AirPlay mirroring...small picture on tv

I'm having the exact same problem with the same hardware. Ipad2 iOS5, AppleTV2. All upgraded. Airplay from iTunes on Laptop fills the screen but Ipad2 Mirror uses just the top quarter screen. Sat on hold with Apple for an hour and a half and just gave up.

I have the same problem. Some people have had success with changing the Aptv settings under video/audio from Auto setting to 720p manual setting.

Yea, I can confirm that unless the Apple TV is set to 720p HD then Airplay gets really messed up. Cases like you saw where the ipad/iphone mirror just uses the top left hand corner of the screen.

In fairness though ... all other settings other than 720p HD look pretty terrible. I guess if you don't have a HD set then its a workaround, but not ideal.

fwiw, the only problem I have with mirroring is that the screen is a little squashed ... It's almost square in the middle of my widescreen TV so it's workable but not ideal. What I do find odd is that BBC iPlayer and ITV Player have smaller screen outputs that leave gaps everywhere, even at the top. Others, like Sky News, fill the screen perfectly (of course they are not direct mirroring).

I am having the same issue the frustrating thing is AirPlay from iTunes works great. Was looking onward to mirroring but if it's just the top left 1/4 of the screen it will be useless to me. I hope apple offers a fix in the future. I am not in the market for a new tv yet.

I figured it out, I had the same problem and here is what I did to make my iPad full screen as opposed to only filling up about a quarter of the screen.

First I want to say that I did this on the latest update for the apple tv that just came out, so I don't know if this will work on older software.

All I did was select The Settings icon on the main menu

From there select Audio and Video and scroll all the way to the last option and select TV Resolution

If you haven't tampered with it yet the auto option should already be selected. I have a 480p TV and found that when I selected 480p-60hz I got a full screen when mirroring. I would suggest trying out all the resolutions from the bottom up and kepp checking to see if your mirroring turns to full screen after each resolution change.

Also, If you find yourself staring at a blank screen because you chose a resolution that your TV doesn't support all you'll have to do is unplug the power supply on the apple tv for a few seconds and plug it back it, this will reset the resolution to auto again.

Let me know if it works for anyone.

shamus109 His method corrected all mirroring issues for me. Simple and easy. Just unselect Auto and make it (the resolution in the choices) to what it should be and you are good to go!

I can confirm this method does not work.. i have set video to 1080p which my TV supports and when mirroring most apps only use quarter of the screen in the middle still

trigger51, have you checked the format settings on the TV itself? Or, if the HDMI from ATV connects to HDTV through an AV Receiver, the AV Receiver HDMI input prefs would be another spot to check for format limitation.

Some apps in my iPad do not fill the screen either but the limitation is not that severe (1/4) -- more like 3/4 -- and I attribute that to the resolution of the video being output from the app. I confess that I have not tried to change the TV format to enlarge the 3/4 size videos to full screen.

Mirroring the iPad display doesn't fill the HDTV screen either because the iPad format is not 16:9.

All you have confirmed is that this didn't work on your TV on that setting. Did you even try the other settings like I suggested? What kind of TV are you using?

I can confirm that this shrunk mirrored AirPlay image problem still exists with Apple TV v3 (ATV3) , both an iPad3 and a new iPad with iOS 5.1.1 projecting to an 1080P capable hi-end projector. Switching ATV3 settings from Auto to any of the resolutions does not fill the screen.

ATV3 video DOES fill the screen. Only AirPlay mirroring is shrunk.

This really is the pits, ipad3 latest os and HD apple TV, apple TV exported to screen is a good size, mirroring shrinks it to 60%.

When are apple going to get this long standing screen resolution fixed after all the hype over retina screens and HD apple TV.

I've tried every setting in the book to no avail, the simple act of choosing mirroring reduces the image size.

Like these other folks, I have been unable to get AirPlay to consistently mirror at 1920x1080, which is the resolution of my main TV. I would offer another solution until Apple fixes the problem. I have an App called AirParrot that works well and does exactly what AirPlay is supposed to do. It cost me $10 (I think) and I bought it a few weeks ago before Mountain Lion was released. Being able to play videos on my main computer on VLC (an open source application which plays anything and everything with every play option I have ever seen) while watching the videos on my main TV is something I have dreamt about for some time. Using AirParrot is a no brainer for me.

I changed the TV setting to WIDE and Stretch. This at least fills the screen.