Ive recently bought a apple tv 3rd generation. Everything seems to be working fine with airplay from my iphone to apple tv, but when I try and use airplay from my mac book pro, it is extremely slow, and if I try and stream a movie or something its that terrible it is unwatchable and usually freezes then stops. How can I resolve this problem? is this a problem with the apple tv?
The problem is not with you AppleTV or your Mac. Your problem is the network. I had the same problem and finally solved it.
airplay makes screen mirroring, there is a lot more data to be sent from you mac than from your iPhone or iPad
-> airplay can be okay from the small monitor, but jumpy/lag from your mac->Network handles the smaller data sufficiently enough.
"five bars on my wifi" does not mean you get great signal strength.
-->press "alt"-key on your keyboard and then click on the WiFi symbol on your mac to get more data.
You want to look at "RSSI" and "Noise".
- RSSI (=received signal strength indication) can go from 0 to -100 (on apple). Closer to 0 is better, closer to -100 is worse. My RSSI is -54dBm meaning that the signal strength is 54dBm less powerful when it reaches my mac than when it left the base station. For WiFi normal range is from -45 to -87. Below -85 is more or less unusable (for example -90 is just horrible).
- Noise is a combination of all unwanted interfering signal sources (your wifi is not the only one in the neighbourhood, radio frequencies interference etc). this is valued form 0 to -120dBm. Closer to -120 is better(little to no ninterference), closer to 0 is worse. My Noise is -94dBm.
Calculate your SNR margin by doing the following:
SNR margin = RSSI(dBm) - Noise(dBm)
for example my RSSI is -54dBm and my Noise is -94dBm and thus
my SNR margin = -54dBm - (-94dBm)= +40 --> the higher the better.
SNR over 40 excellent, 25 to 40 good, 15 to 25 airplay probably will lag, under 15 is just horrible.
What can you do to get better SNR margin which means of course no lag/jumpy video on airplay form you mac to AppleTV.
1. You can use a router that has 5Ghz instead of "the normal 2.4GHz"
-5GHz is faster with a good signal, but 2,4GHz will go through walls better. A couple of walls(even thin walls) will kill 5GHz quickly, distance also kills it more quicker than a 2,4GHz. Most people use 2.4 GHz and the channels on 2.4GHz are more crowded.
2. You can use ethernet cables to connect either your mac or your apple tv to you router. Beware there are different ethernet cables though, I tried an old ethernet cable which i got in 2000, but boy did my internet connection (internet speed test) get worse readings than through WiFi.
3. You can buy a powerline adapters (sends your network to your power line)
What did I do?
a) My router is upstairs (I get internet from 4g antenna mounted on my outer wall). ->Airplay really bad (new AppleTV 3rd gen, new 27' iMac).
b) I bought a router that handles 2.4gHz and 5Ghz (TP-Link Archer C7, cheap & got lots of awards), connected it with a new ethernetcable to my upstairs router. Connected appleTV and iMac to the new router on the 5Ghz bandwidth. -> Airplay got better but still bad.
c) put my MacBook Pro into use, pressed "alt" key and then pressed the WiFI symbol on the top right corner, looked at my RSSI and Noise and noticed that next to my apple TV my SNR margin was a lot better than next to my iMac, so the problem was the WiFi connection between my iMac to router rather than between my router and appleTV.
d) Used a longer ethernet cable so that my Archer was upstairs above the room my iMac is in-> SNR margin got better-> airplay got better ->still not watchable enough.
e) bought power line adapters (didn't know they existed, didn't believe they were good, my brother recommended them, the shop offered a 30 days trial & return policy) (Netgear powerline AV500 (XAVB5401)). Now I get internet through 4g to my original upstairs router. Upstairs router to Netgear powerline via ethernetcable. Downstairs the internet comes from my power outlet via the second Netgear powerline through ethernet cable to my Archer C7 router. iMac and appleTv are connected to Archer-router via 5Ghz WiFi. ->Airplay works wonderfully with VLC,iDVD,Quicktime,iTunes, from a movie DVD connected to my iMac.
One could of course just use router to powerline via ethernet cable and then powerline to mac and another poweline to appleTv that would have been the neater solution.
You can also look what channels your neighbors use (press "alt"-key + click on WiFI symbol). there are some charts in the net that show what channels interfere , what channel should you put your router on.
An easy test should be to put your router, computer and Apple TV next to each others and try airplay (hey your router doesn't have to be connected to the internet to be able to do this), if that solves the lag, then your network is definately the problem (SNR margin remember?).
Hope this helped, i cursed that I didn't find an explanation like this, people just say "bad apple", "why doesn't apple fix this", "I have 5 bars on my Wifi so the network can not be my problem" "solved it by lowering my resolution (=less data to be send so they had almost enough of SNR margin, enough for low resolution(less data), not enough for higher resolution or something like that)! !
Click "this helped me" if this really helped, you so more people find this lengthy text easier ! !
The wifi on the AppleTV isn't very fast. I had to connect the AppleTV via Ethernet and my lag went away.
turning off bluetooth solved my issue as well, but i shut it off on the apple tv side so i can still use bluetooth on my mac.
Hello krissoundz,
Congratulations on your new Apple TV! I understand how important it is to have media play without interruptions on the Apple TV, and I appreciate the details you provided regarding the situation you are experiencing.
I recommend reviewing the steps in the section titled "Troubleshooting performance issues with AirPlay or AirPlay Mirroring" in the following article (you can skip the steps that review to an iOS device since you are only experiencing the issue on your MacBook Pro):
Troubleshooting AirPlay and AirPlay Mirroring
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4215
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.
Best,
Sheila M.
I played around with 5G network settings and 2.4G settings on my router, and the 5G didnt work at all, it all froze and lagged just as you and others did describe, everything seems to be working on the 2.4G network settings, and i choose the channel 6 from this forum. Hopes this works 😉
This solution actually worked for me. Thanks!
For everyone else - use the Extended Display setting rather than Mirroring displays. Apple should really make mirroring work between a MBP Retina and a current generation Apple TV, but video playback appears to be problematic at least. I noticed issues with mirroring when I was trying to project a presentation as well -- very slow.
My setup:
MBP 15" Retina, 8GB RAM (late 2012 model)
Mac OS 10.9.4
Apple TV 2 (purchased in 2011 I think)
Airport Extreme for Wifi and Ethernet
Apple TV connected via Ethernet
I tried turning off Bluetooth, using Wifi vs. Ethernet and a couple of other suggestions. Mirroring didn't work; extending the display worked just fine. I just had to carry my laptop in to the living room so I could see what I was doing. Might not work so well if you have an iMac or a Mini...
I had the same issue but figured out what the problem was....Maybe this will help someone else 🙂
I have two 20" cinema displays connected to a mac mini and was trying to extend desktop to my apple tv but it would
freeze the screens and the computer when turning on airplay.
What was causing it was when I enabled airplay mode it was trying to mirror all displays....
but both of my cinema displays are lower resolution compared to the HD 1080p resolution on my newer apple tv.
So what I did was go into apple tv settings/ Audio and Video / TV Resolution and temporarilly changed it to a lower resolution
then it worked and I was able to shut off mirror all displays mode on the mac mini to get it to stop freezing.
then I went back to apple tv and put the resolution back to HD.
Hope this helps!
1 SOLUTION:
Mine worked flawlessly while I was in Korea and I moved to the US and found it lagging too. Thus I knew it was my set-up and the only difference I had was I had my apple tv directly connected to my SOHO switch (a cisco 10port switch -- if you want wireless speeds of 80+mb/s you'll need a good switch). Note the switch just ensures I get what I pay for on my internet speed.
Since the router/switch are further away I used an extra airport extreme to connect directly to the apple TV. The computer is plugged into the switch. This appears to have removed the load off the Apple TV and it is now flawless.
I agree that this means spending another $40 or so, but that is what worked for me.
So my system is this:
imac ---> switch ---> time capsule <wireless connect> airport extreme ----> apple tv
Hi there,
After struggling for some time myself with the same issue I have managed to solve this problem. Firstly start by ensuring you are not mirroring from your Mac to the Apple TV. Then turn off your Bluetooth on your Mac. This should solve the issue (at least in great part). Once done you can reconnect to your Apple TV via AirPlay and begin streaming. If you are still having streaming issues try extending your desktop display rather than mirroring it and then obviously drag the screen you desire onto the TV display. This should solve your problem entirely!
Hope I helped :-)
Rich
I have the same problem with my brand new iMac (Yosemite 10.10.2) and ATV3. Today a guy from Apple Care told me that this lagging when mirroring or extending desktop to ATV3 is "normal behavior". I just bought the wrong product.... In fact it appears that streaming movies from iTunes on my iMac is flawless. According to this guy this is the way ATV is supposed to be used, and mirroring or extending desktop is a bonus. For Powerpoint presentations - without moving images - this will work fine; for more dynamic streams lagging will be the result.
In my opinion this is unacceptable. When re-reading the product page of ATV nothing of this kind is mentioned. I think I will try to get my money back, though Apple's reputation on this is questionable.
had the same problem after updating my mac
the way i fixed it was: quit the wireless connection and delete is from mac then reconnect that was it now it works fine but had to try many other things before that !!!
anyways apple should be able to fix that issue since we pay them a lot money !!!
Yes this issue seems counter-intuitive until one thinks about how this works. I am a systems programmer, but since I do not have access to the internals of OS X, I can only make an educated guess as to the root of this "problem."
There are two distinct parts to Airplay: audio/video and mirroring. When our iDevices send audio or audio/video or photo's to the AppleTV, it sends the audio or audio/video information as a stream of data that is then decoded by the AppleTV in a way that preserves temporal integrity. Think of this as the same way you receive a Netflix movie or a streaming audio song. In fact, it's the same concept exactly, and we all know that Netflix or Spotify would be useless if it was choppy or laggy. This is an efficient means of transporting data, hence it just works.
Mirroring involves the extra step that slows things down: scanning your screen and input audio which then has to be processed and packaged for transport locally from our MacBooks. Only then can it be sent over-the-air to the AppleTV. This is a necessary, incredibly processor intensive task that is the difference between using Airplay on our iDevices vs our more powerful computers. So why does mirroring work perfectly from our iDevices? Because Apple uses a trick that recognizes audio or audio/video streams from our iDevices and temporarily "switches" to the non-mirroring form of Airplay - have you ever noticed that when "mirroring" from an iPhone or iPad, as soon as you start a video, the TV screen gracefully fades out and then back in quickly to a full screen version of the multimedia? To confirm this hypothesis, try mirroring from a Safari page in iPad vs mirroring from a Safari page on Mac OS X. You'll notice that from the iPad, your AppleTV will show only the video in full-screen on the TV (non-mirroring) but from the computer, you'll see the web page and the video in an identical configuration as what you're seeing on your computer screen (mirroring). This way, the iPad and iPhone don't have to perform this extra "step" and everything stays smooth.
So why doesn't Apple employ this same technique on our expensive, powerful computers? I think it's because mirroring from a computer was designed to be more of a "second screen" for our PC's in which case we would be truly ****** if our AppleTV's could not mirror a webpage or application if video or audio/video was present whereas this is not important for iPads and iPhones. As annoying as this is, I fear that it is working as designed, and this problem will only get worst as CPU's move to mobile architectures to save energy unless Apple works on optimizing the efficiency of it's Airplay algorithms.
To address the post that mentioned that this all works much smoother from wired connections, this has to do with the fact that the algorithms to mirror vs stream audio/video only are much less efficient. It took 30 years of software optimization to learn how to efficiently stream audio/video (non-mirroring), but even if the scanning/processing step (mirroring) from our computers was wholly efficient, there is still way more information to send over the network to the AppleTV due to the way data must be packaged to truly mirror a screen.
ATV3 - Settings -> Audio & Video -> Adjust for AirPlay Overscan -> OFF
When I changed this setting to OFF my apple tv starts to behave like in Jobs time :-)
Mirroring starts much faster (within a second) and when mirroring lags are much better nearly none
I've found a solution that is different from anything that I've read on here so far. I've tried all of the above solutions over the last few months with no results. So I decided to search through different processes in activity monitor and that's when it hit me.
Hopefully this works for you too.
1. Go to activity monitor on your mac (all models that support airplay).
2. Click the "Network" tab
3. Search for "airplay" (two processes should appear)
4. Highlight the process "airplayXPCHelper
5. Quit the process
6. Relauch Airplay to your Apple TV.
7. Reply to let me know if it works for you also. That way others can skip all of the other solutions and get back to smooth streaming.
Thanks.
HI folks, I read all of the stories in this thread and found out this: my Apple TV automatically had detected a wrong output TV resolution. It had detected 1080P 60Hz but my TV is 50Hz. I changed this and to my TV's resolution and even the bluetooth can be switched on again...
So having read most of this thread (thank guys for clogging it up with your 'useful' replies), I have found that:
ATV3 - Settings -> Audio & Video -> Adjust for AirPlay Overscan -> OFF = makes it better, but not perfect
Turning off Bluetooth = makes it better, but not perfect
However, investing in Beamer makes it PERFECT. Go get it and finally enjoy ATV as it was meant to be.
When using airplay from mac to apple tv it lags/freezes, but works fine with iPhone
