AppleTV won't "play" anything

Have you tried restarting the Apple TV? Mine does this every so often and I have to restart it. I see all the menu's and such but when I select something all I get is the spinning wheel. Reminds me of the old days of OS 9. Only back then it was a pretty beach ball spinning.

I have to be blunt here. I used to really like the Apple TV when I first bought it. Now it just seems I have been having more issues with upgrades, connection with TV and with software not working. Luckily I have a Xbox 360 that has some of the same content available.

I had a RoKu box that developed similar problems. Just freezing up and such. Maybe these boxes just wear out faster then we hope?

Wow I cannot believe that actually worked. I suspected it was an Airplay issue because the "Internet Radio" screen was being displayed as a screen saver and I had just used Apple Music.

To be clear, I just turned off the WiFi on my MBP, pressed play on the ATV, it played the show and I turned WiFi back on.

Hi i've been searching every where for a solution to this problem as that is EXACTLY what happened to mine and I was wondering if you somehow have solved it yourself since posting this??

I gained some help from this thread. I had this exact thing happen, and here were my problems and solutions;

- One of the Macs in my network is like my "media server", in that I synch all phones and purchases to it, and everyone airplays from it

- I also have a MacBook that I work on, and sometimes use the AppleTV for a remote display

The problem, it seems, was that some past connections for AirPlay and Home Sharing were 'sticking', leaving some kind of socket open with no label or content. it showed in the little AirPlay status window as "Unkown: Radio Connection".

Fixing the problem involved

- updating itunes on my home content server

- restarting that computer

(this seemed to break a 'sticky' connection)

- restart the laptop

(broke another 'sticky' connection)

- restart the AppleTV

Voila! I hope this helps.

Which model of the Apple TV are you guys having these problems with? I have Apple TV model no. 3 and it got a little unstable for a while when I changed from Cable to Fibre Internet connection. Make sure that all of the cords are OK and also check after any new update for the device.

I don't know about this now, I'm only speculating, but for example when my old iPhone 4 got the latest iOS 7.12 the phone got incredibly slow and unresponsive and stuff, I later found out that the newest version of the OS didn't work for such old devices, so maybe, if you have like Apple TV model no. 1, it might be something similar, also keep in mind that the processor is slower in the different models.

Also, I had Netflix until some month ago and it kinda Screwed up several times a day, couldn't watch a complete movie before something happened, the picture froze, got all blue screen, huge pixels who never changed, and if it was subtitles they were all out of order and was delayed or too fast, etc. Netflix could also be the problem itself.

-- Treb S. Walker 🙂

Having this problem too. (Apple TV FD199LL/A) I restarted the ATV, updated software, now 6.2, and pulled plug to restart. Tried forgetting network and reconnecting. I get 2.5+ ms. Same results: Netflix, trailers, video does as far as selection but only returns to selection when I press play.

I had this same issue and restarted apple tv several times with no change. I decided to restart the mac in my house with itunes running (even though it was affecting apple programs, netflix and local shows) and once that was back up restarted the apple tv. After that it worked properly.

Hope this helps.

I had the same problem, Netflix videos wouldn't play, screen would just go blank, itunes "untitled" icon would show, and it would just drop back to the netflix movie info screen. Also tried previewing iTunes music videos, it would play for a split second, then quit.

Turning off the wifi on my macbook solved it. I suspect its a problem caused by Airplay (I had used airplay remote desktop earlier, and even though the Apple TV was restarted, airplay from the macbook must have still been interfering).

If you want to disable Airplay on your macbook (so you can still use the wifi without interfering with Apple TV): `sudo chmod 000 /System/Library/CoreServices/AirPlayUIAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/AirPlayUIAgent` in terminal, then force quit the AirPlayUIAgent process in Activity Monitor.

If your connection is only 2.5mbps then that's going to cause a lot of issues when attempting to stream HD content.

This worked for me too, except that if I turn the wifi back on on my MBP it instantly disconnects whatever was playing on the Apple TV. This is very annoying.

The only permanent solution I have found is to disable or turn off AirPlay on your AppleTV.

Thanks! Worked like a charm 🙂.