Why does AppleTV 4's iPhoto screensaver only show about 15 pictures?

Question

Level 1

8 points

Why does AppleTV 4's iPhoto screensaver only show about 15 pictures?

I have an iPhoto library of a few thousand pictures. My AppleTV 4's screensaver is set to show photos from this library. (No specific event, just the whole library.) However, Apple TV only selects about 20 pictures from my library of thousands of pictures. It randomly cycles through this same 20 photos every time the Screen Saver starts.

The photos it picks are indeed from many different events. So I at least know it is searching through the entire library. But it's always the same few pictures.

This feature of Apple TV would be genius if I could get it to randomly show all of my iPhoto library. This doesn't seem like it should be too hard to implement. Any insight/ help is greatly appreciated.

Apple TV

Posted on Mar 2, 2013 9:53 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Mar 2, 2013 10:25 AM in response to jcetheredge

I'm not being rude but are you exaggerating. The Apple TV will only show a limited number of photos from a library but I'd expect it to be more than 20. If you are only seeing around 20 then need to look at this differently.

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 2, 2013 10:29 AM in response to jcetheredge

My guess is that since the AppleTV needs to stream those photos from your computer, it has just storage for a limited number. I also see only about 20 photos, and I tried various methods to increase the number.

Reply

Answer 3

jcetheredge Author

Level 1

8 points

Mar 3, 2013 4:29 PM in response to OrangeMarlin

Wow, what an annoying oversight. I wonder what the threshold is becasue the only reason I set it to view my own personal photos is becasue the safari animals default photoset again seems like only 20 pictures.

One thing I have noticed, even though the number it shuffles is very small, every now ang again it'll add 1 new photo. Like after 2 or 3 days it'll be like, here's a new one for you. And now here's the other 19 you've been looking at for the past few months.

aaarg. ah well. thanks anyway.

Reply

Answer 4

Mar 4, 2013 4:17 AM in response to jcetheredge

Yes that's what I see too, it seems to change the photos from larger albums overtime.

I seem to have around 100 photos in my screensaver at anyone time, I can't see why, but perhaps the original size needs considering.

You need to remember that what Apple are doing by having it work this way, is ensuring you always have photos in your screensaver, if it simply played all your photos in large albums it could only do so when it had a connection to your computer, so in many cases you would find your screensaver simply didn't work.

Reply

Answer 5

DLBrooke

Level 1

14 points

Jun 22, 2013 8:31 PM in response to Winston Churchill

I'm seeing the same problem as jcethridge, Winston--easy to recreate using different photo directories.

Reply