Apple TV keeps freezing.

Question

Level 1

6 points

Apple TV keeps freezing.

For the last few weeks I have had to keep restarting my Apple TV. I find it freezes, quite often, when trying to enter the "My TV Shows" page. It'll freeze on a black screen and just stay there until I eventually kill the power and restart it. I then the blinking orange light for a few minutes before it reboots. But it'll happen a few times in a row until I eventually give up and watch a movie.

I currently have no internet connection, so I can't do a factory restore, and before I lost the connection I filled the hard drive it to capacity. Should I take some media off of it? Is it a bad idea to have the hard drive so full?

Either way though I was getting the freezing issues before I filled it up.

Anyone else experiencing freezing or have any suggestions?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.1)

Posted on Oct 6, 2009 3:20 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Oct 6, 2009 3:30 PM in response to elturno

You can do a factory restore without an internet connection, but you won't be able to sync stuff onto it unless you can connect to a computer on your local network, unless you don't currently have one.

You also potentially would not be able to add protected iTunes movies/music to the AppleTV without an internet connection, but you should be able to factory restore ans sync non-protected stuff.

AppleTV should be good enough at 'housekeeping tasks' so that a full drive won't affect performance.

Not sure I know what you mean by eventually giving up and watching a movie.

If connected via HDMI then I have a suspicion that AppleTV not being the selected HDMI input can affect it and make it unresponsive in some instances with some TVs, but it's not consistent behaviour.

Reply

Answer 2

elturno Author

Level 1

6 points

Oct 6, 2009 3:41 PM in response to Alley_Cat

By "Give up" I mean, I stop trying to access "My TV Shows" and just go directly to "My Movies".

Thanks, I'll try doing a factory restore and then attaching my computer to it and syncing the media back onto the Apple TV.

Will post the outcome.

Reply

Answer 3

Oct 6, 2009 4:01 PM in response to elturno

Myself I don't go with the idea that its OK to fill your drive more than 90%, although it has to be acknowledged that this is exactly what happens when automatic sync is selected.

I feel it will possibly lead to directory corruption which can cause a number of strange things to happen. I wouldn't fill my start up drive on my mac or any of my additional storage devices more than 90% and my mac has a much more substantial system and a wide variety of repair tools available to it.

Obviously Apple seem happy to let it happen or otherwise why let automatic sync fill the drive, I have concerns and thought I should mention them.

Reply

Answer 4

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Oct 6, 2009 4:06 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Winston Churchill wrote:
Myself I don't go with the idea that its OK to fill your drive more than 90%, although it has to be acknowledged that this is exactly what happens when automatic sync is selected.

I agree in principle, but would assume if there was a potential negative performance impact that AppleTv would be designed to trasnparently reserve disk space for buffering etc so that problems would not arise.

Reply

Answer 5

elturno Author

Level 1

6 points

Jan 26, 2010 2:54 PM in response to elturno

I found that it is badly encoded shows that freeze the ATV.

Reply