Received my 2nd gen ATV yesterday, and successfully setup home sharing with iTunes on my mac, along with photo sharing. I really like the photo screensaver capability of the ATV, and set it up to use my entire iPhoto library with "Floating". However, every time the screensaver starts it shows a bunch of pictures from 10 years ago (the oldest stuff in my iPhoto library). I don't mind seeing these pictures, but I'd prefer to get the photos in random order and not "oldest first". I can't seem to find a "photo shuffle" preference, am I missing something?
Yes. The latest update improved the screensaver in that it now picks random photos from across your whole library. BUT it still only selects a limited number, and over the period of 20 minutes we start to see repeats. I'd say it's only grabbing a couple of hundred at a time. This is frustrating, and proves it's still not selecting photos LIVE from your iphoto library. This was fine on ATV1 because it had more storage and could therefore store the whole library, but on ATV2 the limited storage means this method for caching photos locally is not the way to go.
Please apple.... make the ATV smart enough to live stream photos from the library, or at least give us an setup option to have the ATV2 update it's cache every XXX minutes.
Well, after the 12/14 update, my screensaver seemed to be stuck on the same 100 - 200 pictures. I went to my connected iMac picture settings and and reset the photo library (disconnect - reconnect) and all seems well again. (It reloaded the picture library.)
I just got ATV2 and setup the screen saver to use my photo library. As with all the rest, I am very disappointed because the photos keep repeating. I have 5000 photos in my library and repeats should not happen. Frequently I even see photos repeat within 3 photos. One of the main reasons I got ATV2 was for the screen saver display on my TV. I've noticed that even though there are 5000 photos, only about 100 are used for the screen saver. I have noticed that sometimes when I exit from ATV2 and come back later, it appears to be creating a new group of ~100 to display (e.g. after reentering ATV2 from watching a DVD and go to the screen saver menu, I see a spinning wheel on the photos option. Then when the screen saver is activated, a new group of photos begin displaying). Even when the group of screen saver photos is updated manually (or occasionally automatically), there seems to be a core bunch of photos that shows up in every group. Why can't it randomly select photos from my entire library in real time instead of batches of 100 that are infrequently updated. This can't be that difficult to fix. If it is that difficult, then they should stop selling this as a feature. Has anyone figured out how to make this work where it pseudo-randomly selects from the entire library without repeats?
Same boat. This slideshow is the biggest feature for all the people who know nothing about computers. Grandmas and such. In my case my Grandma was so impressed for about 3 minutes and then it started repeating. I know what to add to make this work. I have my laptop on and itunes and iPhoto open. I get it. It doesn't work right. In my mind, this is the most basic function that Apple normally nails. I understand that it's not going to import my 3000 photos from the last year. It has 8gb built in that must have a size limit.
Additionally, I also have it set up to use pictures from Flikr. I have an AP search selected as the 100 photos. Somehow it grabs a few photos, then shows me pictures from last month. This is AP. It's updated all the time.
Seriously, fix this. Your making me look like and idiot.
I thought apple was this great company that listened to its customers?! My screensaver on my new apple tv is functioning just like everybody elses is here.....Not truly selecting photos in a random manner.
PLEASE FIX THIS!!!!!! It is VERY annoying!!!
Add me to the list. have the same complaint. Pictures repeat a ton! I have 5500 photos in my library and yet i just counted 10 repeats in the last 50 photos. Worked much better in atv1
Apple please fix this! I talked my wife into the fact that I needed an ATV2.....and now the one feature she loved from ATV1 seems horrible. Bad repetetion of same photos....:)
