ATV2 - HD Rental - Ready To Play...

[DiScO197]

Hi Folks,

Bit confused about the storage on the ATV-2. I thought it had like 8GB of onboard flash memory. My problem is, I rented a HD movie a few nights ago, it said ready to watch in 2Hrs so I thought cool. 2 Hrs later, ready to watch! It was a bit late then so I switched off and thought I would watch the next evening. On switch on and pressing play I was once again confronted with the ready to watch in 2hrs scenario Is this box supposed to hold any content? The only reason I think it should is because I downloaded an HD trailer of Toy Story 3 a while ago and every time I went back to watch it it did not have to load it, it was there already. That was before the latest software update however. Anyone know a bit more about this? Cheers.

 

[bobr1952]

I am still trying to figure that out myself. I really don't understand how much it has to hold in memory before it can begin to play. I've only rented one movie so it will probably take some time to get a better feel for it. Personally, I think the problem lies with the servers feeding the movies--my opinion. Regardless, I left ATV alone and came back an hour or so later and it was ready to play--I wasn't ready to watch--so I just left it there and next day it was there ready to play immediately. My understanding is that if you want to keep it in memory, you need to leave it on the menu where it is downloading the movie--and don't shut off your ATV--and it should be there ready to play when you want to watch. Of course it should just start playing right away as soon as you rent it, but unfortunately it seems that is not always the case--for whatever reason.

After using my ATV for a few weeks now, I like it--and it seems to work pretty well but it still has some rough edges to sort out especially in the rental area. I bought it primarily to stream music to my Home Theater but I do want to use the other features as well. I am going to try yet another option to compare--Roku--and Amazon on Demand.

 

[roidy]

My problem is, I rented a HD movie a few nights ago, it said ready to watch in 2Hrs so I thought cool. 2 Hrs later, ready to watch!

Ready to watch in 2 hours means that enough of the movie will be downloaded to ensure that during playback you will get no pauses due to rebuffering because of a slow connection. It does not mean that the whole movie will be downloaded in 2 hours.

The faster your internet connection then the less the ATV needs to buffer before playback can be started.

However from what you experienced it would seem that turning off the ATV2 causes it to start downloading from the start again next time you turn it on, my question is why would you turn it off during a download to begin with? Just leave it on and let the download finish, maybe then it will remain in the flash memory.

 

[nivekr11]

I had that issue. it ended up being my dns servers i was using. I changed to use my local comcast ones and it started streaming right away.

 

[DiScO197]

I am still trying to figure that out myself. I really don't understand how much it has to hold in memory before it can begin to play. I've only rented one movie so it will probably take some time to get a better feel for it. Personally, I think the problem lies with the servers feeding the movies--my opinion. Regardless, I left ATV alone and came back an hour or so later and it was ready to play--I wasn't ready to watch--so I just left it there and next day it was there ready to play immediately. My understanding is that if you want to keep it in memory, you need to leave it on the menu where it is downloading the movie--and don't shut off your ATV--and it should be there ready to play when you want to watch. Of course it should just start playing right away as soon as you rent it, but unfortunately it seems that is not always the case--for whatever reason.

After using my ATV for a few weeks now, I like it--and it seems to work pretty well but it still has some rough edges to sort out especially in the rental area. I bought it primarily to stream music to my Home Theater but I do want to use the other features as well. I am going to try yet another option to compare--Roku--and Amazon on Demand.

Thanks for the reply. I use it for exactly the same reasons! I thought I would check out the HD rental quality. The movie had fully downloaded and was, fully ready to watch, no more internet required as the white progress bar had reached the end. I guess it just has to be left on. It's a real shame if that is the case as the flash appeared to have stored HD trailers. Makes the thing a bit of a joke if you ask me. For £4.49 (HD Rental cost for 1 movie on itunes), I can go to my local video store and rent 3 x Blurays with no loading required. My internet connection is not the best, however, they had HD movies for £1 the other night on the ATV-2 and I clicked on that and hired Human Traffic. It was ready to watch in about a minute, so was I, and the whole thing ran without a hitch. Not what I would class as HD mind, compared to Bluray, but not that bad either. I use the acetrax service also on my Panasonic plasma and that works without a hitch either but the one thing I will say is the 5.1 surround sound is far better on acetrax than it is on ATV-2. As you said, rough round the edges. I think that sums it up nicely.

 

[Gaelic2]

I tried renting "RED" from iTunes store for the 1st time on my ATV2. It took 20 hours to partially download in HD! My Netflix does it in a very short time. Is this normal for the Apple Store? I am using a DSL line through my wireless network and have never had any downloading problems in the past.

 

[cssmith]

I had the same problem DiScO197. I ended up connecting my ATV (2) via CAT5e to speed up the connection. Loading the movie via wireless was nuts slow. Using a cabled ethernet connection sped up the download significantly.

 

[DiScO197]

I had the same problem DiScO197. I ended up connecting my ATV (2) via CAT5e to speed up the connection. Loading the movie via wireless was nuts slow. Using a cabled ethernet connection sped up the download significantly.

Hi, thanks. I always use CAT5 as oppose to wifi. I think I sussed it. Seems a bit crazy, but after the 'ready to watch' message (2 odd hours or so for a HD film download on my poultry connection), you get the option to press play to watch or menu to view later. It would seem that if you ignore this step it does not retain the portion of the downloaded file. It's either that or when you start watching it and the rest of the film downloads it gets kept in memory. I turned it off last night and was able to instantly view it again this morning, although I did watch it last night as I didn't have the bottle to turn it off or anything else having downloaded the thing several times!

 

[RWinOR]

I have rented a couple of HD movies from ITunes, never had an issue. The first one I rented straight to my ATV2, it downloaded and played with no problems and was ready in minutes. The second HD movie I rented and downloaded into my Itunes library on my laptop. I prefer this method when I can get to HD from my Laptop interface. Most times HD is only available from the ATV2 or IPAD interface. Not sure why? Anyway even downloading the entire movie for play back later within the 30 day window did not take over an hour. I have also purchased several HD movies from ITunes to keep in my Library, again none take over an hour to download with the average being 30 - 45 minutes or so. It is faster then ripping an SD movie for me.

 

[NJMacJunky]

I have the same issue. The first couple of movies I rented played fine, but the last 2 movies say 'Ready to Play' then it stops 6 minutes into the movie and says available to watch in 2 hours. Of course my first thought is that is was my network, but then I switch over to Netflix and watch a movie with no issues. I even tried to watch the last movie the next day thinking it would download over night, it didn't and still stalled every few minutes. It is very annoying. I think it has more to do with the iTunes servers. The last 2 movies we were trying to watch on a Saturday night, which was probably a peak time for people to stream to Apple TV.