Apple TV Lag / Slow unresponsive menu

[sammcj]

Hi,

Got an ATV 40gb today (yeah it was cheap).
Cool wee device but god it's laggy as hell.

At times its completely unusable due to the interface lag.
I'm pretty sure it's not doing much in the background, it should have had plenty of time to index the library since I synced it 6 hours ago.

Any hacks or tricks to speed it up?


Streaming from Imac 2.8 / 360gb itunes library / latest itunes / no movies synced / Gigabit ethernet connection.

[DoFoT9]

802.11g? 802.11n? wired? what.... more deets

[sammcj]

Originally Posted by DoFoT9

802.11g? 802.11n? wired? what.... more deets

Sorry, Wired over my gigabit switch.

[DoFoT9]

Originally Posted by sammcj

Sorry, Wired over my gigabit switch.

sweet thanks. thats really retarted.. it happens when your just browsing the menu and no movie playing? odd

[sammcj]

Originally Posted by DoFoT9

sweet thanks. thats really retarted.. it happens when your just browsing the menu and no movie playing? odd

Yup, its horrid! often when scrolling through artists or youtube clips it just stops and the buttons make no clicking noise, then in about 30secs to a min all the noises catch up and play and it comes back to life

[DoFoT9]

Originally Posted by sammcj

Yup, its horrid! often when scrolling through artists or youtube clips it just stops and the buttons make no clicking noise, then in about 30secs to a min all the noises catch up and play and it comes back to life

youtube clips could be your internet connection (lag), is that fast enough?

browsing artists on a shared library shouldnt cause that.. maybe something is going on in the background.

have you tried turning it off and on again??

[sammcj]

Originally Posted by DoFoT9

youtube clips could be your internet connection (lag), is that fast enough?

browsing artists on a shared library shouldnt cause that.. maybe something is going on in the background.

have you tried turning it off and on again??

It buffers / plays movies fine, even hidef clips.
I've tried restarting it twice.

[DoFoT9]

Originally Posted by sammcj

It buffers / plays movies fine, even hidef clips.
I've tried restarting it twice.

how very odd... i have no fix sorry. are there any updates you can do?

[sammcj]

Originally Posted by DoFoT9

how very odd... i have no fix sorry. are there any updates you can do?

Thats ok, thanks for replying so quickly, It's the latest version.

[Bye Bye Baby]

That is strange- I have a similar but wireless setup and I have no lag at all. My library is about 400 GB.

Is your conetnt ripped or bought? The only thing that comes to mind.

Let us know.

[sammcj]

Originally Posted by Bye Bye Baby

That is strange- I have a similar but wireless setup and I have no lag at all. My library is about 400 GB.

Is your conetnt ripped or bought? The only thing that comes to mind.

Let us know.

A lot of it is 256 - 320kb ripped from cds.

[DoFoT9]

Originally Posted by sammcj

A lot of it is 256 - 320kb ripped from cds.

i wonder how big the images are... that wouldnt really effect it but..

[synthfreek]

Something similar happens to me. I sync content to the aTV and sometimes when scrolling through the TV Shows, Movies or Podcasts menu the cursor doesn't respond. It only happens for a few seconds but like the original poster said, after a few secs all the delayed button presses happen at once and the cursor jumps up or down several places.

[tom1971]

I would do a factory restore and start from scratch. That should do it.

[MattG]

Mine's always been laggy. Done multiple resets. I think that's just the way it is.

[ugacdawg]

I have three of them, but I don't sync anything... streaming only... over 2TB of data easily... never lags at all, for any reason. And they are connected over wireless N too.

Perhaps it has something to do with the local drive... could it be fragmented or just slow to spool up or search?

Try doing streaming via your ethernet connection and see if it gets perkier...

[Bye Bye Baby]

I have ripped and bought content movies and video. I have all content on a drobo attached to a mac mini as a media server/centre that streams wireless to an ATV.

I use frontrow and ATV. I do not like plex/hulu/boxee etc. I have found them to be very disappointing.

I have no lags whatsoever. I also have an iMac that sometime accesses the content but only a few songs occasionally.

I have the house wired with cat6 and all N wireless network. The intenret connection is fibre optic (not that it matters internally).

[ebrightc]

I had the same problem recently, and I found that it was trying to update the software constantly. I eventually did an factory reset, manually updated the software through the ATV interface, and then left it alone while it updated. It took a while, but after that I haven't had any problems. I think before, it was trying to finish its update routine, but as I was messing around and restarting, it couldn't finish, so it remained laggy while it was constantly trying to update.

[kadeschs]

I have the same problem occasionally. Mine generally happens when powering back up from standby mode. It's like it doesn't come all the way from standby. Standby mode can be problematic. Warm reboot usually fixes the issue. It's most likely something going on in the background. For example, automatic syncing of iTunes with ATV. I had terrible problems with losing connected mounts. I've since fixed the problem completely by removing Microsoft in favor of FreeNAS for serving up my media to ATV. I'm also using the extremely buggy NitoTV stuff. That's probably 99% of my problems. I put up with it all because it provides what Apple should have to begin with.

[sammcj]

Have done a full factory reset.

No difference, still lagging up, got so bad it froze before so I went back to my mac and noticed it was syncing.... WTF?!

[Bye Bye Baby]

Originally Posted by sammcj

Have done a full factory reset.

No difference, still lagging up, got so bad it froze before so I went back to my mac and noticed it was syncing.... WTF?!

The default setting is for syncing. It can take forever.

I am wondering if your unit may have a problem? Not 100% sure but it is possible.

I have never noticed these problems. Why don't you take all content off your ATV and just stream. See if that works.

[dmm219]

I might recommend switching to custom syncing if you haven't done that already...

[sammcj]

Originally Posted by Bye Bye Baby

The default setting is for syncing. It can take forever.

I am wondering if your unit may have a problem? Not 100% sure but it is possible.

I have never noticed these problems. Why don't you take all content off your ATV and just stream. See if that works.

yup its 100% streamed with nothing synced...
could it be trying to connect to another computer on my network that's not properly shared in some way?
ie. my flatemates ubuntu machine ?

It seems so random when it does lag up, it's as if it trying to load cover art for the next page down but can't multitask?

[sammcj]

seems a bit better today, though did lag up when scrolling through songs inside an album before...

[jaw04005]

Honestly, I've never used an Apple TV that didn't lag (and I own three). It's just the nature of the device.

I suppose a better description would be the Apple TV is slow to respond to remote commands. If you get too far deep into its menus and press the menu button on the remote quickly, chances are you're going to have issues as it tries to get back to the home menu.

Generally, after a few seconds I get two or three beeps in a row and then it finally goes back to where I want it to go.

Apple needs to update it with more RAM and a faster processor.