About 10 days ago, my Apple TV (generation 1) died. Or, at least it "refused" to reset or upgrade along with the iTunes 10.1.1 update. The ATV1 was out of warranty by 2 months. It wasn't a big decision to order Apple TV 2 for $99. Streaming HD video is the goal. Absolutely no problem with playing purchased and stored HD movies from my home computer on the home HD LCD screen via wireless Apple Extreme router. But, big disappointment with renting HD movies from the iTunes store. Just terrible download speed (hours, when it should be ready to stream within a few moments). After several days of researching and fussing with this, I have found a better pathway, so to speak. It seems to be a combination of DNS issues and broadband download speed, but primarily the DNS from my ISP. To save my DPC friends time & energy, I will share the results of my research here. (Your results may vary.)
I had read on December 20 that OpenDNS and Google DNS might be slowing down your Apple TV. I thought, "That's it!" because I have been using Google's DNS service (very successfully) for many months. However, as I went to my network settings to revert to the DNS addresses provided by my ISP, I found they had already reverted to the ISP's DNS auto addresses. This likely happened about 2 weeks ago when the Apple Extreme wireless router had its firmware updated.
In the network preferences, I entered Google's Open DNS server addresses. Worked much better. Then, I entered OpenDNS' server addresses. Also worked well. The only addresses which didn't work were those provided by my ISP. So, even though the word on the street is, "Changing DNS probably won̢۪t help your Video Streaming", I found that it did make a difference. I'm guessing that OpenDNS and Google DNS universal systems are adapting to the problem. That said, my sense is the streaming video constraint is the fault of the content delivery network (CDN), which is hosted by Akamai.
Other experiences?
Message edited by author 2010-12-28 14:45:09. |
