Apple TV resolved: Apple TV 4K - movies pausing, songs stopping.

[Marshall73]

resolved, see my last post (5)


Having an issue with movies streaming in 4K from Apple, Apple Music and YouTube every 5 minutes it stops briefly then continues, this is exaggerated further by having the Apple TV connected to a Homepod Pair for Atmos as it has to sync audio/video.

Netflix 4K, Disney + work fine and Plex also works fine on the local network.

There are no issues reported on the apple status so just wondering if anyone else has similar issues. It could be an issue with my provider so I have also posted on there forums.

If it continues I’m going to stick my smart switch on it, port mirror and run wire shark to see exactly what is going on.

 

[Marshall73]

Definitely a network issue. When it drops on Prime video it throws an error rather than pausing then resuming.

Now running from my iPhone hotspot, zero issues.

 

[Marshall73]

Ok, so, I believe I have discovered the issue and I can easily replicate it. One of my homepods used in the stereo pair is operating as the HomeKit hub. I have 3 cameras which send a fair chunk of video to HomeKit and when they are on and recording they cause the drop outs. So turning them off has resolved the issue. Funny thing is they have been fine all week so not entirely sure why it’s acting up now. But, disabling recording when I’m home has resolved it.

So, if you are having issues with dropouts try turning off cameras etc. Now, Apple need to have an option to choose the primary hub, so you can pick another device as default so this sort of thing can be avoided.

 

[techwarrior]

Ok, so, I believe I have discovered the issue and I can easily replicate it. One of my homepods used in the stereo pair is operating as the HomeKit hub. I have 3 cameras which send a fair chunk of video to HomeKit and when they are on and recording they cause the drop outs. So turning them off has resolved the issue. Funny thing is they have been fine all week so not entirely sure why it’s acting up now. But, disabling recording when I’m home has resolved it.

So, if you are having issues with dropouts try turning off cameras etc. Now, Apple need to have an option to choose the primary hub, so you can pick another device as default so this sort of thing can be avoided.

If ATV is WiFi connected, maybe tweak your settings.

I generally use different SSID for 5Ghz and only connect to that SSID on devices that do a lot of network activity. 2.4Ghz not only has less bandwidth, but it is more likely to get interference from a number of sources.

If you can hardwire ATV, maybe even better option.

Or are you thinking it is the ATV <> HomePod connection causing the stutters?

 

[Marshall73]

If ATV is WiFi connected, maybe tweak your settings.

I generally use different SSID for 5Ghz and only connect to that SSID on devices that do a lot of network activity. 2.4Ghz not only has less bandwidth, but it is more likely to get interference from a number of sources.

If you can hardwire ATV, maybe even better option.

Or are you thinking it is the ATV <> HomePod connection causing the stutters?

Hi

All of my Apple TV’s are connected with Ethernet. The issue was caused by data from my cameras going through one of the HomePods which was acting as the primary homehub. This homehub was acting as part of a stereo pair providing audio via ARC from the new Apple TV 4K (Which works incredibly well).

I thought that it was an external issue as Plex worked fine, but when I streamed a high bitrate 4K movie to Plex it too bombed out after 3 minutes. This lead me to looking at the internal traffic and I could see the data from the 3 homekit cameras spike every few minutes. I disabled recording and the issue resolved. I then had to figure out how to change the primary homehub.

l managed to get my original Apple TV 4K to be the primary homehub again (By disconnecting everything else). Once this was done everything worked properly including the cameras. If Apple added an option so you select The primary homehub device it would have been easier to fix.

So, if anyone else are running HomeKit cameras and use using HomePods paired with the Apple TV have pausing in streaming movies, songs stopping playing in Apple Music etc then check that your HomePod isn’t being used as primary.