Apple TV slow to update; any suggestions?

There’s a major update to Apple TV, but I can’t seem to download it over wifi; it just pinwheels forever on “Estimating Time Remaining.”

Any ideas on how to do this download? The Apple TV box, and my TV, are very far from my cable modem, so I can’t see a current way to connect them directly.

Restart the box if you haven’t already. Also, check to make sure you don’t have “update automatically” on – the “automatic” updates seem to stall manual ones. If you do, turn it off, maybe restart again for good measure, and do the update again.

Next, just leave it trying overnight – I’ve had updates finish in a minute or two, and a couple that took six hours or longer. I don’t know if they’re just variable or dependent on available memory or some other resource, but it’s not very predictable.

If none of that works, though, just wait a couple weeks and try again: I suspect the real problem isn’t on your end at all, just congestion on the Apple servers as close to a billion devices all try to update themselves to iOS 8 and then update their apps to match. It’ll probably fix itself as the load comes back down.

Ah, that seems to be working! Thanks!