Q: Slide shows on ATV 4 plays semi random

Matt - isn't it all Home Sharing - a link in the command chain to

Choose Photos? Screen saver just borrows from the slideshow

(with your permission of course) but I do think it all comes from

iCloud b/c the computer doesn't seem to be involved at all -

we can even shut it down. Forgive me if I'm off base - the workings

of  tv and slideshows are just not revealed on these boards so

I'm really just guessing here.

Tom

Hi Tom,

Getting your photos from Home Sharing on your home computers iTunes is different, unique, and separate from getting your photos from the cloud option for screensaver at least.  After speaking with multiple levels of techs at Apple today, the engineer people came back and confirmed that with home sharing, the apple tv gen 2-4 only grabs a small amount of your photos to use for the screensaver (about 100-150 they said) because the cache is so small on the unit.  That translates into the screen saver showing many duplicate photos quite often (easiest seen in Floating mode).  They said that getting your photos for screensaver from the cloud option would in fact use all of your photos (even if thousands) for random display without many duplicates.  I don't use cloud so I can't confirm this to be true or false.  As for slideshow, in home sharing mode it has same problem as screensaver...not sure about slideshow getting photos from cloud.  If I shut down my iTunes on my home computer while home sharing screensaver is running on apple tv 4, then the screensaver stops and says home sharing has been disconnected.  I don't use cloud nor do I have any photos on the cloud so I know photos are not pulling from there ever when home sharing is selected as source for screensaver photos.

Thanks,

Matt

Edivon, this is exactly the problem I've been reporting, with the exception I use Photoshop Elements instead of Aperture. Same as your case, slideshows (I'm not talking about screen saver here, that's a separate idiotic issue...) work perfectly fine in my ATV 2. But in ATV 4, when using Ken Burns or Classic if you set 5 seconds or more per slide, it just stops after a certain number of slides, and if you set it to 3 or fewer seconds per slide, it starts fine (only from the beginning - another issue), runs a certain number of slides sequentially, then it plays a few of the previous slides, then it resumes sequentially playing slides from the "go random point" (not sure but I believe it even skips one or more a few slides, I'll check that out), then at some other point more random older slides, and so on and so on. Really bad, annoying.  Again, everything works fine, as it should, in my ATV 2.

I've tried everything I've seen posted here and everywhere, including those instructions kindly posted by CarlAnders, without any luck, all problems remain the same. If ATV 4 and tvos are what Apple sees as the "the future of TV" we may find ourselves watching Game of Thrones and suddenly random scenes from previous episodes will show up. Not cool. So far, from a user experience angle (and as a paying customer too...) I fail to find a single element I can say the ATV 4 is an improvement over ATV 3 or even ATV 4. On the contrary. It looks more like a regression. Siri, it's faster... Give me a break.

mandrieu, edivon, Apple TV 1 Fan, CarlAnders, et. al.

I'm sure there are good reasons for not using iCloud for Home Sharing but I frankly

am not aware of them - will someone please enlighten me? Thanks, Tom

Hi Tom,

I think the idea of using or not using iCloud is not about it being right or wrong. There are many different factors in play, and depending on wether you care some more than others, using it makes sense or not. In my case, I have all that content already in my own storage. And it's of significant size. Several Terabytes. I see no reason to pay Apple for for storage I already have. I use it at home. I don't need or want to access it from my phone, ipad or anything else outside. I don't want or need to share it.  But if I wanted, I don't need iCloud either. I can do that in any of several ways. including other cloud vendors. Obviously, to use iCloud (or any other cloud solution) you must be online. An important element is ownership and privacy... All those photos and videos are personal, family stuff, they are important to me and loved ones. I don't want that content to be in the hands of people I don't know, and much less I want to give those people the power of me losing access to my content if they or I decide to terminate the subscription for any reason (see iCloud's terms of use... http://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/icloud/en/terms.html , under "Effects of Termination"). This last one scares the most to me.

Sorry I made it too long. Again, for some things, the cloud is great and I use it. For these other things, nope. Nothing right or wrong, just my preference.

I see.

FWIW, Apple recently pared storage rates.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238

In light of your substantial investment in media, don't you have

to put the value - and price - of off-site storage into the equation?

The online services I'm familiar with (yet untested in a crises) run

$100 year - or more - iCloud's far less. The other off-site storage

scheme I liked was periodically rotating a storage unit into my

card - but that got old and I wasn't thinking of theft, etc.

They said that getting your photos for screensaver from the cloud option would in fact use all of your photos (even if thousands) for random display without many duplicates.

Then I believe they are wrong.

If you choose to use iCloud photos for a screensaver you can only choose from photo stream or shared albums, both of which are limited in number and are not 'all of your photos'

I see.

FWIW, Apple recently pared storage rates.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238

In light of your substantial investment in media, don't you have

to put the value - and price - of off-site storage into the equation?

The services I'm familiar with (yet untested in a crises) run $100

per year - or more - iCloud much less.

Hmmm. After dumping all 8,000 into an album ("Whole Library" is what I named it)

I seem to be getting a huge shuffled display with random themes. The option

presented was the question "Allow Whole Library to be used as screen saver?"

(Yes). Now, to be honest I can't swear after watching it (as many as 8 or 9 images

onscreen at once) that there are no repeats - but what I do see appears to be wave

after wave of fresh and satisfying material - so I recommend it. Again, I had to follow

CarlAnders tip on the re-set of my TV. BTW, some posters appear to have been

thinking re-set of their devices as "re-installing apps" was mentioned. The re-set had

to be of tv. Anyway, good luck, Tom

Unless I'm missing something here, I don't see how that is possible.

You can't put 8,000 photos into a shared album only into an album in your local library, if it's a local library album you can only select it for a screensaver via homesharing.

I'm wondering if a number of people here aren't all discussing matters with cross purpose.

Clarification: I created a new album - not a shared one - to dump all my photos in.

My library had been previously uploaded to iCloud (I'm the one who does use iCloud)

- and updated along the way. So this album was readily available in iTunes Choose

Photos To Share - and it appeared as a choice on the TV screen.  Tom

So this album was readily available in iTunes Choose

Photos To Share - and it appeared as a choice on the TV screen.  Tom

Yes, but the Apple TV is seeing it via home sharing, not iCloud. iCloud isn't involved in the process at all.

I have to agree with Winston, and we shouldn't include iCloud on this discussion. The issues we have been talking about relate to the use of home sharing, serving local media (from folders, Aperture, iPhoto, Photoshop Elements and such) via iTunes to the ATV 4. In my specific case, the system reset proposed by CarlAnders didn't solve any of the issues