Problem streaming HD Movies to Apple TV through home network

Rusta - I thought I solved it with this method too.. Unfortunately, didn't work.

It's unbelievable it takes longer to 'load' an already downloaded, purchased video file from a hard drive connected to my air extreme, than it does to 'rent' an HD movie from iTunes.. Of course, both take terribly long.

<Edited by Host>

Ok. After hours of pulling my hair out, resetting airmac, cycling power, rebooting, screwing up network settings... and ultimately getting no purchased HD TV shows to play, I..
- unplugged ATV 2
- waited 10 seconds
- plugged it back in
- navigated to Dexter in the Library via iPhone Remote app
- pressed play.. Started playing in 1 second... Aaaaaargh!.. Success!

I hope it's fixed.. But everyday seems like a new challenge.

MY ISSUSE SOLVED THIS IS HOW.

Equip.
ATV-2G 4.2.1 \ WIN XP\ Linksys WRT160N Frim. V 1.022

I'm now able to stream videos from ITunes with my WIN XP machine via AirPlay and ITunes sharing. This is done over Wireless "N" using a Linksys router.

1. If you have a QOS capable router Disable everything associated with QOS in the router, it should have it's own menu. (you can enable it later if you so desire I just want to get you running now..)

2. If you have a MIXED Freq router (i.e. a,b,g,n) switch to "N" only. Now your router will only broadcast on the N Freq. Now test the video streaming via airplay or itunes sharing. If it does not work go to 3.. Otherwise 4.

3. Unplug the ATV power cord from the back of the unit wait 30 sec and plug it back in. Your ATV should lock in on the "N" band. Again do as above to see it the streaming works.

4. If your ATV is playing your videos the you can switch back to MixMode on the router and your ATV should remain locked on the "N" band. The rest of your devices that aren't "N" band should be just fine now. You can close the browser with the router settings.

I have done this several times to make sure it works and it does. When the router is in mix mode and I unplug the power from the ATV and it resets , it stops working again. Then I went trough the whole procedure described above and got it working again.

I hope this helps some of you. It took me a good 3 hours trying to find out where the bug is and it seems the WIFI services in the NEW Firmware does not lock on to a WIFI band, so you have to make it choose one when there are no other band available on your WIFI network.

* Please Make sure you have the correct PASSWORD ETC. for your home network.

Message was edited by: Observer77

I too am suffering from this issue. If I stream an HD movie (3,000 bit rate) it used to load in 1-3 seconds. Now it have to let the movie sit and load for 15-30 minutes before it will play.

VERY FRUSTRATED.

Okay, everyone with a WiFi network and connected via WiFi: Your problem is probably your WiFi network.

What about us with Gigabit networks, across one 24-port 45Gbps back-plane switch? (No network loops, serious bandwidth on tap, very clean setup.)

Workstations are all high-end i5/i7 Windows 7 // Server is Windows Server 2008 R2

The Apple TV is downloading at about 1 minute of HD video every 4 minutes when using Home Sharing from our personal libraries.

Network utilization is somewhere between .2% and .5%! (Basically non-existent.)

Processor utilization (4-core hyper-threaded) with 10GB RAM -- 0 to 4% utilization.

All CAT6 cabling.. tested physical connections between workstations, server and the network cable to the Apple TV and able to get 800 Mbps without the slightest hesitation.

///
Movie Rental's in Standard Definition available to play instantly.
Movie Rental's in High Definition available in less than a minute.
Standard Video off iTunes Home Sharing will play after about 2-5 minutes of caching. (Somewhat an issue.)
High Definition Video off iTunes Home Sharing will never play (unless I need to wait more than 2 hours? Which I've haven't had the patience to test past.) (ISSUE!!)
////

Sometimes I can get it to play whatever has been cached by playing with the forward/rewind and the chapter forward/rewind options. Problem here is that it will eventually catch up and pause to continue caching.


We have iPhone's, an iPod and a iPad... Remote App connects flawlessly to Apple TV most of the time.

- I've restored the Apple TV firmware multiple times.
- I've tried iTunes from 4 different computers:
---- Custom-built high-end i7 with Windows 7 64 Bit
---- ThinkPad T410s i5 with Windows 7 64 bit
---- ThinkPad X201 i5 with Windows 7 64 Bit
---- HP ML Server class Windows Server 2008 R2 64 Bit

Please call Apple Support with this info, or talk to a genius at an Apple Store. It's extremely useful and may help them gain awareness about how to go about fixing the problem.

Also, not everyone's problems using wireless networks are due to the network being wireless. Before the 4.1 update I was able to stream HD video from my Mac across my wireless network and would have to wait under 30 seconds to buffer. After 4.1, streaming the same HD videos over wireless ceased working completely. The network has not changed (and is using all-Apple equipment to boot).

I'm in the process of setting up a wired network to connect my AppleTV to, but based on the comments of other people here I doubt it will fix the issue. If it does, I'll post about it.

I was getting so frustrated about this that I tried to get us some publicity by contacting Dan Frakes at MacWorld and a few others. Dan responded this morning with what I hope is a solution for me. Here is his reply:

What are you using for DNS? There's a known bug where people using Google
DNS or OpenDNS are seeing very poor Apple TV performance.

Take care,
-- Dan Frakes


I am using OpenDNS, so I hope that will be my solution!

Apple tech and engineering team suggested that my security software Intego was likely causing the streaming issue from my Mac to ATV. So I opened NetBarrier and turned off the protection in preferences and the movie started streaming instantly.

After reading 100's of these posts on this issue and seeing what happened when I modified the protection parameters, the ATV product is solid. The streaming from the Mac issue is probably all related to how we as individuals have our LAN setup. I suggest you focus some attention there to correct the issue. I do not believe Apply plans or needs to do anything.

I'm off now to learn more about my Intego product.

Hope this helps,
Rookie

reboot your router.. any funny stuff with my network.. i reboot my router and it fixes it..

also all 802.11n are not created equal.. n (b/g compatible will be slower than n (n only).. the fastest 802.11n is 802.11n (n only) with wide channels (bonded channels).. this is almost twice as fast as regular 802.11n... i your using an airport extreme.. if i remember properly.. this option is under the wireless tab.. press the "wireless options" button..

except the OP here is watching and HD movie he own.. i presume streaming from a computer in his house.. so the DNS would not be an issue.. it's an issue when streaming a rented movie directly from apple..

using GoogleDNS or openDNS can mess with the scheme used by Akamai or LimeLight to route the movie to you.. they use the DNS hierarchy data to figure out where you are on the internet and if you use GoogleDNS or openDNS then they might not be able to parse where you are and could throw off their calculations..

I probably should have told you that I was able to watch video on YouTube, see my pictures on Mobile Me and watch HD movies from the iTunes Store using my ATV. I just could not get the movies I downloaded from the iTunes Store to stream to ATV from my Mac Pro. just got the spinning wheel.

So I connected ATV to my MBP via ethernet cable and was successful in streaming iTunes movies to ATV.

Then I got the tip from the Apple tech that Intego NetBarrier as probably the problem. After turning off protection in the preferences, the movie from my Max Pro started instantly playing on ATV. That's where the issue was for me and could be for many of you.

Later,
Rookie

So I tried changing my DNS to something besides OpenDNS with no luck. I do not have NetBarrier, but I did turn off my Norton Firewall and also Intelliguard from Spyware Doctor. Also no joy. Just for fun, I decided to disconnect the ATV2 from the hard-wired network and try wireless. Again, no change. I have turned off every kind of control I can find on my D-link router to no avail. This is soooooooooo frustrating. I too, have ordered a refurbished current gen Airport Extreme in hopes of solving this problem (which certainly should NOT be necessary, but AI am desperate. It should arrive tomorrow so I will post my results here.

The buffering issue is clearly a software bug... don't know why people are still comming up with work-arounds that are networking related...

Skip your movie to the end so it will buffer and rewind and the movie will play fine... Apple will need to fix this!

Brent, it's really hard for me to believe your hardwired setup did not work.

Have you turned on Apple TV speaker at the bottom right hand of iTunes? If so do you then select ATV at the bottom right of the play controls bar when your movies is playing in iTunes?

Simple items but easy to overlook.

Rookie

I know it is hard to believe, and yet I and many others above with hard-wired networks are having the same problem. And yes I have tried before the suggestions of both of tthe previous posters. No Joy.