Apple TV users report long rental wait times, HDMI issues - Page 3

There's definitely something funky about the HDMI on the Apple TV.

I've not had any picture issues, but mine is connected to an HDMI switch box with my Blu-ray and DVR (single-HDMI TV). The switch will automatically switch between the Blu-ray and DVR as they are switched on and off, but won't automatically select the Apple TV. Also, once it's switched to the Apple TV, it won't automatically switch away when the other boxes power up. I wonder if the HDMI port is kept "powered up" even when the device is asleep.

I've not used the video rental yet, my broadband's not up to it and it's too expensive, but I've not had any other performance issues. I use AirPlay a lot - only issue I've had is that if you pause playback with the Apple TV remote it won't start again from that remote, I have to resume from the iPod.

We've used www.socialkik.com to buy a few thousands of Youtube views and channel subscribers for multiple channels and they always over-delivered on the number of views or subscribers that we purchased by up to 30% of extra views. Now that Socialkik campaigns are over, newer visitors to our channel are more willing to become a subscriber than before, because they see that we have over 10,000 of other subscribers.

I don't use ANY Google products unless I have to. I've found that almost all the time, the alternatives are better - and I'm not feeding a slimy monster.


Except there are no hits for "My dog is ordering me to kill." (with the quotes). I guess my dog's OK.

There is now

Yeah why does Google spider AppleInsider so aggressively? Spooky.

This worked for me as well. THANKS mpx.

I only have 3Mbit dsl and my 2nd gen AppleTV starts playing anything instantly. Prior to getting the AppleTV I used to rent movies,tv, etc on my PS3 and it would take forever before I could start watching. If I wanted to watch a movie in HD on the PS3, I had to rent it the day before and leave the system on all night. Now I have them side by side, on the same wireless connection, and it's night and day. The PS3 takes an eternity to start playing a movie that the AppleTV will start playing instantly. Using Netflix for a direct comparison is telling. My situation appears to rule out a slow internet connection or using wireless as the cause of the issue. The fact that even when both sources are Netflix, there is a massive time differential between the devices seems to me to indicate either a bug on the device side that causes the delay or some sort of forced proxying going on on the provider side. I'd bet that whatever is causing the difference between my PS3 and my AppleTV is similar, if not exactly the same as what is causing the difference between my AppleTV and those who have to wait hours to watch anything. I've had the AppleTV for almost two months now and I use it everyday to rent movies or TV shows, usually from iTunes, sometimes from Netflix.

On to the HDMI issues. I have an old Sony Wega CRT with an HDMI 1.1 input and I used an old HDMI 1.1 capable cable (purchased at the same time the TV was purchased new, so roughly 6 years ago). With that setup, I had zero HDMI issues. Last week, however, everything changed. I bought a new Sony 7.1 channel receiver with 4 HDMI 1.4 inputs. I bought new 1.4 capable HDMI cables as well. I did this mainly because I was tired of having to swap cables between devices to use the single HDMI input on my TV. Anyway, once I hooked everything up, the AppleTV refused to play anything, displaying an HDCP error on the screen no matter what I tried. Connected directly to the TV, the AppleTV played fine, connected through the receiver, HDCP errors. The PS3 had no issues playing HDCP protected content through receiver (yes, thankfully a sony player, playing through a sony receiver to a sony TV works fine). Eventually I discovered that if, instead of using one of the new "1.4 capable" HDMI cables, if I used my ancient 1.1 cable between the AppleTV and the receiver, the issue disappeared. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the cable itself, in fact I just swapped it with the one going to the TV. I'm not entirely sure why that would work, but my theory is it forces the entire connection between the AppleTV and my TV to 1.1 only settings.

And thus concludes my novel.