AppleTV 3.0 is a little flaky

[00Diablo]

Whoever created this software should be fired!

This Apple TV 3.0 upgrade is by far the biggest disappointment I've had in my 4 years as an Apple user.

I've had all the problems described in this thread from the get-go. I was left with no choice but to factory restore back to 2.0.

I always hear about what a control-freak and tyrant Steve Jobs is, so it is obvious he is not paying any attention to this device. No way should 3.0 have gone out the door like this.

From the ugly and generic Sony/Boxee style interface, the difficult navigation, to the fact that it quickly rendered my device useless and erased my content - this is not what I'm used to from this company. In fact, I'm wondering if Apple has jumped the shark with this 3.0 disaster.

I've grown quite used to streaming my music library into the main audio system since buying the Apple TV, but I'm frustrated with the growing instability and limitations of this product and am at the point of considering other options. I could care less about the iTunes store, as I rip, needle-drop, or OTA antenna>DVR almost all of my own content.

Getting by for now on 2.0, wish I would've stayed somewhere between 2.1 and 2.4.

 

[scottness]

So unimpressed.

 

[Lumpydog]

Nice QA work Apple (not)

My ATV did this last nigh too - just as I was sitting down with my family to watch a movie. All of the menus showed default thumbnails for music, movies, tv shows, etc. The remote stopped working and then the ATV just suddenly rebooted - when it came back on-line, all of my synched material except my photos was gone. WTF!?

I go to iTunes on my Mac to see what's up and it starts resynching with my ATV - from scratch - all 100+GB of content.

Bottom line - No movie night for the family and an owner who is starting to wonder if this device is worth the hassle. It doesn't "just work".

Apple owned up to the problem: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3116

Seriously - wtf guys. You could not find this in testing... thanks for the crash and burn job on what should have ben a nice family movie night.

 

[fpnc]

So, it seems that the disappearing media bug has been addressed in the v3.01 update. I really can't confirm the fix because I never had this problem with v3.0. It's interesting to note, however, that there was a similar bug in a previous 2.X release (or maybe it was associated with a release of the iTunes app). This latter bug (which "bit" me several times) took Apple several months to fix, so this time they seem to be faster to respond (maybe it affected more users).

As far as v3.0 in general, I'm still having pretty good luck. My Apple TV is over two years old so I decided to do a complete factory restore and upgrade since I had been upgrading all along on the same, original installation. Everything seems to work pretty well, could use a little more performance (i.e. "teh snappy") but otherwise it's fine.

 

[CultHero]

so I was out of the country when this update came out and came here first to see if it was worth it. At this point, I am still on 2.9 (?). Are there any major innovations that make 3.1 worthwhile?

 

[jajohns8]

One issue I have been having is that, when in Itunes, I used to be able to click on the Apple TV in the devices list and then click on Movies underneath that and see, sort of grayed out, what movies the Apple TV would play. (Sort of let you know what the Apple TV could "see" for streaming.) That was a way that I could tell if the content in Itunes was playable on the Apple TV. Now, as far as I can tell, there is no way to get that list. You only see the grayed out list of synced material. The movies tab in center does not tell you if the Apple TV can play the file.

 

[phillipjfry]

...

Most annoyingly Apple have still not addressed the issue regarding an ethernet connected computer not talking to a wireless Apple TV

I wish they'd invest a little more in the ATV, I think it's a great device, but too many little flaws for my liking.

I have looked in to this issue a lot in the past. I have concluded (at least FOR MY CASE) that the issue lies in your ROUTER and it's ability to quickly transfer encrypted wifi data to ethernet and back again.

What happens is that either the AppleTV or the computer (pick which one?) is sending data too fast for the router's ability to decrypt, do a checksum on the data (this is where it fails) and pass along to ethernet (same thing happens in reverse but still I see checksum failure upon sending to AppleTV).

Turning encryption off may help with the router's overhead in decrypting your wifi signal but all in all, I'm seeing the connection to the AppleTV timeout since it's unable to maintain a connection with iTunes/AppleTV due to checksum failure on the router leading to a timed out connection between iTunes/AppleTV. Routers are not made equally which is why you will find some routers perform flawlessly and others...not so much

Either connect by ethernet (taking A LOT of overhead off the router) or turn wifi off (I went with the former)

On Topic: I'm still on 2.x since i'm very pleased watching movies through boxee BUT I still miss the ability to rewind said movies which results in Frontrow crashing back to the main menu.

 

[Scott6666]

Very flaky here too. Did a full factory restore and then update. Now content is loading extremely slowly from iTunes. Like 5 mins per song. Even connected via hard wire rather than wireless.

Also goes unresponsive to remote periodically.

 

[randy98mtu]

I've had more trouble with this release than others as well. When I have music playing and I go back through menus to do something else, the music pauses while each menu loads. it is slower and goes unresponsive more often. I had it flat out reboot on me at least once, just out of the blue. I love my AppleTV and I wanted to buy another one, but I won't if this software is the best they can give us. I'd rather go back to pre-3.0. Is there a way to pick which version to upgrade to?

 

[zedsdead]

I've had more trouble with this release than others as well. When I have music playing and I go back through menus to do something else, the music pauses while each menu loads. it is slower and goes unresponsive more often. I had it flat out reboot on me at least once, just out of the blue. I love my AppleTV and I wanted to buy another one, but I won't if this software is the best they can give us. I'd rather go back to pre-3.0. Is there a way to pick which version to upgrade to?

It's not just the software. The hardware cannot handle the functions of the software. It is over 3 years old (and it was outdated even then). A new Apple TV NEEDS to come.

 

[MacBoobsPro]

Whenever I open iTunes it always resyncs the last item I played on the AppleTV be it a movie, TV show or song.

It says I have no photos synced but when I click on the photos button it shows my synced photos.

The AppleTV shows ALL my iTunes content even when iTunes is not running so I have to remember what is actually available to play i.e. synced to the ATV if not and I click on something not synced the ATV hangs for a few MINUTES and then tells me the item is not available. If its not available don't ******* show it!

When the ATV works its brilliant, simple fact is it rarely works!

I am reluctantly looking for an alternative and if (big if) Apple finally decide to upgrade the AppleTV it will need to REALLY blow me away to win me back, and I mean 42" screen, built in 2TB drive, runs iTunes and controlled by a multitouch remote. No more piss poor set top boxes advertised as separating the TV from the computer when infact they cant function without a computer.

1TB drive would suffice if the above is too 'difficult'. Feck! At the moment I have a 1TB drive connected to a macbook to stream to the ATV. Both the Drive and the Macbook obviously need to be on if I want the choice of my entire iTunes library. If not I'm limited to less than 40GB of stuff which when it comes to movies is about 10.