Poor AirPlay mirroring performance

Intermittent problems are often a result of interference. Interference can be caused by other networks in the neighbourhood or from household electrical items.

You can download and install iStumbler (NetStumbler for windows users) to help you see which channels are used by neighbouring networks so that you can avoid them, but iStumbler will not see household items.

Refer to your router manual for instructions on changing your wifi channel or adjusting your multicast rate.

There are other types of problems that can affect networks, but this is by far the most common, hence worth mentioning first. Networks that have inherent issues can be seen to work differently with different versions of the same software. You might also try moving the Apple TV away from other electrical equipment.

I have been having the same issue as well. The quality just *****, it is super slow, choppy and resolution ***** as well.

sarulkumar wrote:

I have been having the same issue as well. The quality just *****, it is super slow, choppy and resolution ***** as well.

Airplay mirroring is a compromise at best.

It is not like the relatively simple task of sending a pre-rendered video stream of a purchase from itunes store.

Mirroring has to create the stream in real time from the display frames and also send it.

There will be compression to achieve this - whether it is rate adaptive quality wise with better results in a good network is difficult to say, but if you want optimal quality Airplay is going to be limited in what it can achieve currently.

AC

so this is what is expected? you can not even watching anything with delay and video quality

sarulkumar wrote:

so this is what is expected? you can not even watching anything with delay and video quality

No, there will be more to it than that - primarily robustness/speed of wireless LAN.

Some people will find it works pretty well, others won't and those factors involved are likely to relate to networking not the AppleTV or sending device.

AC

I am having this problem with apple mirroring from my iMac, the quality is really poor. It is nothing to do with the internet speed or cabling because the mirroring used to work with no problem and in really good quality, with no lag. I have no idea what has changed, any suggestions??

I have the same issues with Airplay mirroring. I have swapped out 3 high-end dual band routers, all with b,g,n capabilities (apple Airport extreme, Linksys EA3500, and a Linksys E4200). I have a late 2012 iMac, the latest apple TV (1080p), and a fast Internet connection. I have segregated off channels for both the host machine (iMac) and the apple TV to insure that the wifi bandwidth was not being impeeded by other devices in the house. I have no intrusive Neighbor wifi problems, I have even gone as far as turning off breakers to other parts of the house to minimize radio frequency interference from other random electrical devices and I don't live anywhere near a radio tower.

I have noticed a few things:

1. The pixilated (poor picture quality) is frequent but not constant. Occasionally I get a 1080p picture.
2. The Apple TV can have a very pixilated picture even when the quality on the host machine is full resolution.
3. The apple TV is a clear picture when playing Netflix or Itunes (using home sharing) media directly from the ATV.
4. The problem seemed to be more frequent when I updated to the latest apple TV firmware.
5. This is really annoying.

From this I can tell that the issue seems to be with the wifi communication between the Apple TV and the host machine during the mirroring process. I have tried every type of setting I can think of and I have not been able to resolve the issue. I have discovered that there is lag in device detection between the ATV and the iMac and I have to observe a cycle in order to promote detection. For instance when both devices are asleep I have to "wake" the host computer first and then I can wake the apple TV. Otherwise I get video and no audio. Aside from that, I got nothing.

So Joe I just wanted you to know that you are not alone bother. I also wanted to dismiss some red herrings that might come up in replies regarding the issue. I hope that if we get enough people talking about it we will get some resolve. Overall it's pretty cool technology and it's great when it works. It is Apple's first run at this and with all early adoption there will be kinks.

Mine is doing the same thing. Worked fine then all of a sudden it pixelates with any movement on screen. It does this at home and at work so I think the problem is in my Macbook software somewhere.😠

I don't know what is going on with Airplay. It works great on my iphone 5 and retina ipad, but for some reason my brand new Macbook Air completely fails (the icon is there, however, the display never crosses over). It used to work (sort of), now it loads a frozen imagine on my TV. Strangly enough, I even have a thunderbolt to HDMI that used to work amazing, now my TV doesn't get a signal. I'm not sure why this is, other than maybe Apple ran into an issue with people watching movies outside of itunes on their computer and trying to watch them on their TV? Stupid, Apple needs to get their stuff together, it is very Microsoft Blackberry of them to put out such an unstable feature. It seems like the stability has became worse with the most recent update.

Seems to be only a problem when I mirror my Slingbox App from my IPad or IPhone. I have a dual band Netgear N600 using the 5MHZ for the Apple TV and IPad. Even set the QOS on the router.Speed at home is 15 to 20MB Dowen and 2MB up. I have tried a lot of isolation in order to corner the problem and even got on Sling Tech Support but they told me to speak to apple and that I need to set port forwardmanually, blah blah blah.

Can someone please tellme I can blame on Airplay. Allot of my other streams work great like HBO Go, Netflix, Movies through AirPlay to iMac. It is just the most important one that is breaking down

I want to join in on this post. I have recently updated my ATV3 and when I use AirPlay on my MBA (latest model), the whole desktop, movies etc is getting pixelated. When I use AirPlay on my iPhone or iPad for that matter, it looks great with YouTube videos and so on.

I hope they will fix this soon!

I wanted to offer a follow-up to my comments regarding pixilation. After installing the most recent Apple TV software 5.2 I have only had minor audio/video lag issues. The picture is now frequently 1080p resolution and I no longer have to observe the wake cycle to promote detection. The functionality has improved significantly and I waited a month to test the update before posting. There still appears to be some issues with pixilation via other posts, I just wanted to establish that it appears my concern is resolved. Apple, thank you. Now I can put my efforts into matters of greater consequence... the fact that I hate iTunes 11!

It seems I spoke too soon. After the latest 5.2.1 the pixilation returned with more frequent lag.