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Has ATV Improved When Browsing Large Categories?

A

askipper

macrumors member
Original poster
May 3, 2008
33
0
I have 3 1st gen ATV in the house - 2 wired and 1 wireless. All perform really well and are set up so that the 2 kids each have one with parental control etc and all stream wired from the iMac with a connected 3TB HD over FW800.

All works well on the whole.

However, about 2 or 3 years ago I bought an ATV2 for my duaghter and it was HORRIBLE at streaming. Really really naff at streaming from our imac - it used Homesharing I think.

But, the issue was that when she browsed to the Childrens movies genre it would take 15 minutes to basically cache the 300+ movies there - at least I think this is what it was doing.

If she browsed say 'Documentary' genre then it took say 10 seconds as there were only haf a dozen movies.

In the end we gave up - basically there were several threads on Apple forums and it was a common problem with people who had fairly large genres of a few hundred movies - seems every time you turned it on it cahced the thumbails/meta data etc and it could take ages.

So, we sold it on ebay and she got a 1st generation that works fine.

However, I quite fancy the newer AT3 as it has 1080p support I believe and I have new spanky 50" panasonic plasma and I'd would like to encode new movies going forward at 1080p if possible (not sure if that IS possible using Handbrake etc but hope so).

Anyway - all you ATV2/ATV3 owners - has this issue been resolved now? Browsing around genres with 300/400/500+ movies in them? Does it take ages to cache? IS there workarounds?

We are all wired ove 1GB ethernet btw.

Cheers
 
SandboxGeneral

SandboxGeneral

Moderator emeritus
Sep 8, 2010
26,482
10,051
Detroit
There may have been something else going on there. I have a substantial iTunes library on an external RAID drive connected to an iMac that streams over Ethernet to my ATV2 and ATV3 and I don't have any issues with it loading content within seconds.
 
M

mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
I can't answer about genre browsing as I don't do it. But I do have a 350+ iTunes movie collection. When it has not been used for a few days and I go to it, it does take a while for the artwork to load but the movie titles are there and active within seconds. Also, if you scroll to a movie you are interested in and the artwork has not loaded yet, if you select it the artwork loads quickly. I get the feeling the artwork is cached in iTunes and it takes a while to load compared to just directory information. I wished the artwork would be cached on the aTV so it would not have to re-load.
 
FreakinEurekan

FreakinEurekan

macrumors 603
Sep 8, 2011
5,561
2,613
I can't quite duplicate your 300+ items in one genre, but I have about 350 total movies and largest genres of 95, 88, and 51 movies each - and loading any genre is basically instantaneous. This is with the ATV3, using a 2012 Mac Mini with an external USB drive for iTunes Media (external drive set to never sleep).
 
PsyOpWarlord

PsyOpWarlord

macrumors 6502
Nov 11, 2010
334
26
Colorado Springs, CO
I do not have your issue. I have about 1350 movies on my external firewire iTunes drive (also set to never sleep) and the genres with 300+ movies load almost instantly (except coverflow which takes a few seconds to catch up).

There is definitely something external to the AppleTV that is causing your issue.
 
A

askipper

macrumors member
Original poster
May 3, 2008
33
0
OK, this is good news - maybe it was ATV2 that had this and using wireless or maybe because we had 2 original ATV's (1 wired, 1 wireless) and then had Home Sharing turned on for the ATV2 that was wireless for my daughter - maybe it all just 'clashed'

Anyway - I think I'll get an ATV3 and see what happens - if it's rubbish again then I'll disconnect all other ATV's (mk1) and try again - still won't work I'll pop it back on ebay and then stick with ATV1's throughout the house - shame though if this is the case because I want to take advantage of using Handbrake to create 1080p versions of my DVD's - if possible anyway!
 
M

mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
askipper said:
OK, this is good news - maybe it was ATV2 that had this and using wireless or maybe because we had 2 original ATV's (1 wired, 1 wireless) and then had Home Sharing turned on for the ATV2 that was wireless for my daughter - maybe it all just 'clashed'

Anyway - I think I'll get an ATV3 and see what happens - if it's rubbish again then I'll disconnect all other ATV's (mk1) and try again - still won't work I'll pop it back on ebay and then stick with ATV1's throughout the house - shame though if this is the case because I want to take advantage of using Handbrake to create 1080p versions of my DVD's - if possible anyway!
Click to expand...

No need to put it (aTV3) on eBay. Just return it for full refund, no?
 
apunkrockmonk

apunkrockmonk

macrumors 6502a
Nov 20, 2005
769
16
Rochester, NY
I was able to speed up loading times for my large media library on my ATV2/3 by moving my iTunes Library files to my SSD while leaving the actual media files on a big hard drive.

To be clear though, prior to doing this I think the max load time was maybe 15-30 seconds, now it is close to instant.
 
M

mic j

macrumors 68030
Mar 15, 2012
2,663
156
apunkrockmonk said:
I was able to speed up loading times for my large media library on my ATV2/3 by moving my iTunes Library files to my SSD while leaving the actual media files on a big hard drive.

To be clear though, prior to doing this I think the max load time was maybe 15-30 seconds, now it is close to instant.
Click to expand...

That is how I am configured. Library on MBP, media on external USB HDD connected to the AEBS.
 
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