Apple TV2 Rented Content Download FAILURE and 24 hour "Watch" Policy

[webnuts4u2]

I recently received my 2nd gen Apple TV. My network is a 5-6MB connection using an AirportExteme/TC router.
I rent a standard def movie from iTunes, and try to play it. It says it will be over 100 minutes before it starts to play. I wait over 100 minutes and come back and try to play again. Now it says it's over 68 minutes to play. I come back the next day and it wants me to re-rent the movie. Evidently I've moved outside of the 24 hour window to play the movie. Well, I never successfully played the movie. Apple recognizes that I tried but they didn't recognize their massive FAIL in the ability of this device to actually deliver the content to me that I ordered.

Netflix movies start to play right away. In fact it's a better Netflix player than my Samsung DVD player that has the same capability.

If Apple can't guarantee delivery of the content that I paid for and keep track of whether or not I actually received it, they won't get any more of my rental business. Right now their Apple TV2 Rental model is a big disappointment to me. If you haven't purchased one yet I'd certainly wait.

 

[thetruth1985]

Did you play the movie at some point? I thought you had 30 days to start the movie and then 24 hours thereafter to finish it.

 

[webnuts4u2]

Did you play the movie at some point? I thought you had 30 days to start the movie and then 24 hours thereafter to finish it.

I did try to play it twice. Each time I tried it said the movie would start playing in NN minutes, but it never did. When I came back the third time the 24 hour window had expired. Watching a movie in most cases is a matter of opportunity and time is of the essence. When it's ON DEMAND then it should play within a matter of minutes if not seconds. Giving me 30 days to play it is fine, but only having a 24 hour clock to play the movie once started when there's no way to determine if it's ready to play other than playing the movie doesn't work.

If I wanted to rent from iTunes and then wait for the download to complete before watching the movie I could have done that. But the AppleTV is supposedly an on demand streaming device. It needs some work.

 

[webnuts4u2]

Money Refunded

Apple did the right thing and quickly refunded the cost of the movie after I contacted their support line. Will try again in the future but for now I'll just download to my iMac sharing all of my media and play it from there. At least I have a fairly deterministic outcome that way.