Q: Airplay

you must be aware that some of the hardware you list is entirely irrelevant to the matter.

You are the one saying it must be my network equitment.   I outlined why that is unlikely to be the case.  

why don't you have a stab at explaining why mine and apparently James's equipment does not have the issues yours has

You are assuming I buy your it has never failed for me claim.  I don't even if that is actually the case you are missing the point.  A handful of people claiming it works for them while so many other people are reporting problems with it that it has its own category here clearly shows there is a real problem.  Even on this single thread other people are jumping on reporting it is not working for them.

bearing in mind that unlike your computer which has many different settings, haxies, third party extensions and the like, AirPlay on my AppleTV/iPhone is exactly the same as yours.

The same as mine, and everyone else's and has already pointed out a huge portion of the posts for ATV are over this feature.  

do you assume that the population of the world is afflicted with broken wrists, just because there was a couple of people with broken wrists when you last visited the doctor.

If you read my actual words I assumed nothing.  I pointed out that this bugs and failures with this feature are constantly being reported by a large portion of the people here.  So many it has its own category.   YOU seem to be the one assuming that because two people said they do not have an issue there must not be one even though the majority are having issues.

many people just have lousy networks

On this point we agree.  How ever.  If people can maintain a streaming video connection to the iTunes Store, Netflix, etc. across the internet with no issues then maintaining a streaming video connection on just the local network should be no problem.  The fact that AirPlay on a local network can not maintain the same constancy that same network gets doing streaming video over the internet is a strong indicator that AirPlay has serious issues.

You told us you are a network engineer, if you don't realise there's a difference I have to doubt your claims. They use completely different protocols do you not realise that, I'm not a network engineer and I know that.

YOU seem to be the one assuming that because two people said they do not have an issue there must not be one even though the majority are having issues.

I can only assume you are simply out to be argumentative under any circumstances and that you don't really miss the point that the reason there are a lot posting issues and only a few not is because people who have issues come her those that don't don't. There have been umpteen million Apple TV's sold, I don't see umpteen million people posting here. If you had been here long enough you would realise the numbers reporting issues with airplay are insignificant to the numbers that do post when a real problem occurs.

On this point we agree.  How ever.

NO. There is no however, just because you don't have a problem using one thing doesn't mean you can expect something else to work. There are plenty of people reporting that streaming either from the internet or via home sharing doesn't work either.

You told us you are a network engineer, if you don't realise there's a difference I have to doubt your claims.

That is my point!  There should be no difference.   It is steaming video either way.  And yet streaming video is ANY way other than AirPlay works MUCH better.  In the end bandwidth is bandwidth.  If your network can support streaming video over the internet which is an order of magnitude slower, and MUCH more failure prone then doing streaming video over a local area network should be next to no problem at all!   AirPlay though uses a much more failure prone setup that event with an order of magnitude more bandwidth and two orders of magnitude less latency can not maintain the same connection quality.  The is a bad design and has created a feature that is FAR more error prone.

They use completely different protocols

Which is EXACTLY my point!   AirPlay uses an overly complicated bug ridden failure prone setup that can not reliably maintain a connection on a local network.  Those same networks can maintain streaming video over the internet which is FAR slower, and error prone than a local area network connection to maintain.  AirPlay has the easier setup and yet is far less reliable.

Nonsense, AirPlay is entirely different than streaming, streaming in the vast majority of cases it is simply distributed via a modem/router, whereas Airplay is always relayed from one device to another via the router on the network and streaming is never live either. You are simply being unrealistic if you expect something that requires a better quality network to work in just as many instances to something that requires a lower quality one, it is that unrealistic expectation that causes you to blame Apple rather than peoples networks.

And no, it's not just about bandwidth, it's also about settings, many users have non-standard protocols enabled which will interfere with one thing and not another. I never suggest it because I believe you should be able to resolve things without resorting to this, but there are plenty of people who simply swap out their router for an Airport Express and voila, instant resolution.