Apple TV keeps crashing NON-STOP!!!

I have this problem with two ATV2s My belief is that it is a codec issue, which would expliain why the crashes (out of the netflix app) aleays occur in the same place. That's right if I replay the movie or episode the app suffers in the same place. It could be that the encoding has changed, so that the same decoder in the ATV now has trouble. When I go back knto netflix I can only get past the failure point by fast forwarding over it, the slowing to normal speed.

Does this sound like a reasonable explanation to other people?

It would be helpful to know what other diagnostics you may have

tried, including removing power from the unit . . thanks for this.

Tom

TThis worked. Had the same problem of constant crashing. Did this, and no further crashing. Yay!

Knocking out a generic wifi address that my device was directed to cleared up many unnecessary numbers to update ATV and 'someone is already using' messages. Now only occasional rebooting and 'logins' are required, which is a big improvement. I went to wifi on an iPad Air2 and finally ditched the address, a guest media address that replaced my wifi address for some reason and checked off where is stated - - 'forget this group'.

Jose, thank you for taking the time to post. I found this thread because I share the same frustrations posted here.

In regards to your post, I wanted to let you know that I am able to play through the "crash point" after it spontaneously reboots…I am consistently able to do this. I hope that helps with troubleshooting, for whomever comes across this thread.

Unfortunately for my AppleTV, this experience has allowed me to look around and see how far the competition has progressed…

Just to confirm others' comments. I have had the same problem (with a frequent dropping of the network) with two different APTV v3 models. This is true for every usage of either Netflix or MLBTV. (usually after 10-30 minutes) Does anyone have advice on which of the alternative company products would make the most sense?

Since trouble hit with two different units and surely you've had the

benefit of the  warranty all the better that you're going to test your

rig with another brand of device - why not go by price? Maybe

it'll turn out it's some other part of your setup.

The fix is to set the setting at netflix to lower video steaming settings and to set video to 720 on apple tv setting.

this fix has worked for 4 days, no hiccup. As for Apple tv 2, this is what i own. Not one reset. used to do it every hour.

MomosiFeb 22, 2016 9:12 PM Re: Apple TV keeps crashing NON-STOP!!!

Im no tech expert but I did something that I believe fixed the issue (for me at least). My assumption was that the older generations of Apple TV can't handle the Netflix app streaming high resolution and crash (nothing related to network speed). To fix this, I logged into my Netflix account, went into playback settiings and changes the data usage per screen to medium (0.7 GB/hour) this resolved the crashing problem immediately.

Thank you for posting this. Since changing that setting the Netflix app on my Gen 2 Apple TV has not crashed once.

I have 4 Macs, 4 iPads and three current iPhones ...i.e there is no bigger Apple fan, but Apple Tv is junk/joke (I have 3). I have the same issue listed. I do not care if it is a third party app, it is an Apple problem. This issue does not occur on other streaming products. I ONLY use aTV for streaming movies I own...all other streaming is from other providers apps - Samsung TV, Playstation, etc... They perform beautifully.

I hate to say it, but Apples product quality / QA has nosedived over the last few years under Tim...just look at the reviews for aTv, Mac OS, etc... IOS is the exception.

Distressing - especially in light of the many units working properly. Hopefully you're

in warranty and near an Apple Store where they can test and even replace the

device. If a store isn't convenient, you can avail yourself of Apple's mail-in repair

service. Good luck, Tom

http://www.apple.com/support/products/faqs.html

I have an ATV2 with a similar problem: the Netflix app frequently crashes while streaming video. As reported by others here, the stream will often stutter a few seconds before the app crashes and the white LED on the ATV starts flashing. I don't have Hulu, so have no experience with that app. Our primary use of the ATV is watching Netflix content, and the occasional ITMS movie rental.

My ATV2 is connected using ethernet (wired) to a GigE switch, and thence to a 60 Mbps fiber circuit. It has iOS 6.2.1 firmware. TV resolution is set to 720p @ 60Hz.

I've read through the 5 pages of postings on this thread, and found reports of similar problem with Netflix/Hulu elsewhere. From what I've read, I suspect the issue is that the ATV2 is running out of RAM, and crashing due to buffer overflow or some other side effect of memory exhaust. This hypothesis is consistent with various 'fixes' described on this thread:

• Momosi and others reported that reducing the Netflix bitrate from High to Medium mitigates the issue. With reduced incoming bit rate, the ATV won't need as much RAM to store frames of digitized video prior to decoding. The lower bitrate will thus reduce memory pressure.
• Someone indicated that cycling the power before streaming fixed the problem, at least for a while. When the ATV does a cold-reboot (as opposed to a Restart) various caches in RAM are cleared. So it would boot up with more free RAM, available to be used by the Netflix app.
• Someone reported that they changed the screensaver, and that seemed to help. It's plausible that some of the fancy screensavers consume more RAM.
• Someone reported that they swapped the ATV2 with a used ATV3. All else stayed the same (network connection, Netflix settings, etc). The frequent Netflix crashes stopped. The ATV3 has 512 MB of RAM, vs 256 MB in ATV2. If there's a bug in memory management code (in the Netflix app and/or the 6.2.1 firmware), it's logical that the larger memory in the ATV3 would alleviate the spontaneous crashes of Netflix and Hulu apps.

Prior to finding this thread, I had tried all the usual fixes (restart, restore, etc) to no avail. It then occurred to me that my Netflix issues started a few months ago. That's about the time that my brother shared a couple of Photo albums with me (via iCloud Photo Sharing) and placed over 600 old family photos in the shared albums. My ATV2 has iCloud Photo Sharing enabled so the family photos can be viewed on our HDTV. I don't understand how Apple manages the photo sharing data, but it's clear that shared photos get downloaded on demand and are cached in the ATV2's RAM. Similarly, new photos in My Photo Stream get magically synced to the ATV2, no doubt consuming RAM.

That led to my 'fix' for the problem. I logged out of my iCloud account on the ATV, which disabled the photo sharing features. Since doing so, the Netflix app has been stable. No more crashes. I surmise that by disabling photo sharing, any RAM used to cache shared and photostream photos was freed up, thus leaving more RAM for Netflix buffering.

Same exact issue with the AppleTV2. I can't tell if it's the streaming companies issue with not updating their software to be compatible or if it's Apple's fault for making a **** product that can't handle software updates. Or planned obsolescence?

@valli,

Which version of ATV? 2nd-gen? 3rd-gen? Siri-Gen?

Since logging out of iCloud on my ATV2 (which deleted all the shared photos that had been synced), my Netflix viewing experience has been crash-free. I suspect the Netflix app is running out of RAM. As suggested by momosi, try reducing your Netflix bandwidth setting from High (or Auto) to Medium, and see if that helps.