Over the past couple of months, a number of Apple TV users have been complaining that downloading HD movies over iTunes seem to be taking an inordinately high amount of time. We had initially diagnosed the problem as one with the internet connection. However many users who were on high speed internet plans noted that this could not have been the case.
Apple had released a software update last week that was apparently aimed at fixing this issue. The update fixed this along with other bugs on Apple TV including flickering displays and improper HD rendering.
It has now been noted that there could be yet another issue plaguing Apple TV users – one with the DNS set up on their connections. Reports suggest that users who have set up their DNS over centralized systems like Google DNS and OpenDNS could be the ones to be suffering from the long download times. These reports suggest that users who download content via Apple’s servers, the Akamai Content Delivery network do not seem to be facing these issues.
There is not much clarity on why this is the case. In any case, if you are someone who is still affected, why not try out an alternate DNS configuration to see how the downloading works? Don’t forget to tell us how it works in the comments below.
One reply on “Long Movie Download Time On Apple TV & iTunes Due To Centralized DNS”
Forget DNS, ISP speeds, try software bug. Movie will say 12 hours to download, but simply coming out going to select anything to play, a pop up box will announce movie is ready. Now a long authorizing message will pop up, repeat the same procedure of going out, come back and the movie will start playing.