super fast. I could start watching HD content immediately, the other day it took 4hrs to download an SD movie and an hour and a half to download a SD tv show.
Nope, not an internet speed issue.

comovartia said:

It is not my internet speed. I have great internet speed. Everything I download every where else is super fast, just Itunes is slow. And that is just with in the last few weeks. Before that the downloads were super fast. I could start watching HD content immediately, the other day it took 4hrs to download an SD movie and an hour and a half to download a SD tv show.
Nope, not an internet speed issue.

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Don't know what to tell you. Rented the movie "Pi" in HD from iTunes last night and it was ready to view in less than a minute.

comovartia said:

It is not my internet speed. I have great internet speed. Everything I download every where else is super fast, just Itunes is slow. And that is just with in the last few weeks. Before that the downloads were super fast. I could start watching HD content immediately, the other day it took 4hrs to download an SD movie and an hour and a half to download a SD tv show.
Nope, not an internet speed issue.

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I'm in the same position as Laurim...my iTunes downloads smoke...start within a few seconds...and I rent almost every day. And I have the same Apple TV as you.

Do you mind giving more details on your setup ? What is your true Internet speed ? Did you connect the Apple TV wifi or ethernet ? If wifi, please share configurations details (router brand, type of network n or g, band , channel, etc). Are you able to stream from your iTunes library with Home Sharing and is it with good speed ?