Q: Apple TV 3rd generation stuttering on buffer

I say factory reset your Extreme

Unplug the AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule from power.

Press and hold the reset button with a pen or pencil, then plug the AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule back in while continuing to hold the button until you see the light (LED) flash rapidly. This should happen after a few seconds.

Release the button. This will factory default reset the AirPort Base Station or Time Capsule.

Then open Airport Utility and re-set it up with the same information (you can make your WiFi name and password the same as before and your devices will all reconnect) (I recommend WPA and WPA2 Personal) then do a fresh install on your Apple TV by going to Settings > General > Reset > and click Restore not Reset All Settings and the let it download the software if should only take about 10 minutes.

Use only WPA2. Do not use WPA:

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/networking/16351/how-to-hack-wpa-wireless-se curity-in-one-minute/

Sgt. Pinback the article states

"The earlier attack, developed by researchers Martin Beck and Erik Tews, worked on a smaller range of WPA devices and took between 12 and 15 minutes to work. Both attacks work only on WPA systems that use the Temporal Key Integrity Protocol (TKIP) algorithm. They do not work on newer WPA 2 devices or on WPA systems that use the stronger Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm."

Apple removed TKIP from their routers and only support AES and some WiFi devices as new as 2 years ago don't support WPA 2. I know my fathers blackberry did not before he got rid of it but there are other devices as well.

I tried an experiment...I enabled "WPA/WPA2 Personal" on my 5th-gen Extreme and then grabbed a device which lets me explicitly select "WPA TKIP" in its connection settings. The device connected successfully. So I think TKIP is alive and well in the latest Extreme with the latest firmware. Also, if you hold down the Ctrl key (on Windows) and click the Wireless Security drop-down menu in the AirPort Utility, WEP is still there too (and WEP only supports TKIP).

I too am experiencing the same stutter in video content on my new ATV3 about every 10 sec or so, my network is all 1000baseT Jumbo Packet switches, My ATV3 is connected via ethernet on cat 6, full duplex.  Streaming from a brand new core i7 mac mini.  This happens on Apples purchased content as well as my own.  It is annoying and I hope that it a software glitch and not a hardware problem.

I am interested on any comments here and I will reply when I get a chance to tinker some more with it.

do not use tkip.  It requires processor bandwidth to run, it will slow down your wireless,  tkip is not as secure as aes, and for the reason also it is run in software on most wireless base stations.  aes is built into the wireless chips and does not require near as much horsepower to run and is also more secure.

I don't have a solution but am having a similar problem. I connect my ATV wirelessly to my iMac. I was using an Airport Express as my main wifi router in the house. Always have stutters and slow buffering. I just installed a new Time Capsule & am using that base station now. Just purchased a new HD movie from iTunes & it's stuttering every minute or so. It's so frustrating to have the continual pausing, there's so many people complaining about the problem…why isn't there a solution? We rewind and watch for a little longer before viewing caches up to the buffer again. Not very entertaining or relaxing!

To add to why not to use tkip, it is a wrapper for wep that was a fix to stop people from getting your encyrption key from your data traffic by cycling the key.  AES is built in most modern routers now in hardware.

Oddly enough TKIP runs about a 70 to 80 % hit on throughput and AES about a 30% hit.

small net builders has stats on various routers but they all show the above numbers to bear out the fact that AES is a lot more secure and you will get better throuput on your router.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/

Solved my own problem, it seems. I still had the Express plugged in, took that out & immediately the stuttering stopped. The ATV found the time capsule & it's 5 Ghz network. Yay.

Here's what I have done:

• Ripped a Blu-ray movie to an MKV
• Used Handbrake to transform the MKV to MP4
• Added the MP4 movie to iTunes, and also copied the file to a USB thumbdrive
• Ran an md5 hash against the file in the iTunes library and the one on the thumbdrive, to ensure they are exactly the same
• Compared playback of the movie via Apple TV gen 3, and the USB thumbdrive plugged directly into the TV

While the movie is still being streamed into the buffer in the Apple TV, there are intermittent video stutters / glitches.  The magnitude of the stutters vary, but are still there, ever-so-slightly, and they do continue even after the file is completely in the Apple TV's cache / buffer, although my perception is they are fewer and less severe when the buffereing is completed.

Playback of the same file via the USB thumbdrive is flawless; there is no stutter whatsoever.

No matter how you slice or dice it, the Apple TV has playback glitches; I am convinced of this. It should not matter what the network transport is, or how crappy your wireless signal is, or whether you've secured it with TKIP or AES, or whether its raining outside or not - the Apple TV should not falter on the playback of content that is already present in its buffer, period.  Yet it does.

I too hope that this is a software condition, and not something inherent with the Apple TV electronics.  Watching the movie via the USB thumbdrive is smooth / pleasant / entertaining, with no anxiety of my mind trying to plow through video glitches. That's the way it should be on the Apple TV too, plain and simple.

I tried the N-only mode with 5GHz on my router. But the iPad 2 won't connect untill the WMM funktion on the router is enabled. But with WMM AirPlay is not possible between iPad 2 and apple TV 3G. Why???