“Several discussion threads on Apple’s support forums related to issues with HD rentals not loading and HDMI connectivity problems have reached hundreds of posts in length as increasing numbers of Apple TV owners report having trouble with the device,” Ong reports.
“Some users report that Apple TV displays HD rental wait times of hundreds of minutes, while other video, such as trailers, HD Netflix movies, and YouTube begin playing after just a few minutes,” Ong reports.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple TV 2nd-gen owners? Are you seeing either of these issues? We are not seeing either with our 2nd-gen (or our 1st-gen) Apple TVs.
Bought my baby sis an Apple TV for her Birthday-ordered it as the store came online after the event. She has no issues except recently rental download times are ridiculously slow- everything else is as fast as you would expect from a cable ISP.
The web has suggested that it may be a DNS issue.
Both Apple TVs (one old and one new) are fine
My 2nd gen ATV has been doing great…
…until last night. I rented “Knight and Day” (probably a mistake, but not Appl’s fault) and was unable to watch it because it gave a time of over 7 1/2 hours until it would be ready to play. Netflix, Airplay, and other items on it run fine. I’m on a 35Mbps connection, so speed isn’t an issue. This has only started since updating for the Airplay.
@bizlaw
People are mentioning YouTube to illustrate that their download rate is fine. For some reason, the ATV thinks it is not for Downloading from iTunes store.
Netflix: I went through the painful “can’t connect” phase, too. My PS3 did not have a problem. So it is some Netflix talking to ATV prob, though it seems to have cleared up.
It’s amazing that when you go on a support forum, it seems like everyone has a problem.
No HDMI issues.
Long wait for the HD movie (180 min or more). On the Apple Forums, someone computed that a HD movie has about 4.4 Mb/sec rate. My ISP was quite a bit slower, so it may be that the AppleTV caching needs a significant fix. The one time I tried a movie, after uping my ISP service to 5 Mb/sec, it played promptly and smoothly.
I do not have this problem. I don’t know what they are talking about.
Both of mine are working fine…
Maybe they are on Time Warner Road Runner Internet (California,LA area). I had it and sometimes it would slow to a crawl. Just to download a webpage ,such as MDN, required way too much time to load.
Maybe it is their connection.
I did get the HDMI error screen during setup. I restarted my Apple TV and TV ay the same time to sync the connection. No problems since then.
I bought 2 different 2nd Gen Apple TVs (1 in bedroom and 1 in living room) and was really dissapointed when I had some friends over for pizza/movie night and wanted to show off my new toy (living room apple tv) and it said “655 minutes….”. WTF???? I finally switched to my Home Theater system and rented the same movie in HD which started loading/playing within a minute. I called Apple and the rep said they woudl creidt my rental and then mumbled that “their servers were overwhelmed and that a software updated was coming”. Well, the software update came but I think that was more for the benefit of Airplay. I really hope they fix this soon otherwise I’ll keep renting movie from competing services.
No problems here. Everything loads almost instantly. I have a 12mbps connection through comcast. Movies are ready to watch within 10 seconds of renting them. TV rentals are ready even faster.
The apple tv 2 is so great I just ordered another one! (I never had the apple tv 1.)
I get the green screen of death
I had this problem initially with the new ATV2 where the download took more than 4 hours to complete. I tested the download speeds on my mac when this was happening and my internet speeds were not affected, only the content coming from Apple. So Jersey_Trader, it was INDEED Apples problem. Do you think people all over would be complaining about these lengthy download speeds if there wasn’t a common problem. I think many like myself have had no problems with ATV1 downloads, but it only started once ATV2 was installed. I don’t know what happened along the way, but my ATV2 is now back to the speeds it should have had all along. I almost had to do my first ever product return to Apple.
I started one of those threads on the Apple Discussion forums. Pre 4.1 update, everything worked fine. Post update, video is only 480p. HDMI cable straight from Apple TV 2 to TV; nothing else has changed except the software update. Definitely some handshake issues here.
No problems either.
Both original and ATV2 working great.
Wonder how many people are bitching when they have DSL or slower connections?
Our 50 Mb link works great; fast and dare I say, *snappy*
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
I haven’t had any problems, my movies rented movies load and start playing in seconds
@Superchief Wow, what a download elitist you are. DSL should be more than enough for downloading movies from iTunes, and has suited me very well on all accounts (itunes,netflix, etc.) By the way, what would be slower than DSL? “I cant seem to get my 56K modem to connect to my Apple TV!!”
Sparky Anderson
I felt the Same way about returning my first ever Apple product. I kept it because I believe that Apple will fix it.
I kept getting a connection error from Netflix saying I may need to contact customer support if the problem persisted. If anyone gets this message just unplug ATV2 and it should work just fine.
@ Mac4Life
Yes, Im glad I kept mine too. I had to put up with a lot of aggravation and proding from my wife to take it back, but it is now working fine.
None at all here.
Good thread. And yes, while JT has a point, he seems to be running a quart low on civility.
The problem is the crappy HDMI spec. It should be abandoned and replaced with proper, separate audio and video connection standards. Coax digital (SDI, as used by professionals) would be nice.
BlueJeansCable.com says it best:
“An HDMI cable consists primarily of a set of shielded twisted pairs which carry video data, together with embedded audio, at extremely high bitrates. While analog component video cable is, in practice, every bit as good a method of delivering video to displays as HDMI cable, the content-providing industries have strongly supported HDMI because it provides a platform for the implementation of HDCP (High Definition Content Protection) to prevent consumers from having complete access to the contents of high-definition digital recordings. As one might expect from a standard that was developed more to serve the content providers than to aid the consumer, HDMI has presented a few problems. Unlike analog component video, the signal is not robust over distance because it was designed to run balanced when it should have been run unbalanced (SDI, the commercial digital video standard, can be run hundreds of feet over a single coax without any performance issues); the HDMI cable is a complicated rat’s-nest arrangement involving nineteen conductors; switches, repeaters and distribution amplifiers for use with HDMI cable, by virtue of this complicated scheme, are made unnecessarily complicated and troublesome; and the HDMI cable plug is prone to falling out of the jack with the slightest tug.”
Yeah I have this problem sometimes. I never use the iTunes rental anymore 450 minutes for ” before the devil knows ur dead” glee was 250 minutes so I lost 4.99&.99 respectively on two shows not watched. Unplug the cable when ni have problems with my phone connecting
No issues, whatsoever.