Ready to watch in 2 days!!!

Question

Well I am still struggling with download times post update. I just clicked on X2 to rent the HD version and all I get is a flashing "ready to watch in 2 days"
My internet is tested at 18mbps. My wireless modem is secure and running well.
Any other suggestions on how I can improve performance?
Funny, this was never an issue before the firmware upgrade.
I am slowly losing my patience with ATV.

Answer 1

I'm only on a 1Mbps connection and it takes 10-12 hours to download a HD movie.
I generally decide what I want to watch the night before and just order the rental to view the next day, and I'm happy with this and not having to walk to Blockbuster, though I could get there on foot and back in 20 mins.
If I had a faster connection though I'd be dissapointed too with long delays before watching.
These are relevant Apple support links with times to start viewing:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1577?viewlocale=en_US
Which estimates 50-72 mins to download a 3-4.5GB HD movie on a 5Mbps connection - ie faster than real time so with a bit of buffering it should be ready to watch after a few minutes at most.
http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html
Suggests times to start:
6 Mbps: less than 1 minute
2 Mbps: about 2 hours
768 Kbps: about 8 hours
... but people do not seem to be achieving these - again dissapointing, but if they want this to succeed as an on demand service, and people have the appropriate network connection speeds to achieve that within a minute or so, they have to ensure their servers are up to the task or perhaps offer you a cancel purchase option if it's going to take ages.
Send some feedback to:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html
Remember though it is not necessarily Apple's fault unless:
- you have a guaranteed speed, which is not affected by contention, bandwidth throttling by the ISP, or pehaps other users in the house using the connection simultaneously.
If you have a guaranteed speed immune form these other aspects then it must be Apple's servers or possibly an intremediate connection to them beyond your ISP that can't keep up.
As the others have said new movies might be subject to high numbers of simultaneous downloads but Apple ought to balance loads at the servers to allow for such situations in the same way Blockbuster may have dozens of copies of a new release available but only a few of an older movie.
AC