I have a slow internet connection compared to the rest of the world (1.5mb/s). I am very happy with it since I have been on 256kb/s for the last 2 years. I am just wondering how long it took your movies to say "Ready to watch"?? Can you please say approximately how long it took and if it was HD or not and how fast your internet connection is? Thanks.
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How long did it take for your movie to be "ready to watch"?
- Thread starter nlivo
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Within a minute for SD movie, almost instant for TV show, but >30min for HD movie. 3mbps connection. Looks like about 1GB/30minutes for HD, for the couple I've rented so far.
256kbps won't be useable for HD, IMHO. Apple estimates ~8hr for 90min movie at 768kbps (to start).
You can estimate start times based on their chart on the tv spec page.
256kbps won't be useable for HD, IMHO. Apple estimates ~8hr for 90min movie at 768kbps (to start).
You can estimate start times based on their chart on the tv spec page.
I'm on about a 6Mbps cable connection - I rented an HD movie the other night and it took about 3 mins (2% completion) for the movie to the 'ready to watch' ... I started it right then and I never had any pausing/rebuffering. The movie was completely downloaded when I was about 1/2 way through the movie.
By the time the rental service gets to Australia you'd hopefully have a faster connection anyway. Most of the ISPs here in NZ are phasing out the slower services (Telstra gave me a free upgrade from 2 to 6 Mb/s a while ago) so presumably they're going to do the same sort of thing over there. I wouldn't worry too much just yet 
Thanks for that. I have been looking for some sort of chart to do with internet speeds and waiting times from apple. Thanks. Mine should take about 10 or so minutes to watch a SD movie. That's pretty good in my opinion.
What did other people get?
Man, I have to get some better pipes. I have a 1.2-1.5 mbps download speed via cable modem and I rented my first HD Apple TV movie to watch last night...not. Two hours later it was still not watchable and I went to bed. However, it is fully downloaded as of this AM, for what it is worth.
The times are nice to know, but how about if people throw in what type of connection they have (DSL/CABLE/WIRELESS) and also their average speed up/down if they know it.
You can calculate that the critical download speed for HD rentals is something like 3 - 3.5 mbps; faster than that and the movie will download faster than real-time, which means that the 
TV will need to do very little buffering before you can watch it. Slower than that means that the movie will take longer to download than to watch it, and so a fair amount of buffering will be necessary. Here I'm assuming a 3GB movie that runs 120 min, and I'm talking about actual download speeds, and not the "advertised" speed that can vary from real life by quite a bit.
I'm on a 16 mbps DSL here in Germany, and the HD rentals are ready to watch in under a minute. They take about 70 minutes to download completely, which implies I'm getting a true download speed of about 6mbps--not surprising given the transatlantic bottleneck.
TV will need to do very little buffering before you can watch it. Slower than that means that the movie will take longer to download than to watch it, and so a fair amount of buffering will be necessary. Here I'm assuming a 3GB movie that runs 120 min, and I'm talking about actual download speeds, and not the "advertised" speed that can vary from real life by quite a bit.I'm on a 16 mbps DSL here in Germany, and the HD rentals are ready to watch in under a minute. They take about 70 minutes to download completely, which implies I'm getting a true download speed of about 6mbps--not surprising given the transatlantic bottleneck.