Are iTunes Movies Streamed?

[iMacGuru]

I just rented the weekly movie Bank Job for $0.99. It took over 10 hours to download! I thought that iTune movies are streamed. Netflix and Hulu Plus both stream movies.😕

 

[jkimbro0316]

Rentals are streamed if you watch them on an AppleTV. They will attempt to download if you are watching them on your computer with iTunes.

 

[musicpenguy]

It sounds like you have a very poor Internet connection - HD movies will download within an hour or less for me.

iTunes typically does a stream/download copy. It will typically let you start watching a downloading movie within a minute or so. This is even possible on iOS. If you start to download a movie or TV show on your iPad you can go into the videos app and start playing that back immediately - it will continue to download/stream.

iOS is even good enough to let you jump to a certain part of the movie and buffer that to work instantly.

So the answer is both. You need a solid connection for this stuff to work - it sounds like SD quality may be preferred with your connection speed.

 

[klnorth]

I have been having streaming issues (only from iTunes, not netflix or Hulu +) ever since the latest upgrade for the ATV was performed. So its not my internet connection but I am not sure what is going on.

 

[musicpenguy]

To my knowledge Hulu and Netflix do variable quality streaming - ATV will stream at the setting you determine.

I believe it simply downloads the movie at chosen quality and then plays it to you when its ready - if your internet is behaving that works great, if its not you'll have some issues.

I've had zero issues with ATV and I'm on the lowest end plan from Comcast

 

[wzz]

oh I hate that variable streaming. (although it doesnt happen to hulu for me)

sometimes when I watch netflix, it goes all bad and smudgy.
I can't force the Netflix bitrate streaming on the AppleTV unlike on my MBA. Annoyed me constantly that I cancelled it.

 

[shorn]

What's your connection speed?

 

[jrpelr]

Now you can stream iTunes Video to iOS devices

As long as you have iOS 7.1 or you can now stream iTunes to your iOS devices. You can see a video or prezi on how to set it up to do so here.

 

[betman]

Just a quick question on streaming v downloading: you are getting the exact same thing, right? So if you download a film that takes up 3.2 GB of space then you will also use up the exact same bandwidth when streaming the whole film?

 

[jrpelr]

Based on what I've read, I've never measured how much is streamed, I believe downloading v streaming is the same. At least I've never seen anything concrete to the contrary. They could change the file size base on the device, phone vs tablet vs television, I suppose, but not sure. I've read about the new HEVC codec (h.265) that they will be using for streaming 4k, and it is supposed to not only offer better compression for higher resolution at the same bandwidth, but also offer scalable coding extensions which will allow the one file to be served up at the resolution best needed by the device. Not sure if it's in use yet though.

 

[StinDaWg]

H.265 (if/when it comes) will require an updated box with decoding support.