Apple TV - painfully slow buffering

I quit trying. There was no use and calls to Apple for advice were never fruitful. Instead, I bought a $30 ChromeCast and have been happy ever since. Goodbye AppleTv.

RBH013,

It was stated many times that setting the DNS server in the settings to your router fixes the problem. When you moved your AppleTV to your router and connected it directly it may have reset the network settings. Between myself and my friends there are 5 Apple TV's and the DNS fix is the solutions. One of my friends said they are constantly having problems which points to the possibility of a defective Apple TV. So if the DNS fix doesn't fix your problem then I would take the Apple TV to an Apple store and go to the Genius bar and see if they will replace it at no charge.

Apple has excellent customer service; when you call they may refer you to the genius bar since that is where the magic happens with replacement of faulty equipment. They have never let me down.

DNS configuration made no difference on mine.

Changing the resolution to 720 did, which to me suggested a streaming/buffering issue from the source to my AppleTV. Streaming 1080 from my local media server to my AppleTV was fine. Streaming 1080 from Trailers, or any outside source was not. Changed it to 720 and the buffering issue went away. Not a 'definite' DNS issue.

Kev_bo,

It could still be related to a DNS issue; but may also be something else.

Are you using OpenDNS as your DNS servers? Apple uses Akamai to stream data to you. Akamai has sites all over the world and they use your DNS settings to do a reverse location lookup. I just looked up my settings and I am pointing to google DNS servers which are 8.8.8.8; about a year ago that didn't work for me but it seems to be working great now. I am running the latest firmware which I upgraded to a few days ago and ran a trailer and it loaded in less then 3 seconds from the time I clicked on it.

I'm not suggesting you switch to Google's DNS server but it's always good to start with your local ISP's DNS server then instead of your ISP's server on Apple TV point to your router as the DNS server i.e. 192.168.1.1 (if that is your routers ip address).

I will follow up with my friends you says they have been having constant problems and see if they ever resolved theirs.

I tried a variety of DNS servers, even using the NameBench untility to map out the fastest. It didn't make any difference in my case.
I even set my own DNS server up to forward DNS requests out just to see a log of how often AppleTV was looking to talk to said server. It wasn't that often and as such, I couldn't quite understand why what would should be a quick 'forward' from a DNS server would cause such a lengty buffereing issue. It's not like the data stream is actually ported thru the DNS server after initial contact is made, and thus my argument that a DNS server change shouldn't actually make a huge difference. Once the IP addresses are resolved via the domain name (DNS server's job), its straight thru IP routers along the way, from my understanding of this. I'm not a network engineer so I can't say that that is the case for sure but from my own tests, noticing a huge change in buffering between 720 and 1080 via the same name servers, I felt it had to do with how / where they were serving their 1080 content vs the 720 content. I understand the file size is very different, but the stream rate should not differ, and thus my conclusion. I haven't tried it for a long time now as I gave up on Apple trailers but may look at it again as it has been months since I explored this.

Also - there could very well be 2 similar issues with 2 different causes on two different versions. This way my discovery with ATV3, while others seem to be with ATV2, which from my understanding, is not 1080.

I hope this gets fixed soon. But, just too chime in. I have tried everything. Plugged in the cat5 cable direct to the router, Disabled the firewall, unplugged the phones and everything else wireless, turned off and unhooked anything that was on the LAN, rebooted several times, reloaded the apple tv 3 from iTunes, changed to standard mode instead of 1080p, tried several DNS ips, you name it, been there done that. All I'm trying to watch is a youtube video, Roger Waters - The Wall..... But the buffer loads for 1/2 hour and soooo slow and it won't play....

But, I can load the same youtube video on the same network wifi, loads within 10-15 seconds on my ipad2... Then I can play the same video from my iPad over to the Apple TV 3 wifi and watch a 2 hour show on my tv that way without any buffer delay at all.....

Has anyone found a fix.......? It has to be the apple tv firmware in my case.....

Thanks Southbeach Mike

This explains the fix. Hope others can have peace with it as well.

Agree with Apple's support at stores and phone, just surprised that there is little representation within the thread of this problem.

I've been dealing with this constant buffering and slowness for months on my ATV especially during AirPlay from OS X (Mountain Lion & Mavericks). I tried everything from running ethernet to trying different routers. I fixed the majority of my buffering issues with ATV with the following steps:

1. Switched to use the 5GHz WiFi AP over 2.4GHz AP.

2. Changed my DNS settings on the WiFi router to be the ISP recommended DNS servers. Apparently video servers do some DNS tricks to find the fastest server geographically. I'm using an outer ATT modem/router with an inner dual band Netgear router in a cascade configuration. I changed the inner router's DNS setting (Under LAN -> DHCP) to use ATT's Primary DNS 68.94.156.1. Find your ISP's DNS here: https://www.whatsmydns.net/dns/usa. After the ATV renogiated DHCP and received the new DNS, there was no more buffering.

I sent one whole evening nearly 4h trying ot make this work. Unsuccessfully. What a disappointment. A great deal of marketing. 2h+ to load a movie? how can that be??

I wish I could afford just throwing the whole thing in the garbabe, but I will actually return it to get my mony bak This and be left alone.

The key fix is this one from dusman above - "Changed my DNS settings on the WiFi router to be the ISP recommended DNS servers" - this is what fixed it for me. Make sure you do this before your throw anything away or get your money back.

I have the same issue of constant buffering. I stream wirelessly from my iMac to my ATV2 via Plex and PlexConnect (with geoblocking for Netflix). Streaming movies from my iMac works just fine but streaming movies from Netflix is unwatchable.

It worked fine intially but gets worse after a few hours until it buffers every few seconds.

I did everything from from reinstalling Plex to trying different Geo-blocking services. Nothing worked.

What worked was restarting the ATV2. I go "Menu-->General-->Restart".

It works like a charm for another few hours before it starts buffering again.

Spent the last hour watching 15 mins of a movie, searched everywhere and your solution just happened to be exactly the one that worked. Thank you for taking the time to post that!