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Apple TV 3 mirror lag...

I am wondering if there is anyway to get rid of the lag in my air play mirror on my apple tv. My current set up is a Macbook Pro Retina connected to the network via wifi. The router is an Airport Extreme ( latest ) which is ethernet connected to the apple tv 3. Yet when I mirrior, I get about a half second lag in all movement. It makes it very difficult to watch the tv and move the mouse to the place I want it to be. Any thoughs on if this can be fixed?


Thanks

AppleTV 2, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Nov 29, 2012 7:54 AM

Reply
15 replies

Nov 30, 2012 7:21 AM in response to Autoinside

I just purchased a new rMBP 13" yesterday. I started playing around with the mirroring feature and also noticed a lag of about a second or two. I also tried playing a song and a video from iTunes 11 and had a lot of distortion in sound and image quality. The video and song stopped playing after about 5-10 seconds.


The funny thing is that when I use mirroring on my iphone 5 I do not encounter any of the problems. Music and Video play seamlessly and in real time from my iphone to my ATV. I suspect that the problem is not my wifi, my iphone 5 or the ATV but with the rMBP. It may have to do with the size of the image that I am trying to mirror.


I hope that Apple can address this issue since this is a signature feature of the latest OS that can really end up hurting them down the road (they are planning on releasing a box set apple TV next year).

Nov 30, 2012 7:24 AM in response to Enrique_Wash_Heights

Enrique,


It is still very likely your network bandwidth (WiFi if you use it)

The fact that iPhone's stream is seamless is due to the lower resolution it outputs over airplay.

Your MBPr is outputting 1080p over WiFi and this is a problem.

If you try on a cable you should see the difference and my point.

Post back if you think this is not the case here.

Nov 30, 2012 7:32 AM in response to tzbikowski

Hello tzbikowski,


Thanks for the reply. I guess I could use a cable but the beauty of airplay is avoiding the use of wires. I will probably continue using my iphone to play music and videos. This is ideal for the times I want to use airplay anyway (running around my apartment on the weekends with friends over).


I also have not updated my ATV with the lastest software (released yesterday). I am going to see if that helps. I think I can also play around with the resolution. using a lower resolution should help alleviate the problem.

Nov 30, 2012 7:44 AM in response to Enrique_Wash_Heights

One you should do is connect your Apple TV via cable.
This will offload your WiFi traffic during the airplay process. Apple TV is static wired to your display unlike MBP or iPhone - hope this makes sense.

This will improve your Airplay from MBP.

Also as you say - if you send only audio or lower resolution video you will see an improvement.

Dec 8, 2012 4:16 PM in response to Autoinside

So what I've found out, is that when using airplay from my MBPr to my tv, I will get a lag in the mouse control. I tried hooking up the computer via ethernet to the router where my ATV3 is hooked up, and still got lag. The ONLY thing i've found so far that will fix the lag issue when trying to get my computer screen to my tv with no lag, is to hook up the TV as an external monitor via the HDMI cable. This in fact gets rid of all lag. Maybe one day airplay will work better, but for now this is what I am suck with.

Aug 3, 2013 7:30 PM in response to Autoinside

Why would people buy this if not for the AirPlay?


I have the same problem. My Apple TV 3 is connected through ethernet directly to the router and my MacBook Pro is directly infront of the Apple TV. The router is in the same room as three of the devices. I am trying to stream movies and it still lags. There is no interfernce and the internet connection is around 6M. What I am getting out of this forum is that no one really knows?


Again, why buy Apple TV 3 if AirPlay lags? I guess were still not there yet with all this technology we have. How totally frusterating...

Jan 14, 2014 10:53 PM in response to Autoinside

If you only want to watch movies via AirPlay, it's better not to mirror the screen and instead use iTunes to play the video via Apple TV.


Mirroring the screen comes with a lot of lag due to WLAN, but only because of the overhead of having to mirror your 60 FPS screen on which the movie is played on. If you send the movie directly, you'll be able to watch the movie without lag.


I had no problem streaming HD movies using an early MacBook Pro, a 802.11n WLAN and Apple TV 3, all devices connected via WLAN.

Apple TV 3 mirror lag...

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