Problem streaming HD Movies to Apple TV through home network

Got my new Apple TV yesterday but has some quirks. The biggest one is I'm in the middle of watching an iTunes HD movie I own -- streaming it to my Apple TV on my home network -- and the video starts stuttering halfway through the movie. It was playing with no sound, the video was jumpy, etc.

I stopped the movie, unplugged the Apple TV, tried playing the movie again -- I did this a couple of times -- and same result. This issue didn't happen until about an hour into the movie -- for the first hour of the show it played perfectly. Just before the movie, I'd watched an HD TV show I downloaded from iTunes earlier in the day, and was streaming this to my new Apple TV over the home network, and it played fine.

The other issue I'm seeing is it takes a looooooooooong time to load my iTunes Library from my computer. I selected my shared library, and then it takes about five times (or more) as long to load the list of movies compared to my older Apple TV (the previous generation 160GB hard drive model).

Is anyone else seeing these issues, and is there a fix?

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.6.4)

Posted on Sep 30, 2010 3:45 PM

166 replies

HuDDy25k

Level 1

29 points

Dec 2, 2010 1:47 PM in response to vazandrew

Right just to put it right I have a friend that works at Store who is a Genius and between myself and his fellow team members we have found out what the problem is with the TV if you are using the TV with the Ethernet Cable it works fine in every way. Also is you have a full WiFi Signal Strength (Tested with G/N) same as above works fine as soon as the signal drops below the five bars thats where the problems start know the Genius Team believe its a hardware vs software issue that has been missed he has said but sins the update they have had way over 200 customers complain in store about the problem and has been reported to  HQ and should be resolved asap

hope this helps

Dec 3, 2010 12:43 PM in response to BigCountry10

Same thing here, before the 4.1 Update ATV 2.0 played every 720p AC3 5.1 movie from iTunes.
After the iOS 4.1 update it only play movies with aac and my denon receiver detects the signal as stereo (not dolby digital)
What else can I try to get back 5.1 Dobly Digital? Maybe different encoding?
I used MKVTools so far (and up to 4.1 without problems)

Thanks in advance
Andreas

Dec 4, 2010 12:32 AM in response to SaberRider

My apple tv was playing everything fine until I did the update. AND I am hardwired with ethernet right to my airport extreme....

Not a wireless issue for sure on my side.

pi$$es me off I cant downgrade - Right now I have a useless atv sittin here.

Dec 4, 2010 1:02 AM in response to wargasm594

Well I fixed it on my end. After connecting straight to a hdmi monitor everything worked. I hooked back up to my hdmi surround sound receiver and the videos would lock up again and not play.... So figured the audio was freaking it out and disabled the Dolby digital option. Now evrythings plays again. "shrug"

Dec 4, 2010 2:58 AM in response to wargasm594

HEY, this is unbelievable !!!!

After several hours of testing different audio settings (Digital Audio on/off, hdmi-audio, optical audio) and using the MKVTools settings in every way NOTHING worked. No Dolby Digital output at all.
As a last step of hope and to see if the general Dolby Digital is working I rented a HD Dolby Digital Video from the Store direct from the ATV.

Dolby Digital is working. phew

After that I switched back to my own movies and started the first one AND DOLBY DIGITAL IS WORKING !!! Every Movie is working!

What can be the reason? I don't wan't to rent a Dolby Digital Movie from the Store every time my own fail to play 😉

Dec 5, 2010 9:09 AM in response to SaberRider

Ok, the Dolby Digital Movie iOS 4.2 bug seems to be repeatable.

I made this video to demonstrate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHIumkYQUcg

1)
- Apple TV Power Off
- Power ON
- Start movie with Dolby Digital tone from iTunes
: FAIL

2)
- Apple TV Power Off
- Power ON
- Start rented video (in AppleTV) with Dolby Digital
- Start movie with Dolby Digital tone from iTunes
: WORKS

Standby is no problem but restart after power off is not working.

Hello Apple - Hope this will be fixed soon as i don't wan't to rent movies just to play my own ones 😟

All Videos in 720p 5.1 / 6.1 AC3
AppleTV 2 iOS 4.2 hdmi to Samsung 50" Plasma, optical out to Denon receiver, wired network

ATobar

Level 1

0 points

Dec 6, 2010 9:22 PM in response to BigCountry10

I am having the same problem since the update. I am able to stream HD movies from my iTunes library to my TV (2nd gen) only when the Dolby Digital Out option is set to off. If its On or on Auto my movies wont stream. This is very frustrating and is most definitely due to the recent updates, as I was not having any problems before that. This *****, I am completely Windows free in my home since I have gone all Mac for a year now, and this really reminds me of the old PC days. Hope Apple finally fixes this crap.

Camazotz

Level 1

0 points

Dec 7, 2010 10:44 AM in response to HuDDy25k

I use a LAN connection to connect my home share (my computer) to my ATV2, using a 1Gbit router connected to Verizon FiOS (35mb up&down), and I am having the same problem streaming HD content. When I try to play the movies, they sit there trying to load.

All my HD movies are dd 5.1 encoded. So I'm not sure if it's the audio holding it up. I will try scanning to the end of a movie and backtracking it to the beginning to see if that fixes it. However, I have tried scanning forward and then pressing play, that doesn't do anything. The screen will update to that part of the movie, but it still wont load.

I'll update once I have tried scanning to the end of the movie.

Camazotz

Level 1

0 points

Dec 8, 2010 8:22 AM in response to Camazotz

Okay, I've tested scanning to the end of the movie then backtracking... This works! It's not a resolution but at least it's a work around.

Dec 8, 2010 12:45 PM in response to BigCountry10

I had the same problem, everything was OK up until the upgrade, since then I lost Dolby digital on all sources regardless of whether it was a rental or local streaming. I changed Settings>Audio & Video>Dolby digital out from auto to on and my movies are all streaming in Dolby digital again.

Dec 10, 2010 10:13 PM in response to BigCountry10

All of a sudden I'm having the same problem. From one day to the next, suddenly I can't watch purchased iTunes shows from my MacMini. Not a wireless problem. I've gone through and troubleshot everything. It just wants to keep buffering on the HD content. SD fine. HD from Netflix, fine. HD that I've encoded, fine. HD from something I bought??? Hosed! What's the deal??? I am sick of this being a hobby!!! UGH!

Dec 11, 2010 8:07 AM in response to BigCountry10

I still have the problem that no hd dolby digital movies from iTunes will play here.
The only solution so far for me is to rent a movie with atv containing dolby digital tone and play it for a second before I play my own movies. Due to the fact, that rented movies are only 48h playable I have to rent a movie every second day 😟 (which I'm not of course)

Play the rented dolby digital movie seems to initialize the audiohardware of the atv to be able to play every dolby digital content - until the next restart or a longer standby.

Can someone of you please try to add the following Trailer to iTunes and play it with atv 2? I converted it by using mkvtools to 720p h264 dolby digital 6.1. It plays fine here but ONLY with the above written procedure.

http://s16.de/appletv/Dreamworks.m4v

Thanks in advance
Andreas

Dec 11, 2010 11:41 AM in response to SaberRider

Hi SaberRider, I've been having the same issues with streaming, it's driving me crazy. This last update has made the atv 2 practically useless. I downloaded your test video and it played perfectly fine with 720p / Dolby Digital 5.1 straight out of iTunes using Airplay and perfectly using the atv menu. I didn't have to rent a movie to make it work.

I don't know if there is any pattern to these problems as I'm still having problems playing back 720p mkv videos from iTunes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just reverts back to the menu screen without playing (like in your earlier video) or it gets stuck buffering for ages.

Have you figured out how to get this thing working or heard anything?

Dec 11, 2010 11:45 AM in response to thewizardofoz

Sorry correction - "I'm still having problems playing 720p "m4v" videos from iTunes." (not "mkv" - They were originally mkv but I remuxed them in Subler to m4v, which played back perfectly before the software update on atv 2)

Dec 12, 2010 2:44 PM in response to BigCountry10

Okey, I found the reason for not being able to play Dolby Digital content from iTunes.
The Audio Language from my atv was set to German instead to Default.
Now with Defaut Audio every 720p Dolby Digital movie converted by MKVTools is working fine. So it looks like my Problem is solved. Thanks to every one her for helping me!
Andreas

This thread has been closed by the system or the community team. You may vote for any posts you find helpful, or search the Community for additional answers.

Problem streaming HD Movies to Apple TV through home network