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Problems with the NEW Apple TV

post #1 of 6
10/15/10 at 2:35am
Thread Starter 
I've just bought my first AppleTV and my first impressions of it were excellent. I rented Godfather 2 and then I Am Love. Both streamed perfectly, no breaks at all. A real joy to use. When I stopped Godfather 2 and later went back to it I had all kinds of problems getting it to restart but eventually it was sorted.

Anyway, yesterday I switched it on and it had changed the display settings from 720p and I couldn't get it back again. The picture was all broken up and half way across the screen. I tried the display settings on both the AppleTV and my Sony television but to no avail. I did a reset. Also, when I stream across my Home network (using a Time Capsule as my router) I get streaming breaks/pauses with videos. Surely this shouldn't be happening on my home network? Admittedly it seems to be more of an issue with 30 Rock HD episodes than Peep Show SD, but even so. Is there anything wrong? Anything I can do to improve matters? I thought the stuttering and inconsistencies had been eradicated with this update?
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post #2 of 6
10/15/10 at 2:20pm
Thread Starter 
I had been wondering whether my Time Capsule (1st gen) was to blame. However, tonight I connected the AppleTV via ethernet and that solved much of the problem and I guess to access my iTunes library still had to rely on wireless connectivity between my iMac and the router (Time Capsule). Would that suggest a problem with the wireless on the AppleTV itself?
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post #3 of 6
10/16/10 at 7:25pm
I don't know about the display (720p) issue, but as far as your stuttering/pausing video issue, this sounds like a problem with your bandwidth.

Is your network password protected? If not, you'll definitely want to enable this as your neighbours may be sapping your bandwidth.

Second thing, which sort of explains why your ethernet connection is helping the problem, is that when you're streaming through your home network, your wireless bandwidth is being taken up by the video going from your Mac to your TC and then to your ATV, whereas when you're streaming from iTunes servers (rentals), it only goes from the TC to the ATV.

You might be able to test this hypothesis by attaching your Mac to the ethernet and using the ATV wirelessly and seeing if the result is the same. The HD episodes would stop more often because they are larger files overall, and therefor take longer to buffer and be cached on the ATV.
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post #4 of 6
10/17/10 at 12:32pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for your reply. I'll try that. Also today I tried to rent The Godfather Part 3 and when I went to the play screen it said the film would be ready to is 4399 minutes!!!! I assumed this was an issue with my broadband (or bandwidth) but I was and still am able to stream TV on my iMac through the BBC iPlayer. Does this confirm your theory? What might it be? I've recently changed broadband supplier but as I say streaming of TV on my computers works fine.
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post #5 of 6
10/17/10 at 8:24pm
The streaming BBC player probably uses Flash, which iTunes rentals definitely don't, so we might not really be comparing apples to apples. (Haha) Did you try playing a rental on your mac? If you get the same result, it may confirm a bandwidth issue, or maybe Apple's servers were just really inundated when you tried the last time.
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post #6 of 6
11/1/10 at 12:53pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ThereseS View Post

The streaming BBC player probably uses Flash, which iTunes rentals definitely don't, so we might not really be comparing apples to apples. (Haha) Did you try playing a rental on your mac? If you get the same result, it may confirm a bandwidth issue, or maybe Apple's servers were just really inundated when you tried the last time.

Ok, so Apple recommended I return the AppleTV for a replacement. I did that and certainly I've had none of the resolution problems with the new TV. However, after a few successful rental streams I'm again having the same problem. Admittedly this time its load times of hundreds of minutes, not thousands. However, whilst I can stream from my computer, can download and stream on my iMac and Macbook I can't do this on my AppleTV without the long load times. I see from the support pages on the Apple website that many users are having this issue and some have been told to wait for a firmware update for the AppleTV.
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