Apple TV 3rd generation stuttering on buffer

Funny this should resurrect. I promised update if changes. Remember I had no issues on iTunes streaming, only on the ATV streaming on hi def.

I'm on ATV 3rd Gen number 2.

Note: So far I have not watched a full stream, only previews but the results are promising.

I replaced the HDMI cable for faster throughput, no change.

I have a Samsung LED with Auto Motion Plus. I started testing the settings in more detail.

On the motion plus settings I get this:

Off - no stutter but lousy quality

Smooth - stutters

Standard - stutters

Clear - no stutter.

I've tried this over and over with the same results. I was holding off until I watch a movie thru and confirm so there will be an update.

In summary it appears the setting on the television to reduce judder is causing the problem.

More after final testing.

Bud

HI, just got ATV3 and had the same "stuttering" or occasional dropped frames. When I checked my Samsung LED TV Screen settings, I also had selected "standard" motion and when I changed that to the "clear" setting the "stuttering" disappeared. I have only checked this on a HULU Plus streaming, and the ATV is connected wirelessly to my wireless access point (Netgear, newer AP), but the problem seems to have gone away. Looks like the problem isn't in the ATV but in the TV settings.

I concur. After watching different videos and a movie I feel it is an incompatibility between the Auto Motion Plus settings other than clear and th ATV. However the TV cost more so it is the ATV that is at fault. :-)

If you are having a stutter problem check your anti judder settings on your TV.

Thanks to everyone who stuck with this thread.

Bud Blevens

The Auto Motion Plus seems to be the major culprit. I watched some more streaming videos today and noticed an occasional "stutter" that persisted, looks like the rendering engine somehow stops, then rapidly catches up to "real time" in less than a second. Setting the Auto Motion Plus setting on the TV didn't completely eliminate this judder or whatever it is, but it gets to be almost unnoticeable 🙂

Confirmed, setting the Auto Motion Plus to 'Clear' on my Samsung TV seems to have corrected the problem. I find it interesting that the same content played back through a different SMP does not exhibit the problem, nor does playing the content direct from USB on the TV. There must be some weird interaction between the ATV and the TV. I'm certainly pleased there is a workaround, though. I hate to say it, but we were growing accustomed to the motion jerk.

Cheers,

Jim

I wish that the last few posts presented a solution for me. I also have a samsung tv (d8000 set to clear on AMP) + apple tv 3rd gen (ethernet to verizon fios router). My mac rig is a retina mbp.

Whereas playing content via xbmc using the HDMI port yields no issues (stuttering, skipping, slower motion playback), airplay mirroring pretty much anything (embedded flash video, xbmc SD or HD, amazon prime HD) becomes problematic after a few minutes.

Given the respective age of my components, I imagine that the culprit is my router.

I can also confirm Motion Plus fixed the issue.

I bought an ATV3 last week and rented a movie for the first time last night.

To my shock and horror the film stuttered at certain points, mainly fast moving scenes. I thought the ATV3 was the issue thinking the hardware inside couldn't handle the 1080p movie.

After reading this post I changed the Motion Plus setting on my Samsung LED 7 Series to 'Clear' and the stutter went away.

In saying that I enjoy having Motion Plus set to Off as it does feel the image has an un-natural look and feel about it when Motion Plus is On.

Does anyone know what the differences are with the Motion Plus settings? I've set mine to Clear. What's the difference between Clear and the other options I can choose from, Standard, Demo etc etc...

I have been having issues with my ATV3 on 1080p material.

Network is all Gigabit. My HD content is all from local server. Server is Windows 7 Ultimate running iTunes.

My DVD & Blurays are ripped to the server using Handbrake. 480p material has no problems. Neither does Hulu or Netflix.

My 1080p material is all ripped as MP4 (.M4V) at 16Mb/s with both Stereo and 5.1 AC3 streams. Media is stored on a RAID5 with 6TB of space on a Dell PERC 5i RAID controller.

It will play for about 2 seconds and then goes into buffering mode. I can hit fast forward and that will usually fix it. It will then usually play no problem, but some videos will still have occasional stuttering throughout. If I watch my server it shows the network to be streaming anywhere from 14Mb/s to 45Mb/s. So the AppleTV is pulling data. Based on the timeline bar it looks like the ATV only buffers a couple seconds worth. The white part behind diamond is only a tiny bit further then the diamond. But I think on stuff like Netflix & Hulu the buffer fills up quicker. I can't recall what it does on 480p local content. It may be that the ATV3 has a preset buffer size and it may only be several Megabytes which high bitrate HD can chew through quickly.

Hmm, has the 1080p material ever worked? The issue smells network-related to me...I'd start power-cycling the Ethernet switch(es) to see if that helps. BTW the ATV3 has an 8 gigabyte buffer; it should fill steadily, and much faster than the rate playback occurs, especially in a wired environment.

Nearly all of the content we play back is 1080, also Handbrake-encoded, from a Windows 8 PC running iTunes. The connectivity is wireless, however, and the playback experience varies greatly depending upon the mood of the wireless router. After a fresh reset of the router, streaming occurs around 25Mbps. The wireless radio will intermittenly drop, though (I think we're overwhelming it with all of the wireless devices we have in our house). In that case, all of our devices simultaneously lose connectivity, and the ATV3 stops playing back, even when there is plenty of content in the buffer to keep it going (and potentially recover when the wireless comes back), which is just silly to me.

We have experienced inexplicable playback pauses even when the buffer seems to be sufficiently full, and a quick rewind/play action will make it start playing again. The occurrence of this is rather infrequent, though...seems to happen most often when the wireless router isn't keeping up very well.

Before we had the ATV3 we used a PS3 to stream from iTunes and it could play 1080p material. Tonight we watched Horton Hears A Who @ 1080p and it buffered about every 15 minutes. Then we watch Kung Fu Panda @ 1080p and it didn't have one problem. Both recorded with same presets on Handbrake (16Mb/s).

I only have 1 router that is actually in router mode, so that it can serve DHCP. All others are either actual switches or routers in switch mode.

If it gets real bad, like to the point that it won't start a movie or it it refuses to AirPlay then usually going to settings>restart will fix the problem. I also did a restore when I first noticed this problem.

I too experienced the choppy playback when playing video on my macbook via airplay mirroring to my tv. After reading here I did similar to as someone else stated and dragged it into itunes (just drag and drop over your itunes icon). Didn't seem to need to convert it, it ran pretty much immediately and solved the choppyness issue. The other benefit is you can still use your laptop without affecting the airplay streaming (multi-task). Of course some movies still need to be converted, yet I was experiencing this problem with mp4's before i tried this.

I Have a samsung and have disabled motion plus, and while it has improved, it still drops a frame every 5 seconds or so when playing 1080 content from itunes.

Anything else to try? It's not the Network etc.

Correction - just solved it; Set the TV to 60hz not 50. No stuttering now with MP set to clear.

I have the Apple Tv directly attached to the modem via ethernet. (forget wireless).

Tested download speeds are 20~22 Mbps. (Comcast Business class).

When watching movies, and especially the trailers, the Apple Tv stops and starts buffering/stuttering.

Tried Centurylink Dsl, same problem.

Other Obeservations :

This problem has been very pronounced since Aug 2012. For the most part, in 2011 apple TV ran fine.

The problem is very apparent when watching movie trailers in the "independent new releases" as opposed to the megahit movie titles.

For example :

If I watch the new Spiderman trailer, the white buffering line is really fast to reach the end, and the blue line of the movie playing is slow to advance.

On the other hand:

If i select any movie trailer from the "independent new releases" the white buffering line advances really slowly, and the blue line overtakes the white line, and the system starts buffering.

Go figure?

Possibly two different Itunes servers with faster upload on megahit movies, and less priority on other new releases.

When i try to stream movies via Itunes to my ATV3 it also prebuffers for a long time.

I installed a bandwith measurement tool for my home share server, and i notice that during streaming i am only able to achieve 50kb/s upload speed to the ATV. I´m on a 100mb/s network so this speed is much lower than what can be achieved.