Apple TV (v2) and movie rentals - my experiences, for what it's worth...

Question

I’ve been reading a lot of posts over the past couple of days about problems streaming rented movies, and thought i’d share my experiences as i’ve had a couple of days of head scratching and frustration trying to watch one of my own:
I unwrapped an Apple TV v2 at the weekend, which was a gift form a friend, and tried it out by renting a movie. This was yesterday:
Now I’m a Virgin media customer in the UK, with 10MB broadband (wired), which I figured would be fast enough to easily stream HD video - and sure enough my rental started up and played fine. For about 30 mins...
After this it froze, and gave me the dreaded ‘loading’ dialogue, which showed 7 hours as my wait, and it got longer as the day went on - not shorter.
I gave up, and decided to come back to it later, which of course was a foolish move, as everything that had been buffered was erased and i was back at square one.
I then tried again today and had the exact same problem. After turning on, and being pleasantly surprised to see that my HD rental began streaming perfectly with almost no delay, I was again kicked off after about half an hour.
So i decided to look at my ISP’s terms and conditions, and sure enough there are cap’s on my data traffic of 1.5gb during the day, and 750mb in the evening (until 9pm). Exceed either of these and your traffic speed is cut back by 75% for 5 hours.
So i did some digging, and found that the average HD movie file size is about 4gb. This means that it’s impossible for me to stream and watch a film in one sitting, as i’ll never have enough uncapped bandwidth to stream the whole movie in one hit.
Now some folks have talked about getting ahead of the game, and beginning a download ahead of time (like first thing in the morning) so that by the evening a film is waiting for you no matter how long the download time. But even if this works, you run the risk of losing the buffered file by hitting the wrong button on your apple remote. This to me is unacceptable.
So lets drill down to the details here:
Problem 1: the manner Apple TV v2 stores video. I’m no technical expert, but understand that the latest Apple TV has no hard drive - rather an 8GB flash drive. This would be enough to download and store an HD movie as a semi-permanent file, but Apple TV v2 doesn’t do this - it just uses it as a streaming buffer, which is cleared out periodically, and is easy to accidentally lose.
Problem 2: my ISP just won’t allow the amount of data transfer required to stream an HD movie without capping my download speed. Not between 9am and 9pm anyway (i’m going to see if i can stream the end of my film later without the beggars cutting me off).
Problem 2a (more of a gripe): Apple TV doesn’t warn you that the file you’re about to stream when you rent a movie will very likely trigger your ISP’s bandwidth throttling policy. It might be in their small print, but it should be there in big letters at the point of sale, just before you hit ‘buy’.
The Solution: There isn’t a satisfactory one for me really. I don’t imagine I’ll be renting any more movies directly from Apple TV. It’s too pricey to take the risk that I won’t be able to watch it, so back to DVD for me.
Now I could rent or buy through iTunes, and then stream to Apple TV, as at least I’d have a ‘hard copy’ of the movie on my MacBook and would be safe in the knowledge that once i had downloaded the file i could watch it from start to finish without interruption - but this is also less than ideal. I can’t get HD movies from iTunes, i’d have to go through the ‘planning ahead’ phase of starting downloading early in the day, and there’s still no guarantee it wouldn’t trigger the bandwidth throttling if it was a long movie.
The only other solution would be to max out my broadband package, although currently the most expensive package (which costs double what i pay now) still had a 3.5gb cap, so could kick me off just as i’m near the end of the film. Plus, i don’t watch that many films to make the expense worthwhile.
To wrap up...
If you’re on a decent broadband connection that in theory should be able to handle HD streaming then check your ISP’s regs regarding throttling. Even with throttling on, YouTube, iPlayer and other similar sites still worked for me, as they’ll happily cope with reduced transfer speeds. Apple movie rentals won’t. This might explain why some can use these services perfectly at the same time as being unable to view their rental.
If you’re an occasional film watcher in a similar position to me, don’t bother with movie rentals. Unless you’re on an uncapped, unthrottled broadband package it’s unlikely you’ll be able to stream an HD movie in one hit due to the file size.
Back to Blockbuster Video for me i’m afraid. At least until we get NetFlix in the UK
Hope you have more luck than I did,
McGinty

Answer 1

Thanks for the pointers folks. Yeah, 1.5GB is pretty poor isn't it? There are other suppliers, but you have to get a their phone line installed to access the internet so it's an £85 setup fee plus a day off work for a guy to come round and drill a hole in your wall before you even get to the monthly costs.
Don't get me wrong though - I'm certainly not an Apple basher, but am equally frustrated with both them and the ISP.
Virgin Media spend all kinds of money advertising their broadband as the fastest in the UK, but don't tell you (up front anyway) that you'll be cut off if you actually try and use it.
Apple on the other hand carry on with their 'it just works' mantra, but with Apple TV this only applies if you meet certain criteria (again, not mentioned up front).
I guess it aint a biggie, as i was gifted my Apple TV, and love all the other stuff it does, but from the number of posts on this forum can see that there's a lot of angry customers out there who want explanations as to why they're having similar problems to me.
Will be very interesting to see if Apple release any kind of software update that turns the flash drive from a buffer to permanent storage, to at least ease some of the pain...
Message was edited by: McGinty