Q: Apple TV 3rd Gen Freezing/Buffering constantly

Welcome tonight club. I just bought an Apple TV just over a week ago and it's nothing but a sorry, busted up sled. Never any HD playback. iTunes Radio buffers 3xs per song. Sometimes for minutes and minutes at a time. I've got a Super HD video paying right now and it's so pixelated it can't even make out some faces. I can't explain how disappointed I am with this purchase. I was really excited to get this. Slow, bloated and outdated is what I got. Ugh.

Same isssue here: ATV3 is hardwired to router. Roku box is not and is TWO FEET away from ATV3. Additioanl ATV3 in kitchen, 25 feet away (maybe). ATV in kitchenon another tv works well, no problmes. This one is not able to play youtube videos w.out a loooooong wait. youtube on macbook pro, wireless, flawless. C'mon Apple! get it together!

yes, the AYV has been updated and rebooted several times.

Same here.  ATV3 that was replaced last summer under the wifi recall.  we have recently been using it for netflix (wifi, good signal, plenty of bandwidth) quite a bit and it is not working well.  It will start playing fine with good resolution but after a few minutes the quality degrades and it sometimes pauses like it is waiting/buffering.

My wifi xbox 360 right next to it works fine with netflix, as does my roku in a more distant location.

My issue has been movie rentals in the last month or longer from iTunes.  Seems like a buffering issue but I've restarted movie when its halfway loaded and its no different.  And Apple TV has been updated to latest osx.  I feel like Apple should refund my last several rentals because the issue is on their end.

Yes same for me updated everything and it still UNDERPERFORMS.

Guess what everybody?!

I tried Airplay something and it had this ERROR, even a RESTART didn't work.

It **** me off so much.

Good thing Amazon can refund me after 15 days since having it for a month.

RETURNED! Give back my 100$. Never knew how buggy the Apple TV was.

My new Apple TV pauses every few minutes when streaming any/all content through it (photos, music, video).  I tried updating system software, rebooting, resetting the device, etc... but the problem persists.  I'm now relying on my Sonos bridge to access and stream music in the house.  I purchased an original Apple TV (with internal storage) and enjoyed it for years without any issues.  As an ex-Apple employee who infaced directly with Steve, I couldn't be more disappointed in the quality and performance of this current generation Apple TV product. I would welcome a firmware or system software update that addresses this issue!

I'm having essentially the same problem when streaming NetFlix or even just playing movies stored in iTunes on my PC.  Everything is connected on a wired network, and everything was working fine until a month or two ago, so I really suspect a software update. It will hit a bad spot, pause for a *very* long time! and eventually restart after a few minutes. Very annoying, and it renders my Apple TV basically useless, where it used to be the best way to stream video from a variety of sources.  Please fix!!

atv3 user with same issues...i have always wanted apple products but could not afford much inthe way of technology until i graduated college and started earning an income...now i have a mac mini, an iphone and an atv...

<Edited by Host>

Go into your Router settings and chance whats called the MTU size to 1480.

My netflix worked like crap over ethernet for both my Apple TV and Roku.

It;s blazing fast now.

Also told a mate about this who could watch netflix but says it's even faster now.

cheers

tom

Got the same issue. Really annoying!!!  Netflix is buffering every 5 min and you watch HD picture about 10-20% of the time. Last time got tired of waiting and switched to my PS3...No problems there folks! The worst performing Apple device ever! The Netflix interface on ATV is the best but the performance is the lousiest.

I have the exact same issue and this has been ongoing since the holidays.at first I thought apple would see these posts and fix it. In frustration I went out and brought a roku and it works amazingly.

Right now my Apple TV is a brick.

I am sure this all started going wrong after the 6.0.2 update.

Apple fix this pls!!!!!!!

Having problems here as we'll and only on one of our AppleTVs. The problem here is a bit different than described here and has only started happening since the latest software update.

In our case the audio continues to play while the picture freezes or stutters. Then the video either jumps forward to get back into sync or winds forward quickly until it returns to sync.

It seems to happen predominantly with higher bitrate streams, but bitrate is still well below the max bandwidth for the connection to the home server.

Very frustrating - especially to my little daughter who doesn't understand why her movie keeps acting up.

FWIW, I was having this problem and recently updated the firmware on my router and the problem seems to have gone away.

I solved my "old" ATV3 problem by selling it on Craigslist after it would not stream rentals 12 hours for HD and 10hrs for SD quality) while Netflix through ATV was streaming Netflix in HD immediately.  The buyer said he knew how to jailbreak it to fix it so good riddance. 

Bought a new one and it works fine (had Apple Store do the software update).  The troubling part is Apple Support kept insisting it was my T3 connection being the problem when it wasn't. Try an hard Ethernet connection instead of wifi to see if its not a wifi interference problem, then software update.  Or dump it and try a new one like I did.

I too have a feeling that this problem has to do with the 6.x firmware update. In 5.3 everything was fine.

But there could be more caused for the same problem of course, like interference or certain ATV models.