Apple TV 2nd Generation slow streaming for Movies from my iTunes

hello:

Connect myappletv 2g to the airport extreme for wireless N 5GHz and will not over
of 65MB, when the imac on the same network connects to 250mb. I see it in the airport utility.

- Is blocking the Wifi N connection of appletv2g?

Thks!

For what it's worth:
As a long-time happy owner of the first-generation Apple TV, I assumed version 2 would be just as awesome. But ever since I got it two months ago, it has been SO slow streaming movies from my iMac that I was ready to toss it. Took about 5 minutes to start loading an SD movie, if at all...and even then, slow loading often interrupted play. (Like so many others, movies streamed from Netflix are fine and fast.)

However, I made the following tweaks to my system last night and it works GREAT (fingers crossed). Only takes 20 seconds to load and play a standard def movie now from my computer. I have no idea if any of these were singularly effective, so I'll list them all:

1. Reduced my Airport Extreme (802.11g) transmit power to 50% (down from 100%).
2. Increased the multicast rate from 5 to 11mps.
3. Downloaded and installed the latest version of iTunes (was maybe 2 versions behind.)
4. Completely unplugged Apple TV 2 (HDMI and the power cable), waited 1 min, then replugged.
5. Moved the Apple TV about 5 inches from the right side of my cable box, to on top of my cable box. Thinking there was to get it slightly higher for better reception...this probably had no effect, but like I said, I'm telling you anyway.

So there you have it. My system: circa-2006 iMac with 802.11g card, with iTunes library attached via external HD (7200 rpm, USB 2.0 connector), Airport Extreme (older conical-looking model) equipped with 802.11g. Speedtest of my Internet connection shows 3 Mbps (Time Warner Cable modem.) Modem and Airport are approximately 25 feet away from both the iMac and the Apple TV 2, in a different room.

I hope this helps someone. I'll let you know if this improvement is sustained.

I'm having the same problem, and am very disappointed with the product.

From what I remember, it used to work just fine, but now it won't stream almost any of my movies, simply giving me the "An error occurred loading content. Please try again later".

If it does start loading it just takes so long that it simply becomes impractical to use.

In my previous message I said I was having trouble with REALLY slow streaming from MacBook Pro to Apple TV 2.

Tried everything from deleting almost everything from iTunes Library. Restarted, turned off, rebooted, refreshed and all but threw out the window. The shows from my library wouldn't load, stop halfway through, or the library wouldn't load at all.

I had these problems off and on for days. I moved my modem/router from upstairs to downstairs. Router is now about 10m from ATV2, laptop in same room. Also tried (from a separate post) turning off IPv6 configurations. (Open network preferences through Airport -> TCP/IP -> configure off). PROBLEM FIXED!! So happy to have finally fixed my ATV2! Love it.

Hope this helps somebody.

Shillelagh -

Tell us what the following instructions are meant to do:

QUOTE
1. Reduced my Airport Extreme (802.11g) transmit power to 50% (down from 100%).
2. Increased the multicast rate from 5 to 11mps.
UNQUOTE

I've done both currently getting a signal strength of -55, a noise level of -88 and a transfer rate of -65. If anything, my signal strength is weaker and my noise level higher than previously. I have not yet adequately tested the new configuration to determine if I am seeing any improvement

I also have the same kind of question for Sophie Jane. What is turning off IPv6 meant to accomplish?
(Note: I am connected wirelessly at 2.4 GHz.) And are these instructions compatible?

tadcrawfordmv--

I read in a separate post that turning off IPv6 helped solve someone else's problem. I did this at the same time I moved my modem/router. I have no idea what turning it off is meant to accomplish but that and the move seemed to help. I have since turned the IPv6 back to automatic, yet to have a problem. So turning it off obviously did nothing.

Sorry I couldn't help more.

Resolution / hack found that seems to work (several have already reported this):

First, the actual topic of this post is about: "Apple TV 2nd Gen. slow streaming of movies stored in one's own iTunes library", whereas many have discussed problems with slow streaming of rented movies over the Internet, which is a completely different issue.

My post regards the actual topic, and I want to confirm that the workaround/resolution that others have already posted, completely resolved the issue for me to.

My iTunes Library is around 500 GB in size, with a large amount of movies and TV shows stored on my iMac i7, together with a ton of music. I have an Apple TV 2nd generation connected to my home theater, connected to the rest of my Mac's and the iTunes library via an Apple Time Capsule running 802.11n with good signal reception. I had the same experience as jprice126 reported about initially: Streaming content over the Internet to my ATV2 worked just fine, but trying to stream a stored movie from my own iTunes library over my internal network was just useless! It took forever to get even a short SD TV show to start, and it would still stutter frequently plus the video and audio being mostly out of sync.

I was at the point of starting to wire up my house with CAT-6 ethernet cabling and hook the ATV2 to a fixed GB LAN network instead, assuming it nevertheless had something to do with my WiFi network, but was puzzled that it worked fine watching even HD video over the Internet. Then I read about the fix others have reported (e.g. "lenw" replied on Jan 1 to this post), and tried that with full success instead:

- Enable home sharing on an iPad (works equally fine with an iPhone or an iPod Touch).
- Start Apple's Remote app from that device
- Use Apple's Remote app to control the Apple TV 2 and the content in the iTunes library that one wants to watch/listen to.

- And low & behold: it just works perfectly! Any movie starts within a reasonable 5-15 seconds, absolutely no stuttering at all, fast forwarding is a breeze.

I have no idea whatsoever why this workaround resolves the issue of streaming content from iTunes over the internal network to the Apple TV 2. There is no logical connection, but I can confirm that it really works 100%, and that's enough for me for the time being. I am sure that Apple will include a fix for this issue in one of the next SW updates for the Apple TV 2.

Well, I am not sure what happened but after spending a few hours opening each DVD and trying them out, it now JUST WORKS! It works like a dream, my movies start after about 10 seconds. Switched everything off, left it a couple of hours and switched everything back on and it still works! Problem solved but I don't know how. I am now Apple TV 2nd Generation's biggest fan..

it's probably the result of you rebooting your router.. when ever i get any such problems or weirdness.. a router reboot usually fixes it..

The symptoms I have are the same as everyone else's ... iMac was streaming iTunes movies just fine and then one day recently dropped performance to the point that streaming was taking ridiculous amounts of time.

I picked up on a solution from someone else in this discussion thread .... go into airport utilities (Applications>Utilities>Airport Utilities) and for each of the airport routers on your network 'right click' and select 'restart from the drop-down'. Airports will restart and problem will go away. It makes sense doesn't it ... the problem is in the Airport's management of the network and restarting the Airports will clear the problem. Like the man said (and apologies for being unable to attribute my pick-up to you because I lost your tag) 'anytime there's a problem with the network, restart the Airport'. Fixed.

Thanks heaps .... that's the fix alright !

For the past several days, I have had terrible trouble getting my ATV2 to stream video content on my HomeSharing library. When I go to that library from the ATV2 menu, I get the spinning wheel for an inordinate amount of time, and then when it gives me the menu selection for the Library, and I select, say, "Movies", I get the spinning wheel for a bit, and then when I get the movie list, and select what I want to watch, I get a spinning wheel on the bottom left corner of the screen while I wait for the bar along the bottom of the screen to progress sufficiently for the program to start. This can take 10 minutes or more, and basically makes the ATV2 unusable. What could be causing this all of a sudden??

I picked up on a solution from someone else in this discussion thread .... go into airport utilities (Applications>Utilities>Airport Utilities) and for each of the airport routers on your network 'right click' and select 'restart from the drop-down'. Airports will restart and problem will go away. It makes sense doesn't it ... the problem is in the Airport's management of the network and restarting the Airports will clear the problem. Like the man said (and apologies for being unable to attribute my pick-up to you because I lost your tag) 'anytime there's a problem with the network, restart the Airport'. Fixed.

Yeah, I did that. No impact.

OK, a last resort ... on the back of the ATV2 is a reset button (like on the airports), You'll need a paper clip or similar to depress the button a couple of micrometres (you'll feel it click ever-so-slightly). remove the power lead to the ATV2 (it's sometimes easier to switch it off at the wall), depress the reset button and hold down while you reconnect the power. Sounds a bit desperate, I know. But worth a try. ATV2 should be good to go. Let me know how you fair.

That did the trick! Thanks!