Airplay buffering but not playing

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Level 1

8 points

Airplay buffering but not playing

Hi,

ever since the 9.2 update, airplay will sometimes stream from my ipad to my ATV4, and the video will buffer but refuse to play. I can select any frame of the video by dragging the slider forward/back but I just cant get the video to play. This frequently happens when I am watching multiple videos back to back. In TVOS 9.1, bringing up control center and closing it will initiate the play sequence but this doesnt seem to work anymore in 9.2 . My old apple TV still works fine. Does anyone else have a workaround? A different browser or a particular sequence of initiating the airplay as a workaround until Apple fixes the problem?

Posted on Apr 6, 2016 9:00 PM

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Answer 1

Mar 29, 2017 11:08 AM in response to Diana.McCall

This annoying problem has resurfaced with tvOS 10.2. Fortunately, the old trick still works. Funny that it was introduced with tvOS on 3/24/16, corrected by tvOS 10 on 9/13/16, and restored by 10.2 on 3/27/17. If you experience this, please be sure to report it to Apple at https://www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html. That's our only hope for a permanent fix.

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Answer 2

Apr 7, 2016 3:36 PM in response to kianli

This problem has been widely reported with tvOS 9.2. Take a look at this Re: AirPlay Won't Play Videos Well thread. My tedious but working solution is to start the video normally, wait for buffering to start, as indicated by the progress bar. Then hit menu on the remote, which will cause the video to start playing on your device. Enable airplay again and it should play normally on the ATV. You should also submit feedback on the Apple feedback site. Good luck.

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Answer 3

kianli Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 7, 2016 10:23 PM in response to Diana.McCall

Hi Diana,

thanks very much for your response. I'm sorry but I am having problems understanding your workaround. When you said to start the video normally at the start, this is during airplay? So hitting menu on the Apple TV remote will make the video start playing on the airplay?

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Answer 4

Apr 8, 2016 2:43 AM in response to kianli

To clarify, turn on airplay, as if you expect it to work, and start the video. ATV shows the progress bar and starts downloading, but will not play, no matter what you do. Hitting menu on the remote kills airplay, so the video begins to play on your device. Pull up control center and turn airplay back on. Playback continues on ATV, just like it's supposed to. Don't do these steps too fast; you need to ensure that download is actually underway before interrupting it. Funky, but absolutely repeatable. Note that just turning on airplay after starting the video on the device does not work. You have to start on ATV, then do this two-step. As a technical aside, my ATV and iPad are both on the same 5 GHz wifi. Airplay was working fine until I upgraded to tvOS 9.2.

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