pixillation when streaming

theslaz said:

I have a ATV 3; Itunes has the latest update and my Mac is running Version 10.8.3. My network is all hardwired.
If I play a movie on my ATV through iTunes, it plays perfectly. If I use Netflix; it plays perfectly. However, if I try to stream it via Airplay; I get major pixillation on my Tv. I have tried various players; however; the one I use the majority of the time is VLC. The pixillation problem is the same with all the players.
What could I be doing wrong???

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I'll speculate...and let others tell me how full of it, I am.

Airplay converting from one format to another (say starting with mkv and ending up with h.264) on the fly. That works fine for sources that have low data density, say your desktop or YouTube video. But when it tries to do the same thing with a high data density source, i.e. movie, it throttles back the quality in order to minimize buffering. Netflix does the same thing, it throttles the data based on available bandwidth. The result of that, with both AirPlay and Netflix, is when the bandwidth gets too small you get pixelation instead of a buffering pause.

Other thoughts, anyone?

try hardwiring the aTV or your laptop (or both) to the network.
keep in mind all wireless traffic goes though the router, so if the router is on the other end of the house, you will have poor throughput to the aTV, even if your laptop is in the same room.

are you using the airplay mirroring built into OS X or a third party app?
if it's third party you will see poorer results. Built in airplay uses hardware on the chip to encode, which is why support is limited. also this makes builtin more efficient.

and mic J is correct, using a pre-converted file (whether it comes from your hard drive, or the netflix servers) will be much cleaner.

Ugh. This happens to me with the MLB app, but not when streaming any other HD content. Anyone have thoughts on that?

zachlegomaniac said:

Ugh. This happens to me with the MLB app, but not when streaming any other HD content. Anyone have thoughts on that?

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I would suspect MLB doesn't come in fast enough from the net.

theslaz said:

My entire network is hardwired; including the ATV. I have tried AirParrot; and I get the same ****** results. I may try wireless and see what happens. Don’t know what else to try!

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What year is your Mac, and it has no WIFI correct? Ur Ethernet is 100TX or GigBit?

theslaz said:

Got it to work. Switched from a ATV that was hardwired to wireless. Also switched my computer to wireless. Perfect picture and sound.

Thanks for the responses; much appreciated!

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You've really confused me on that one. You were getting pixelation using AirPlay. That's always wireless...isn't it?

theslaz said:

...if everything is hardwired; than I would assume the signal is also sent hardwired. If your wireless; than of course it is sent wireless.

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Right you are. I was incorrect in my assumption.