Apple TV Slow Response to Remote Control

Hi from France...

Well since few days, mine make the hard drive run every time I press a button.... so 5 or 10 sec between each menu !!!!! The hard drive crrrrr crrr crrrrr crrrrr crrrrr crrrrr crrrrrr, you know..........

Done the 2.3 😉 yes I know.......

Same issue here.
After a number of reboots, a trip to buy a new battery, and numerous attempts to throw the ATV out of the window, I've restored it to an initial factory firmware. Works fine now. Of course, I don't have YouTube or rentals anymore, but at least my nerves are safe now. I'll try a paper-over-ir-sensor approach tonight... What a shame, Apple!

I've got the same issue.. INCREDIBLY SLOW, SLUGGISH, ANNOYING. Seems to re-sync Music video's that were skipped.. and sometimes says that the AppleTV can't log into iTunes and then ends up erasing all PURCHASED media from the AppleTV and then takes a good 24 hours to re-sync all TV and Movies. I"m about to throw it out the window!

Wow! I've updated the firmware, the ATV started responding sluggishly, but the second I put a little piece of paper over the IR receiver, -- everything become fine, as if nothing happened! Voodoo magic, I guess. 🙂

When you think about it, the ATV & syncing is pointless. Say you have a macbook with 60GB HDD, then all you can fit on your ATV is less than 60GB worth of media.

I got two 1TB Time Capsules, over 300 movies, & loads of full season TV shows on em.

I tell iTunes where everything is located & untick the copy to library and everything works fast. No Syncing, or losing your media when something doesn't play ball.

Could it be that by the time you have looked for a piece of paper and placed it in front of the Apple TV, it has finished getting all the info from iTunes (album art etc) and is finally ready to respond? Or does the 'paper magic' work permanently?

It's when I first start using the Apple TV (ie. when it first wakes up) that mine is very slow. My Apple TV does seem to respond faster if I repeatedly press the buttons (rapid quick fire - like playing space invaders) than if I just press once or twice and be patient. It's definitely behaving as though it's not receiving the messages.

I estimate it takes about 5-10 clicks to get the Apple TV to respond to each command. After a couple of minutes the Apple TV 'gets over it' and starts to respond more normally.

My iTunes library is about 1.1TB - stored on a Firewire 800 RAID 1 drive. Connected to a Mac Pro 8-core, which is connected to the Apple TV using Ethernet (via a Gigabit Airport Express).

The "Paper magic" works permanently: if I take the piece of paper off, ATV starts behaving again. I put it back -- it starts working! For the lack of better explanation, I think, the source of the problem may be in the high sensitivity of IR receiver(?)

...I wonder if one day we will have to make a little Aplle TV dolls and stick needles in it to fix issues.

if your remote is turning amber and not responding to to your APPLE TV try this it worked for me
ps. your iremote app for your iphone will work despite the apple controler not working

To re-enable the remote:

Unpair the remote by holding down the Previous/Rewind and Menu buttons for 6 seconds (this can be done using any Apple remote).
Then pair the remote by simultaneously holding down the Next/Fast-Forward and Menu buttons for 6 seconds.

The flurry of activity can be that the IR sensor is being "confused".
Plasma televisions in particular output a lot of IR signal which interferes with how the apple tv receives IR signal.

Try to reposition the AppleTV in a way that minimises the amount of interference IR. (E.g. place the apple tv in a cabinet or away from white walls which are possibly reflecting IR signals to the appletv sensor.)

Alternatively, the paper trick works quite well (pretty much blocking a threshold of IR.)

another unhappy customer:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1863446&tstart=0

apple has to be working on the fix..... dont they???

Me too. Its my only issue with Apple TV. I hate this problem.