mandrieu

Q: Apple TV 4 - Home Sharing Slideshows - Scratching my head...

Hey guys, I've had my Apple TV 2 for a million years. I love it. One of the features I enjoy the most is the home sharing+itunes+Apple TV (2)+Computers+photos combo to put my 20k+ photos on the big screen, as slideshows (mostly using Ken Burns) with music using an iTunes playlist and screen saver (normally floating theme)...

 

So, I got my new 32GB flashy Apple TV 4 and...

- Home sharing seems to work fine

- I can share all that content without problems, as far as I can tell

 

but:

- The slideshow music settings are gone... in ATV2 you set a playlist in the slideshow settings and you're all set. ATV4 = nowhere to be found.

- Photos show out of order sometimes, not consistently (?). They start fine, then out of nowhere, it randomly presents some pictures out of the album. Seems like a bug to me.

- I can only start a slideshow from the beginning. (in my Apple 2 I can choose a photo and run the slideshow from that point). Seems like another bug to me.

 

(I haven't checked slideshows in the Photos app, because I can't care less about putting my stuff in the cloud, to be honest. Same with the music stuff.)

 

So, I'm not a happy camper right now. I'm I missing something or this is a really half baked $150 bucs thing? This feels more like a downgrade than an upgrade so far except for being faster (and I'll leave the whining about the remote control, the keyboard situation, siri, bluetooth for another time).

 

Thanks!

Apple TV (4th generation)

Posted on Nov 4, 2015 8:00 AM

Close

Q: Apple TV 4 - Home Sharing Slideshows - Scratching my head...

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

Previous Page 2 of 4 last Next
  • by mandrieu,

    mandrieu mandrieu Jan 25, 2016 5:30 PM in response to mandrieu
    Level 1 (7 points)
    Jan 25, 2016 5:30 PM in response to mandrieu

    I just ran the update to tvOS 9.1.1. As far as I can tell, all issues related to slideshows remain exactly the same, unfixed. Using Ken Burns, with 3 seconds between slides, after 20 or 30 pictures, the repeats start, then it shows a few more pics, more repeats, and so on. I have about 20,000 photos so I haven't had the time to test the screensaver to see if there's any improvement though. But the podcasts app is there now... pathetic.

  • by Winston Churchill,

    Winston Churchill Winston Churchill Jan 26, 2016 7:10 AM in response to mandrieu
    Level 10 (103,368 points)
    Apple TV
    Jan 26, 2016 7:10 AM in response to mandrieu

    Are you aware that the screensaver isn't intended to play more than a few dozen slides.

  • by samaki,

    samaki samaki Jan 26, 2016 7:12 AM in response to mandrieu
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Jan 26, 2016 7:12 AM in response to mandrieu

    Agreed, pathetic. I just had a chat with Apple Care. "The issue is known." Will this post survive Apple censorship?

  • by Winston Churchill,

    Winston Churchill Winston Churchill Jan 26, 2016 7:18 AM in response to samaki
    Level 10 (103,368 points)
    Apple TV
    Jan 26, 2016 7:18 AM in response to samaki

    That's not correct, it's not a known issue, the screensaver is intended to play no more than a few dozen photos, that bit is working as intended, other areas of photo display do not appear to be working as intended.

  • by mandrieu,

    mandrieu mandrieu Feb 8, 2016 8:47 AM in response to Winston Churchill
    Level 1 (7 points)
    Feb 8, 2016 8:47 AM in response to Winston Churchill

    Hey Winston, in my specific case the main issue is with slideshows, being able to go thru all photos from beginning to end in an album without unwanted [already seen] photos inserted [sort of] randomly. If on top of that, if they put back the settings to play a playlist, that would be nice. In short, all those things that work in my old ATV 2... Not asking for much, I think. If the screensaver would show all pictures, that would be a very welcomed bonus, but I'm not as sensitive to that.

  • by gb1956,

    gb1956 gb1956 Feb 25, 2016 2:31 PM in response to mandrieu
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Feb 25, 2016 2:31 PM in response to mandrieu

    Yes, Apple, how about it. Simply play photos, one after the other, from a fileshare. You know, a slideshow.

     

    You could add music, and nice dissolves between each one later.

     

    Just give us the bog-standard ability to play one photo after another.

     

    Seriously, if I had known this, it would have been a deal-breaker for ATV4.

  • by Christian Riley,

    Christian Riley Christian Riley Mar 23, 2016 5:25 PM in response to gb1956
    Level 2 (254 points)
    Mar 23, 2016 5:25 PM in response to gb1956

    The slideshow bug is still present for me in tvOS 9.2. 

     

    Plays about 30-40 photos and they cycles back to some random ones from earlier and then either stops playing entirely or gets random.

     

    I even created a new library, with a set of obviously sequential letters and numbers (62) to demonstrate it.  Have reported it with bugreport, along with a link to the video so that they can see what is happening.

  • by edivon,

    edivon edivon Mar 24, 2016 12:13 AM in response to mandrieu
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Mar 24, 2016 12:13 AM in response to mandrieu

    Talked to Apple support in Sweden and now they at least admitted it was a known problem. They also expressed surprise that it wasn´t fixed in 9.2

    Not sure if this make me feel better about it though.

    How can folders, keyboards and similar be more important than fixing an obvious error?

  • by foxcub 6,

    foxcub 6 foxcub 6 Mar 24, 2016 1:24 PM in response to edivon
    Level 1 (73 points)
    Apple TV
    Mar 24, 2016 1:24 PM in response to edivon

    i talked to Appple support today about the shoddy workmanship in the slideshow saga. " well it's not really designed for that " ! oh well that makes it ok then lol so she had me reset reinstall all the software  cause company policy says so and guess what.       it's still the same  now there a surprise , I got a reference no to contact apple about the problem but to be  totally  honest  what difference will it make ? Apple know about the problem they just can't be bothered to fix it  iam paying extra for iCloud storage and it's not really working for me and my photos  as I can't see them in the fashion I would like may just go back to Flickr pro  and I think the give you about 10gb storage for the same kind of money

  • by Christian Riley,

    Christian Riley Christian Riley Mar 24, 2016 1:40 PM in response to foxcub 6
    Level 2 (254 points)
    Mar 24, 2016 1:40 PM in response to foxcub 6

    I decided I would email this to Tim Cook at Apple.  If that doesn't get a response, I will try to get someone (who has > 1 million followers on Twitter) to tweet it to Apple Support on Twitter and to Tim Cook on Twitter.

     

    ---------------------------------------

    Hi Tim,

    Long time Apple user (Apple ][ plus, 128k Mac etc), and was curious if you could help get to the bottom of the slideshow bug in the 4th Gen Apple TV.  In short, it doesn't work properly, unlike in the Gen 1,2, and 3 Apple TVs and has been like that with all the versions of tvOS (9.0 to 9.2).  It shows some photos in order, then randomly shows them out of order and often just ends the slideshow abruptly.

     

    See Apple developer bug report numbers: 23038324 and 25328408 (among others).

     

    [Link to video showing the problem]

     

    And one of several Apple Support forum discussions:

    https://discussions.apple.com/message/29961343

    Thanks for looking into this and try to help the Apple TV become a more bug free product.

    Thank you again,

  • by foxcub 6,

    foxcub 6 foxcub 6 Mar 24, 2016 2:28 PM in response to Christian Riley
    Level 1 (73 points)
    Apple TV
    Mar 24, 2016 2:28 PM in response to Christian Riley

    What I did notice was if I switched off repeat in the slide show I get about 5 photos and then it stops and goes back to the main slideshow ,menu . Something else which I have noticed since updating was when clicking on my computer to use home sharing some times it crashes Back to the main menu sometimes it works and some times I get a few photos then it goes back to the menu again, this is something that either I never noticed in the earlier software or it was by luck has anybody else noticed this problem

  • by samaki,

    samaki samaki Mar 24, 2016 2:34 PM in response to foxcub 6
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mar 24, 2016 2:34 PM in response to foxcub 6

    Same here. If auto-repeat is disabled, after a few slides the show stops and returns to the main slideshow menu screen. For an update that was 3 months in the works (with about 8 or so public beta versions) I would have thought that these highly visible slideshow bugs had been worked out. But like someone here said, apparently, a new app switcher, folder, Siri whatever was more important than fixing a jarring bug.

  • by Alex Spencer,

    Alex Spencer Alex Spencer Mar 24, 2016 8:52 PM in response to Christian Riley
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mar 24, 2016 8:52 PM in response to Christian Riley

    Christian,

    Thanks for doing that.  Its a lot of effort you put into demonstrating this bug.  I just can't imagine the developers of tvOS are not also users of ATV4, and this kind of behavior would drive the crazy and they would never let this get out in the public. (Looks bad on their resume).  I am very disappointed in the Apple testing folks for letting this stuff get out.  A related bug in tvOS 2.2 is that if you turn on iCould photo library and then try to select an album to be your screen saver, you get to the screen that shows all the albums but the "set as screen saver" button in the upper right is missing so while we can now see our photos from the cloud we still can't use them as a screen saver (buggy or not).  I certainly think a screen saver, is the second priority, after viewing, that most users would have.  So it should be at the top of any test plan.  To me it appears that the managers of these development groups do not hold their developers to high standards.  These kind of bugs have a very high visibility and really reflect bad on a company that prides itself in its products.

     

    Alex

  • by samaki,

    samaki samaki Mar 25, 2016 1:48 AM in response to Alex Spencer
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mar 25, 2016 1:48 AM in response to Alex Spencer

    What's particularly surprising: this bug is highly reproducible, probably easy to fix (how difficult can it be to count down 1, 2, 3... or any other order, alphabetical or temporal) --- yet paying (..!) customers are being fed with "slideshows not a priority" etc statements... totally unacceptable.

  • by icudsen,

    icudsen icudsen Mar 25, 2016 2:31 AM in response to foxcub 6
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Apple TV
    Mar 25, 2016 2:31 AM in response to foxcub 6

    Yes, I originally reported this error (slideshow returning to menu after a number of photos) ,and I got this "workaround" from Apple: Either set duration to something less than 5 seconds or enable the repeat function. And yes that kept the slideshow running, BUT after a number of photos - in the wrong order (as documented by many here).

    I wrote this to Apple November 23, 2015:

    <quote>

    I can confirm that the two mentioned workarounds are working “to a degree”:

    • Choosing a duration of 3 seconds/photo keeps the slideshow running.
    • Choosing a duration of 5 seconds/photo and setting repeat=yes keeps the slideshow running.
    But common to both workarounds is that after 25 photos, then photos are shown “randomish” … not completely random but absolutely not in order, as chosen in the settings.
    So, I’m looking forward to a software update for the Apple TV :-)
    <unquote>
    BTW, I was sad to see that my earlier post here has disappeared - turn out that is has been "branched out".
    /Carsten

     

Previous Page 2 of 4 last Next