White Screen of death?

Posted August 18th, 2008 in Movies by Keith Foster

So here it was a Saturday night we have some friends over, and want to watch a movie. What a better chance to show off my Apple TV to some people who, I could see, buying one at some point. We all decided to watch Harold and Kumar click to rent, and after a few minutes it’s ready to watch. I press play and get…… nothing, a white screen, I can forward the chapters, but nothing no sounds no video. After a few moments of cussing, restarting, and getting the “this is why I netflix” from people around me, I pop over to the Apple support forums and found this. After a full reset (unplugging the Apple TV for 30sec) I was able to get the movie to play. In fairness this is the first time I have tried to watch while downloading; normally I download before I go to work and it runs smooth. The most frustrating part was on Sunday when I wanted to watch systm, and had to reset my Apple TV to my PC, my question is will this happen the next time also? According to what I read over at Apple support this seems to be an issue since the last firmware update, and some people have had this happen 3-4 times over the last few weeks. How about all of you, have you had this also?

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meckimac

same thing here. Experienced it last weekend once and a reboot fixed it.
CHASH

Yes, I’ve seen this before, and commented in the Apple discussions thread you linked to.

To reiterate, home computers (for various reasons) need to be restarted periodically, and AppleTV is no exception. In fact, the operating profile of an AppleTV (long periods without a restart) make it more likely that you’ll run into this type of issue…

It’s what I’ll essentially call “stale RAM”, where typically either a memory leak or a error in main memory (a so-called “alpha particle-induced” error) will cause the contents of main dynamic RAM to become corrupted. And depending upon the specifics of the error (what and where), and any subsequent error migration, will determine the likelihood of an eventual operator-visible anomaly, like the one you described.

Normally, commercial or higher-end systems (like Apple’s Mac Pro) utilize error correcting (ECC) memory that would fix most soft errors on the fly. But consumer computers like AppleTV don’t justify the added expense of ECC hardware.

In the case of the white screen, I personally think it’s more likely that an undetected memory leak exists in the Quicktime code…FWIW. But, in any case, it’s a good idea to restart your AppleTV periodically. To do this, you hold down both the minus (-) and Menu buttons together until the diagnostic mode is invoked, and follow option screens to restart.

Hope this helps.
ccunning

I’ve had a very similar experience (friends over trying to show off), but different symptoms that lead to the same actions. I was renting a movie and got to the “Connecting to the iTunes store” screen where it would just hang. Cycling power fixed it, but it took about 20 minutes for me to figure it out by which time my company was getting bored. It has happened since and I’ve let it “Connect to iTunes” for an hour without anything happening.

Also if it needs to be rebooted regularly, it’d be nice if it had a power button or a way to hard reset it from the remote. Crawling behind the entertainment center with company over is embarassing.
YodaMac

Can you reboot the AppleTV after it’s already started downloading a rental without messing up your download?

… or do you need to wait until the rental download is complete before rebooting?
CHASH

YodaMac – You can pause and resume downloads at will, including rebooting AppleTV.

ccunning – You don’t have to crawl behind your furniture overcome with embarrassment. Just do as I describe in my final paragraph …Hold both minus and menu buttons on the remote until you invoke diagnostic mode. This will give you the option to restart. You’ll know diag mode is triggered with the status light turns blinking yellow… So, you’ll still be a bit embarrassed, but can skip the groveling part…

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1560?viewlocale=en_US
ccunning

Awesome tip CHASH. It seems like the kind of thing I should have known already somehow (by reading all the posts before mine?).
Rassmass

Thanks for the tip CHASH, I didn’t know you could reboot your appleTV with the remote, also this helped me with the white screen of death I received when trying to watch Speed Racer in HD.
Michael

YOU ARE HEROS!!!!!! Apple was about to get a very nasty email from me – Thanks Keith and CHASH!
Thomas

So cool. I am viewing this beautifully on iphone. I got big white screen too. Tjank you so much for publishing the problem and the solution.
http://roblawton.com rob lawton

Thanks Keith,

Just rebooting my ATV now, so I can finally settle down to Heroes and 24!

Can’t believe I haven’t seen your site before! I’ve bookmarked, and will be following you on twitter!

Cheers,

Rob,
Linda

I love you!! Reboot worked!!! Thank you!!!!!!!!!
Happy Geek
Matt

Thanks for the reboot info via remote… I’ve had to reboot a number of times b/c of the white screen of death. I’ve little doubt that this is a HDCP/DRM problem. I have other content that is not iTunes protected content that plays perfectly, while the content I buy/rent from iTunes suffers.

Some people have discussed logging into iTunes prior to watching AppleTV, etc; however, this doesn’t really make sense as you are “logged in” when you buy/rent. Definitely a software problem, hopefully Apple can get out of the DRM game and start providing user-friendly content.
Dlauren

THANK YOU SO MUCH
I've had this white screen sitting here for the last 2 hours.
I finally unplugged it and the movie is finally running smoothly. I really hope this doesnt become a problem in the future. This is the first movie ive watched off the apple tv.
nikib

Literally just happened to me while trying to watch WATCHMAN. Thank you to this Forum for helping me solve!
Todd

It happens every time a rent a movie. Unplugging the AC for 10+ seconds seems to correct it every time. My understanding is that this problem has to do with a change in digital rights coding since the Apple TV was introduced. Apparently, Apple has not found a work-around yet.
Jason

You guys saved the evening with this thread – thanks for the save!!
Name

I have 2 Apple tv's… the older one (2008) is fine, the newer one will white screen on rented plus purchased movies from my library… unplug and replug usually fixes it.
Name

this has happened to me everytime within the last month, for every rental, and last night i tried renting fast and furious, well white screen of death for that. i waited customarily for the complete download instead of pressing play for the stream (which used to work great), once @ 100 % , low and behold it still had the white screen. so i unplugged , waited , plugged back in, and found that the download was not there under rentals anymore, infact rented movies option was not there at all. called apple , they said that they couldnt find the movie that i had just rented.
so they said that they would refund me, and asked me to try again. just wait for the download to reach 100 % , (which i had done)
so i didnt feel like risking it again. and chose to go with the SD version and get it from itunes and xfer it to my appletv.
well , at least its there. i havent watched it yet though…..
Ben

I rented a movie last night and got a white screen just as described here. However, restarting the AppleTV did not solve it.
redneckislandgirl

We had this happen last night. Went to watch and white screen. Even paid for movies. We tried renting a new 99cent movie and the same.
I am searching for solutions. Thanks for this…….I don't feel alone.
TinRocket

It's happening to me right now… I am downloading a tv season. I was notified that an episode was ready to be watched (others are still downloading) but when I press play (as it instructs) I get the whit screen of death with no sound. I'm waiting for the rest of the season to finish downloading… then I'll try it again and re-set if need be.
lioncub

Oh once again I see the dreaded white screen of death, I keep checking for updates to see if Apple have fixed the kinks, but no, I think they must've forgotten about our little magic boxes!!

Seems to happen to me every time I buy or rent a movie now. I don't wait until the movie downloads to 100% I just pull the plug wait 30 secs, start up again then it works, yippiee…… come on Apple, get it together.
Anonymous

Oh once again I see the dreaded white screen of death, I keep checking for updates to see if Apple have fixed the kinks, but no, I think they must’ve forgotten about our little magic boxes!!

Seems to happen to me every time I buy or rent a movie now. I don’t wait until the movie downloads to 100% I just pull the plug wait 30 secs, start up again then it works, yippiee…… come on Apple, get it together.
Anonymous

Oh once again I see the dreaded white screen of death, I keep checking for updates to see if Apple have fixed the kinks, but no, I think they must’ve forgotten about our little magic boxes!!

Seems to happen to me every time I buy or rent a movie now. I don’t wait until the movie downloads to 100% I just pull the plug wait 30 secs, start up again then it works, yippiee…… come on Apple, get it together.
Anonymous

Oh once again I see the dreaded white screen of death, I keep checking for updates to see if Apple have fixed the kinks, but no, I think they must’ve forgotten about our little magic boxes!!

Seems to happen to me every time I buy or rent a movie now. I don’t wait until the movie downloads to 100% I just pull the plug wait 30 secs, start up again then it works, yippiee…… come on Apple, get it together.
Anonymous

Oh once again I see the dreaded white screen of death, I keep checking for updates to see if Apple have fixed the kinks, but no, I think they must’ve forgotten about our little magic boxes!!

Seems to happen to me every time I buy or rent a movie now. I don’t wait until the movie downloads to 100% I just pull the plug wait 30 secs, start up again then it works, yippiee…… come on Apple, get it together.

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