Q: When using airplay from mac to apple tv it lags/freezes, but works fine with iPhone

The wifi on the AppleTV isn't very fast. I had to connect the AppleTV via Ethernet and my lag went away. 

Okey, here's what I found out this morning actually.

Watched a movie (with VLC over air mirroring - extended desktop) yesterday and it studdered pretty bad. Movie was 720p and my setup is AT3 and Macbook Air mid 2011.

My ATV3 is connected with wire.

My router (RT-N66U) supports both 2,4 and 5Ghz as any other modern router out there.

Simple solution (at least for my setup) was simply to hook up my Air to the 5Ghz Wifi, and all symptoms of studder went away,

Hope this is to any kind of help

Good point about the 5G. Mine was already setup like that so I didn't think to mention it.

Exactly what I needed in that link. I had changes around some wifi router settings unintentionally, so that article sent me back to reset them. I feel bad about blaming my ISP now. Well, there, I got over it.

I just bought an Apple TV today and was experiencing similar problems with Video mirroring from my Macbook Pro 2011. I am working on a 10.9.1 operating system with 2.3 GHz Inter core i5 and 4Gb of DDR3 memory.

When I set up the Apple TV, the image would freeze on my TV as soon as I activate airplay mirroring. What ever image was on my Macbook screen would apear on my TV and that would be it. There would be no more video mirroring. I could not see the mouse move, or any video playback, or any applications...Basically I would be stuck at the image that I had when I started mirroring.

The audio playback was normal throughout however. Even when the image was frozen the audio would work just fine.

When I set up the apple TV it was connected to my network wirelessly. I connected my Apple TV to my router via ethernet cable and that solved the problem.

Now, I have excellent video playback. I have excellent audio playback. I can stream videos from the internet on my computer and watch them on the TV via apple TV. I can access my itunes from my computer and listen to songs through my TV and there is no lag or missed frames.

My router does not support a 5G signal so I could not try that option, but it seems that the ethernet cable works great.

Quite a disappointment from apple, but at least there's a fix to the problem.

Same issue.

No reply from Apple for over 5 months?!

Just bought Apple TV today, Iphone and Ipad work just fine, MacBook Pro 2012 has severe streaming issues. I don't see why this would be a router issue if the other devices are working just fine...

Did you try connecting the apple TV to the router via ethernet cable?

I don't really have an explanation as to why it works, but it did for me. The same solution was mentioned in one of the earlier posts as well.

Yes I have it connected with cable, same issues...

I just had the same issues- basically unusable. ATV2 would show an image of the desktop (MBP13R) maybe for a second- but nothing even close to functional. Sound worked ok. I have another guest network on my router (dualband?), which no other devices are using. So I switched to that on both the macbook pro and the apple tv and things are perfect... mirroring, everything works well. The guest network is slightly slower or on a different frequency, but I suppose there is less interference on it and that's why it works for this. I do have a nest, iphone, printer, ipod... all on the other network- so that makes sense to me. Hope that helps anyone out there.

Same problem!!!!!!! I don't understand how a compnay such as apple can have issues like this! It's 2014 people!! Get your tech fixed!!!!!!!!!!!

And apple is still ignoring us!

Same problem here. One screenshot shows up every 2-3mins from mac but perfect on iPhone. It worked for me a few months ago and stopped working around the time I updated my mac to Mavericks. I called apple support and they weren't able to fix it. None of their suggestions worked so they sent me to a local apple store to the Genius Bar. It worked perfectly immediately when I tried it with them. I brought in both my Apple TV and mac. They offered to give me a new Apple TV just in case there was an issue. I took a new one, went home, and still same problem as before. Very annoying that still no fix for this!!!

So what is the deal here? People come here, search out other people who have the same problem and they just keep posting asking the same question with no answer? I have the same problem, streaming Audio to AppleTV is unusable, just like everyone else here, running newest OS on everything, took my Old Apple TV in to Apple today and they gave me another one, come home and the same thing is happening. So what we are a Support group here and no resolution ever comes? Its 2014, I want to stream music from my Laptop or Iphone to my Apple TV 18' feet away.

I think the main problem here is that the GPU on the laptop which isn't that powerful has to power to screens when mirroring where the iPad shuts off its own display and just let's you view on the TV.

It seems crazy to me why it doesn't work like this or at least make this an option, until they do these problems will persist. Works great on iPad it's just a pain in the *** transferring over to the iPad to stream kinda defeats the object.

Wish they'd sort this out as I love the Apple TV.

I have to disagree with you on the GPU power as the Retina Macbooks have very powerful GPU's in them (mine has the Nvidia GeForce GT 650M). Also, on my iPad I can mirror the image no problem, which has an inferior GPU. Don't forget with Mavericks we can processes the image offscreen, which is how I use it.

While my earlier post said my lag went away, that isn't entirely true. It is much better, but every few minutes it definately freezes for a second or two and continues to work normally.