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Anyone else having loads of live ESPN stream issues?

ra4oasis

ra4oasis

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 10, 2010
356
84
I have a 2nd gen Apple TV, and a 4th gen, both have this problem. On a very frequent basis, such as 6 or so times during the first half of Monday Night Football, last night, the whole stream will freeze, or the audio will be fine, but video freezes. If I stop the stream, and restart it, it will work fine, for a while, but it happens very frequently.

I don't have the fastest internet connection, 30 mbps down, but I don't have any problems with other apps, such as Netflix, or even other live sporting events outside of ESPN. FoxSportsGo works fine with live events, so the issue is ESPN specific. Anyone else have this issue?
 
ra4oasis said:
I have a 2nd gen Apple TV, and a 4th gen, both have this problem. On a very frequent basis, such as 6 or so times during the first half of Monday Night Football, last night, the whole stream will freeze, or the audio will be fine, but video freezes. If I stop the stream, and restart it, it will work fine, for a while, but it happens very frequently.

I don't have the fastest internet connection, 30 mbps down, but I don't have any problems with other apps, such as Netflix, or even other live sporting events outside of ESPN. FoxSportsGo works fine with live events, so the issue is ESPN specific. Anyone else have this issue?
Click to expand...

YES!!! It constantly freezes, and the quality goes from good to awful about every 2-3 minutes. I actually talked to their customer service and they were abysmal. I explained the issue and their response was, and I'm not joking or exaggerating, "Ours is working fine here." Um, yea, that's great for you, but I'm actually calling about mine... They had me shut it off and restart it then just said, sorry, we're not having the problem here so we can't do anything for you. That was it. If anyone has found a fix I'd be eternally grateful. And as OP noted, it's not my internet connection either. I have 100 mbps down.
 
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It's not just the ATV platform. I have an ATV4 but don't use it for ESPN - I use either my Fire TV (the 2015 STB, not the stick) or my GF's Roku and they both stutter/gag/choke with the ESPN app during MNF and other key events. ESPN really needs to fix their pipes, they're leaking all over the place. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

I've taken to recording it on my TiVo Bolt and then watching MNF on my Fire TV's TiVo app. Since Amazon's got the rights to TNF, I generally travel with my Fire TV anyways. What a clusterf***.
 
It’s unfortunately quite a common issue with the ESPN and older watch ESPN apps. I have tried them on Roku, Fire tv, and Apple TV and all of them have the same issues. I assume it has to do with their hosting because the problems are almost entirely dependent on the popularity of the stream. When I watch games that most people aren’t, the stream is typically decent, but when I watch popular games it is unwatchable.

I certainly hope your lobbying is successful, but as you found out, they really don’t seem to care.
 
Well, I suppose that it is encouraging that I'm not alone with this issue, but man, ESPN has got to get their crap together. It was so bad during Monday Night Football that we turned the game off.
 
It’s not just you. I’ve been sorely disappointed in the video quality of every football game I’ve watched on the ESPN app so far this season. College and pro. And the NFL app does the same thing for me.
 
And Sunday is here and I'm trying to watch a pregame show on the NFL Sunday Ticket app and of course the video feed is terrible. DirecTV should be ashamed of this product they are delivering.
 
I have had watchESPN streaming issues as well. Generally when I start the stream it is extremely high quality. Then after a few minutes the quality degrades to a noticeable difference, but continues playing. After a while it will get better but goes in and out through a game. Also sometimes I will completely lose the video stream and only have audio for a few seconds, then the video will come back. I'm doing this with the ATV 4. I've got a 30Mbps pipe. I've been having streaming issues in general so I wasn't sure if my internet wasn't sufficient or if watchESPN was just garbage.
 
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