I figure if you folks here can't help with this, no one can. Certainly Best Buy people and Apple reps can't.
My wife gave me AppleTV for Father's Day today. I was very excited-- it meant no more having to use my iPad or the Wii to watch Netflix, and an easy way to stream "VanFlix"--my collection of 220 ripped DVDs from this laptop--to the main TV. Unfortunately, using it to stream my existing iTunes movie/music/TV/photo libraries is currently the *only* thing it will do. (Whoops-- will also play YouTube.) It will not play Netflix. It will not play "Vimeo," whatevertheheck that is. It will not even pull my "Purchased" videos down from the iCloud. In each of those cases, it starts to work, and then, 4 seconds in, it says, "This content requires HDCP for playback," and directs me to check my HDMI cable connection. I Googled that line and found dozens and dozens of complaints-- but eventually everyone seems to figure out how to fix it. We have not. We've replaced the cable with a new, $60 Monster Cable. We've gone through all the troubleshooting methods such as disconnecting each component (in various specific orders) and then turning everything off and then turning it all back on in a specific order. Nothing works. Meanwhile, I can continue to stream Netflix to the TV perfectly fine using my iPad, with both the old and the new HDMI cables. So at this point, our $100 AppleTV is basically a $100 remote control for pausing and rewinding my own ripped movies and downloaded iTunes shows. Otherwise it won't do as much as the iPad will. One thing I'm wondering is if my LCD TV (Samsung, bought in 2006 for $1700) is just broken when it comes to some HDMI inputs. The two HDMI inputs work perfectly fine with the iPad, but it no longer will play our AT&T U-Verse-- we have had to switch to Component Video cables instead. We've known this for months, but I'd honestly forgotten (and my wife didn't think about it when buying the AppleTV for me). What I'd really like to do is try the existing setup on another TV-- in this house, with the same WiFi, etc. But we don't have another HDMI TV. We're going to take it back to Best Buy, I suppose. But I HATE this, because I was very excited to get it. Any thoughts? Other than just "Buy a new TV (that we cannot begin to afford) and cross our fingers?" Thanks, --Van -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Unique Geek" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/theuniquegeek?hl=en.
