Apple TV owners' thread. - Page 57

BTW, http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/...believes/print

Which thread ?

You want AirPlay which the ATV1 does not have. With the ATV2 or 3 you can mirror the iPhone4S via the ATV3, or AirPlay specific apps to the screen.

It depends what you use the WDTV for as to whether or not you could sell it. Many people want a player that can directly play tons of condecs (xvid, divx, mp4, etc...) and containers (like mkv). That would be the WDTV or similar units. The ATV2 or 3 will not give you that.

philip

So, it seems like i need ATV3. How easy to JB ATV3? how long will it take the process?

You can't jailbreak the ATV3 now. Who knows when you will be able to? Maybe never. If you are buying the ATV3 to do something it isn't designed or can't do then you'd be better off with something else. For example, there are better platforms for XBMC if that's what you want. In addition, if your main aim is to play mkv files then look elsewhere.

Philip

+1

There are probably others, but it's the most reliable I've found that is least likely to break things, and it's updated fairly often by an active developer, which is a very good thing.

Well, finally I get an AEX. Audio output to my amp, and I get AirPlay. But something strange happens, the audio streaming through AEX always has cut outs. And not when streaming via ATV.

I've checked

[quote="charlyz"]

Well, finally I get an AEX. Audio output to my amp, and I get AirPlay. But something strange happens, the audio streaming through AEX always has cut outs. And not when streaming via ATV.

I've checked the router and everything is ok. Again, with ATV never happens that.

Any ideas? It's very annoying to listen that way...

Thanks

Is the apple TV wired while the AEX is wireless? Maybe there's a wi-fi problem going on?

I have learned that AirPlay dropouts are just part of the game; it happens at my house every time I use the feature. My media are all stored on the Mac Pro which has a wireless connection... I've always assumed that to be the weak link especially since the bulk of my files are Apple Lossless and wav.

Yes, ATV is wired.
While AEX is wireless, dropouts are not constant, seems to appear when the airport was working about one hour.

The experience with my ATV is perfect, never dropouts.

Are yours wired or not?

so your having wifi issues. you might try a powerline adapter or optimizing the wifi install

2 of my ATV3s are wireless, one ATV2 is wireless, and one ATV1 is wireless. One ATV3 is wired. The media is all on a Mac Pro which is wireless, however.

I never have trouble streaming movies but airplay drops out frequently.

If you check the Apple support site, you will see that there are a LOT of folks in the walled garden that are having the same problem. I've posted there a few times with my observations, but I personally believe it's a bug with Airplay. I have problems w/ Airplay going from iTunes on a MacBook Pro to an Airport Express, as well as with my iPhone 4 to an Apple TV 2.

If I change between the 2.4 and 5 GHz networks on my router, with either/both the source and target devices, I have different results. It's probably the result of wireless interference from my neighbors, but I have no trouble streaming Netflix or Amazon or Vudu or Pandora to my wireless Blu-ray player (Sony BDP-S590) on the same wireless network.

Apple has always struggled with network streaming media and it looks like the struggle continues...

Sometimes the 'culprit' is a botched implementation of the pre-n proposed standard. Once I discovered that the presence of any lower speed wireless device caused all the devices to slow down. My pain points also included a microwave in the transmission path and a cheap cordless phone that made a mess of all the free channels.

You may want to check for any free tools that would help you determine the strength and the channels of all the signals around you.

Another thing you should note is that while you think that you are well within the range quoted for your wireless equipment, the actual practical distance may be 1/4 of this. It is not unusual to have black holes and shadows due to multi path interference or construction material.

Yeah... that's the stock tech support answer. FWIW, my wireless devices are all within 15 feet of the Cisco router, which is a brand new model. This is not a signal strength issue.

Wireless=wonky. Just accept it.

If you want the best shot at trouble-free performance, use a wire, end of story.

Is the ATV wired or wireless? I have no problems with ATV wired, everything works well. (Netflix, you tube via AirPlay, music via iTunes or via iPhone, pandora, etc)

But with AEX is very annoying almost unusable with AirPlay. I've been tweaking my router but not help yet. Anyway, I'm trying to figure where the problem is, since I have a lot of devices in my wifi network and the only with trouble is the AEX.

I'll try to wire the AEX and see what happens. If works better, so the problem is with the wifi network.

FYI. My router has a few years is not the newer ones, but everything is fine except with AEX. So I'm not 100% sure if I need to invest in a new one.

I've saw that a lot of people have this problem and I think that a few of that may have newer routers. ..

If I could be sure that the problem is between my Apple TV and my router, that would be a solution... I am not convinced that the problem isn't from the source device, as well (e.g. iPhone or MacBook Pro).

Besides, I don't see where I can plug an ethernet cable into my iPhone

Ditto the iPad, but that's not the point. The point is to get everything wired other than the iPad/iPhone, where there is no other option. Otherwise, AirPlay is doing one wireless hop from the iPhone to the router, and then another wireless hop right back out to the ATV... two simultaneous wireless hops, running continuously. Perfect recipe for issues.

Wire everything except the iPhone (or iPad) and it's just the one hop, iPhone to router, and then wired for the rest of the trip. No rebroadcast. MUST more reliable. Don't believe me? Read this entire thread, followed by the support threads at Apple, followed by the support threads on any other forum on this issue... you get MUCH more reliable performance when the only thing that is wireless is the iPhone/iPad. Same applies if a wireless MBP is your source... one extra hop from the router to the ATV really messes with things. Wire up that ATV/AEX!

To maintain the best AQ and PQ, Apple Streams a very high bitrate losslessly compressed audio stream to the ATV (or AEX). The conversion to high bitrate (if needed) is done on the client side, and then streamed as a really fat ALAC (Apple Losseless, like FLAC) stream. So it hits the wireless bandwidth pretty hard, even if you're just streaming a low quality MP3. Best to only have one wireless hop, if any, in the chain.

Well, it is probably good advice to hardwire the connection to the ATV; however, my music is already in ALAC and I have nothing that's Airplay compatible over 1Mbps (most are in the 500-600 kbps range, which is what you'd expect from ALAC -encoded Redbook audio).

Sorry, but 1 Mbps (x2 for retransmit from device to router to renderer) is not by any means hitting the bandwidth hard; this is especially true for 802.11n which can reliably carry roughly 60 Mbps, sustained, in real world tests - even at longer ranges than my 15 feet.

But, sure... I'll try running an ethernet cable so I am not '...holding it wrong...'

In my case the router is wireless G. I understand that your router is N. So this is the question: is a wifi related problem related with my old router when other people with strongest routers are reporting the same trouble?

Tonight I'll try to run a long cat 5 cable to test if that improves the streaming. Maybe I'll try removing the cable from ATV to see if reports dropouts too.

On thing, I have the AEX in "joining to existing network" mode. Does this mode allow for wifi or wired connection. I mean, just to connect the cable in AEX? Or I need to tweak the settings?

My point was that some people think playing a 128 kbps mp3 should be really really low bandwidth, when in truth, it's not, because it gets up-sampled before sending.

Regardless, again, whether or not it should be an issue, it has been demonstrated time and time again that AirPlay dropouts are usually fixed by reducing the number of wireless hops to one, whether you have an 802.11b network or an experimental faster-than-N wireless network. You'll have to ask Apple "why" that would be the case (and don't hold your breath for a response), but I'm trying to give practical advice, not advice that depends on futile hopes.

Have you guys had any problems with the ATV3 1080p connected to an hdmi switch ?

I just discovered that I don't have dropouts streaming iTunes via AirPlay from my wife laptop.

In the same moment and the same room I have dropouts from my laptop iTunes....

Maybe I'm a little crazy with this issue but seems that the sound quality coming from the wifes laptop is lower quality that my laptop with dropouts.

Is there any way to set the quality of streaming music in iTunes ?

Three of my AirPlay devices are wireless......two Airports on 2.4khz and an ATV2 on the 5khz channel along with an iPad2. I have zero issues with dropouts of both audio and HD video. I use a Netgear N750 if that helps.

Ok, I noted that the big issue that I have is when I try to stream pandora. Streaming radio from Tune in Radio is almost ok. iTunes is selective, since from my wife laptop is ok

Have you tried to listen pandora via AirPlay in one AEX?

With ATV wired works mostly ok.

If your router is on of the small business or home routers that's branded Cisco, the firmware on all those are not the best... I have been buying e3000s and e2000s refurbished off of amazon and putting dd-wrt on them and using them for every networking task you could imagine. The stock cisco firmware seemed to have issues with the multicast protocols and broadcast discovery services.

If there is an off chance you could borrow a different router (brand) and try it, that may be worth your while. Or if you have a compatible router, brave the flashing process and change the firmware (at the risk of bricking your router).

Please also double check that your access point is open (not encrypted) or using only wpa2-aes (unless you have pretty old devices). If all your devices can do n set your ap to n only otherwise see if you get better results with g-n mixed or g only.

You got to find a way to make sure the channel your router is on is free. The non overlapping channels are 1,6,11 so switch between those.

I have an USB hard disk connected to Airport extreme & my itunes media is stored in that hard disk. Is it possible to stream that media ( music/photos, not movies) using ATV3 without firing off itunes on laptops?