Can the new AppleTV record purchased Itunes shows ? Or only stream?

[thehonuohana]

Now that the AppleTV is in peoples hands- can anyone answer this question? Can the AppleTV record purchased (or rented) tv shows/movies to the hard drive? Or can it only stream them?

I, like many people, have poor internet access- access that tends to slow to a crawl in the evenings. An issue that has made my old AppleTV and Roku pretty much worthless since my last move, and loss of cable broadband.

So- can anyone tell me- is the new AppleTV my savior? Can I purchase/download/record shows/movies during off peak hours to watch later? Or is the memory reserved for apps and limited caching of streamed content?

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

Yeah, I think a number of us are waiting for an answer to this question. It seems oddly glossed-over in all of the reviews that I've read, so far.

I sincerely hope so. It's my last hope for using iTunes in the home - the fabulous convenience of being able to rent a movie from my sofa is currently being killed by 'the need to stream', and I usually end up buying the Blu-ray through Amazon Prime and receiving the disc the next day. Ah, middle-class woes...!!!

 

[2010mini]

If you have a PC (OSX or Win) use iTunes to download the movie and then just stream it to your ATV

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

Granted, this is possible - but hardly as convenient as having the file on the box itself.

Thank you for the suggestion, nonetheless.


EDIT: These machines are 'in the wild', now, so surely somebody around here has tried this...?

... if the answer's "sorry, no", just lay it on me. I can take it!

 

[jmantn]

I don't think it downloads them and saves them long term. What I can tell you is AirPlay, tv shows, and media from photos are in some cases 10 to 20x faster at loading.

I did have to let it cache my media within photos app but everything has received a gigantic speed increase.

Not the answer your looking for I'm sure but maybe that will help.

Also I've noticed no lag rewinding or fast forwarding material that I assume was being streamed and at least temporarily downloaded.

 

[klky]

There doesn't seem to be an obvious way to do this from iTunes like with the first generation apple tv. I do not believe you can copy movies, tv shows or music to apple tv like before.

I did not notice an option to download content (besides apps) directly to apple tv either. Also, I'm guessing if this was an option, Apple would have shipped larger capacity models.

 

[thehonuohana]

FWIW, I did use the chat feature on Apples website to talk with one of their "experts". I explained quite clearly what, and why, and the answer was that yes, it can record. I am still taking this with a large grain of salt- especially given the vague documentation I have seen...

Surely someone who has their hands on one has itunes purchases- and can disconnect their wi-fi in order to test this out (come on- you know you want the karma points).

I'd also be interested in whether anyone else has talked to Apple staff- whether in store, on the phone, or via chat...and what answer they have been given.

 

[Gueeds]

I can speak to this. You can start watching a movie, it will start downloading, you can probably put the screen saver and sleep timers to a long time and it should be done when you come back. Better yet, if you want to hop into other apps or even load up other movies, it will still be downloaded when you hop back into iTunes.

It won't queue things up so it can download a bunch at once, and once you exit out of the movie, it will stop downloading.

A vetter option might be to queue up a bunch of movies on your computer to download them, then use iTunes Home Sharing to watch them.

 

[d21mike]

I just did a test that I did on the ATV 3 and a little disappointed that is exactly the same. If you start watching a movie it will download the entire movie while you are watching or if you pause it. You can see this with the progress bar. After it downloads you can exit and the come back in and you will see the progress bar show the movie has fully downloaded still. However, once you do the same with a second movie and come back to the first the download bar starts over. I was hoping with my 64gb it would keep multiple movies so that if I/we watch the same movie over and over (like with my grandkids movies) it would not need to re-download if still in local cache. With 64gb it could easily cache about 10 movies depending on how many games/apps I had installed.

 

[RhythmAndBlues]

I just did a test that I did on the ATV 3 and a little disappointed that is exactly the same. If you start watching a movie it will download the entire movie while you are watching or if you pause it. You can see this with the progress bar. After it downloads you can exit and the come back in and you will see the progress bar show the movie has fully downloaded still. However, once you do the same with a second movie and come back to the first the download bar starts over. I was hoping with my 64gb it would keep multiple movies so that if I/we watch the same movie over and over (like with my grandkids movies) it would not need to re-download if still in local cache. With 64gb it could easily cache about 10 movies depending on how many games/apps I had installed.

Yeah, this is what I was talking about... thank you.

It's such a drag. I don't get it. Some will try to make the case that it's an anti-piracy thing, but that doesn't hold water - if I want to steal iTunes content I can do it on my Mac, then stream this stolen content to an Apple TV. All that Apple's policy is doing is making it less convenient for the honest consumers - most of whom don't know how and don't care to know how to strip DRM - from using their Apple TVs with greater comfort and flexibility.

It's just bollocks. Excuse me, but it is.

 

[thehonuohana]

Thanks people- sadly what I expected.
When will the tech companies learn that they are missing out on a huge body of potential customers by not serving the millions who have don't access to high-speed broadband and (for all intents and purposes) unlimited data pools?