HT201343: Use AirPlay to display video from your Mac on an HDTV

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wiseallen
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Q: Apple TV Gen 3 is pixellated when using airplay

I love my Apple TV but I am having trouble with the picture quality when watching streaming videos using AirPlay.  The Apple TV and MacBook Air are both connected to my TimeCapsule on the 5Ghz network.  The channel for the 5 Ghz network is set to 149 and the strength runs between 53-55% with a frequency of 5745.  None of the other networks in the neighborhood share any of these settings.  The noise on the network runs at around 13%.  The Apple TV sits about 8 inches under our wall mounted Sony television which is the closest electrical device.  The Apple TV is connected to the television by a high quality HDMI cable.  Does anyone have any suggestions to improve the quality of streaming video (YouTube, Vimeo, etc)?  The picture looks so much better on the MacBook Air than it does the television.  The desktop looks fantastic.  It's just streaming videos that are poor quality.  Any suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks.

Apple TV (3rd generation), Apple TV Software 5.2.1 (6025)

Posted on May 3, 2013 8:31 AM

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wiseallen

Q: Apple TV Gen 3 is pixellated when using airplay

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  • by Alley_Cat,Helpful

    Alley_Cat Alley_Cat May 4, 2013 2:58 PM in response to wiseallen
    Level 6 (19,593 points)
    May 4, 2013 2:58 PM in response to wiseallen

    Sounds like a limitation of Airplay over wifi.

     

    Airplay mirroring if that's what you're using is a lossy screen sharing technology and will adapt to slower connections by reducing qulaity (increasing compression).

     

    Try connecting devices by ethernet where possible, even one of them to take the burden off wifi.

     

    AC

  • by Alley_Cat,

    Alley_Cat Alley_Cat May 4, 2013 3:01 PM in response to wiseallen
    Level 6 (19,593 points)
    May 4, 2013 3:01 PM in response to wiseallen

    wiseallen wrote:

     

    I love my Apple TV .......  The desktop looks fantastic.  It's just streaming videos that are poor quality.  Any suggestions are much appreciated. Thanks.

    This is the thing - the screen sharing technology will not have to work hard for a fairly static slowly changing destop, but constantly changing video requires much more interframe data to get good quality.

     

    AC

  • by Alley_Cat,

    Alley_Cat Alley_Cat May 5, 2013 12:56 AM in response to wiseallen
    Level 6 (19,593 points)
    May 5, 2013 12:56 AM in response to wiseallen

    From your question it sounds as though you are tryong to Airplay mirror most things.

     

    If your issue partly relates to streaming YouTube/Vimeo directly accessed from icons on AppleTV then they may well use different encodings for playback compared to the desktop versions.  YouTube for example used to use Flash and separate h264 versions subsequently appeared for AppleTVs which won't do Flash.  I think both are available on the desktop these days.

     

    AC