Apple TV constant movie buffering

from http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3623

For the best viewing experience when renting or purchasing iTunes content on Apple TV, you need a broadband Internet connection.
A sustained 8 Mbit/s or faster Internet connection is recommended for viewing 1080p high-definition movies and TV shows, 6 Mbit/s or faster is recommended for viewing 720p content, and 2.5 Mbit/s or faster for standard-definition content. Internet connection speeds may vary depending on your ISP and other factors.

Click to expand...

what resolution are you watching?
what kind of internet? cable, DSL?

8/1 while decent, really isn't great, and that's then numbers the internet company gives you, if you look at the fine print it will say "up to 8/1" so in the evening, you probably don't get the full 8 down.
and if you're doing anything else, that will also eat into the bandwidth

have you done a speed test to see what your actual speeds are?

there have been posts in the past about the aTV being flakey on wired ethernet, you could try unplugging and going wireless, but that can bring in it's own issues.
you could try switching to 720
you could also try grabbing the movie, then taking a 15-30 minute pause to let it build up a buffer.

Have you tried renting it on your computer and then streaming it from there?

The point about running speed test will be better tested if you run it during those evening hours where you have the problem. It looks like you ran it in the very late hours (11pm? Australia time) which, if true, really doesn't tell us much (unless that is when you having the stuttering problems). The working concept is that maybe you are facing too much neighboring demand on the DSL pipe such that the bandwidth is getting overly squeezed during what might be called prime time. Else do the reverse test: try running one of the problematic movies at the same time of the evening when you ran the speed test and see if the movie stutters.

One more thing: I've develop a gut feel that there might be a little bug in TV in terms of free buffer space. I notice that movies streamed from my Mac via wired will play fine some of the time and stutter other times. When they stutter, I do the old, unplug, wait 30, plug on the TV. When I try to play them back after that cold reboot, they tend to play just fine again. The gut feel is that through use over time, the TV free space may not be getting fully freed up such that there is eventually too little free space available to avoid some stuttering. It's just a gut guess but it keeps proving out with the cold reboots in an 'everything else remains the same' environment (not dependent on my internet speed). You might try this too and see if you seem to squash this hypothetical bug as well.

Won't netflix not even stream 720p to you unless you are at least 15m/s download? I dunno, I think I would blame your speed in this case. 8mbs isn't bad for web surfing, but streaming large files, especially in peak times this could easily be the issue.

I bet it's your modem. Some modems have trouble streaming large HD files over wifi.

I had a similar problem and I get 25down/1up on average. Then I plugged my Apple TV directly into my modem with an Ethernet cable and problem solved. Luckily, I keep my modem right next to the Apple TV anyways so no problem.

Oh, and my regular surfing while steaming is much faster now too.

Good luck.

iCarabma said:

I bet it's your modem. Some modems have trouble streaming large HD files over wifi.

I had a similar problem and I get 25down/1up on average. Then I plugged my Apple TV directly into my modem with an Ethernet cable and problem solved. Luckily, I keep my modem right next to the Apple TV anyways so no problem.

Oh, and my regular surfing while steaming is much faster now too.

Good luck.

Click to expand...

He does mention that he has an Ethernet cable plugged in...

Does your ISP "traffic shape" at peak times? If you have an iPhone or iPad you can install the speediest app and check it in real time as you stream, hopefully that will give you some more info.