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Does AppleTV "just work" for anyone?

mattwolfmatt

mattwolfmatt

macrumors 65816
Original poster
After experiencing many ATV issues - and eventually trading it in for a mac mini media center (best move I've made) - I'm curious: does Apple TV work for everyone, all the time? Ok, that's a rather high bar, how about, one issue a month?

After switching from PC to Mac about 3 years ago, I was amazed that Macs really did "just work" like they say. I had maybe one issue every few months, but a simple restart did the trick. Nothing like the horrible daily headache of PC world.

However, after what I've experienced, and reading others' experiences, I am curious if anyone has any perfect experiences. If so, please explain how you got to that euphoric state (I'm guessing your library is hard wired to the Apple TV).
 
What kind of issues were you experiencing? My Apple TV has been working fairly fine for the past few years for me.
 
My :apple:TV "just works". I honestly don't know what I'd do without it. It is the center of my home theater in my basement where it is fed a hardwired ethernet connection from my Airport Extreme. My macbook's itunes library serves everything and a dedicated media external hard drive stores content.

I have also used the :apple:TV wirelessly throughout my home and everything seems the same.

I've been able to take the :apple:TV to other people's homes and show off how cool it is without any issues.

All of my media has played flawlessly.

One bit of info: whenever I need to stream new media, I do everything in this order:

1. Make sure :apple:TV is on.
2. Make sure external HD is on and mounted.
3. Turn on iTunes.
4. Add to library the new content.
5. Restart iTunes.
6. Enjoy

That is how I've always done it and it works great. It has set the bar so high for me in terms of watching/listening to my own content as well as renting movies.

Also, the wife factor is a huge thing in my book. She can run everything without my help.

I honestly can't imagine going to something else.
 
I've had one for about 2 years and I think it locked up twice on me. I had to unplug it and have it restart to fix the problem. Other than that, I have had no problems with it, I use both the hard drive and streaming over wi-fi and it gets used probably 2-4 hours every day. It's easily my most used Apple product.
 
Had mine for over a year or so and just had the occasional dropping of itunes, but nothing a quick restart won't fix. I use mine a lot here in college. its nice to have hundreds of movies just a click away to watch
 
mattwolfmatt said:
I'm curious: does Apple TV work for everyone, all the time? Ok, that's a rather high bar, how about, one issue a month?
Click to expand...

I am running issue-free, and have been for a while. There was an update to Leopard (before Snow Leopard came out) that fixed syncing issues, which has since been supported by the 3.0 update to the ATV. After that, I still had problems with them getting dropped, but that was all about my Mac going to sleep, rather than the ATVs themselves.

Since fixing the sleep issue, all 4 of my ATVs (2 wired, 2 wireless) stay connected and synced without any trouble. It's been months since I had a problem.
 
Yep, I can honestly say that my AppleTV works perfectly. I've had it over a year and a half and have had no major problems at all. I've had to reset it a couple of times but thats my own fault for encoding some files wrong. I've applied every update as soon as it's been released with no problems. It's hardwired to my homemade WHS with almost 3Tb of content and it just works. I don't know how I'd manage without it and if it ever did break down I'd replace it with a new one in a heart beat.
 
Works great for me. It used to forget its wireless password periodically and come out of standby regularly on its own, but that hasn't happened for a long time now. Recent (say last 6 months) reliability is 100%.

I don't stream, just use it effectively as a large static iPod that happens to be hooked up via digital out into high end audio system, with the bonus of the TV out as well. All I have to do is rip a CD in lossless on my Mac and it's on Apple TV without doing anything in no time. That's exactly what I was looking for and it was worth every penny for me.
 
alphajerk said:
I've had one for about 2 years and I think it locked up twice on me. I had to unplug it and have it restart to fix the problem. Other than that, I have had no problems with it, I use both the hard drive and streaming over wi-fi and it gets used probably 2-4 hours every day. It's easily my most used Apple product.
Click to expand...

I also have had one for 2 years via Wireless and another for 18 months via wired. I originally had an old slow computer and would occasionally have some issues. I then went to a quad core i5 8gb Ram Windows 7 tower with 7tb’s in it. 😀 Haven’t had any problems since really that weren’t the fault of windows (rebooting from patches for example). However, this was fixed setting itunes to start on startup. I also use a flashed Asus RT-N16 router so now I have n wireless. It’s extremely solid. My library is massive as well.

With the old PC i had very long sync times (15 minutes or more). Now it's just about a minute.
 
Mine works great now! I think 2 weeks ago was the first time I had to hard reset in 3 or 4 months. Even though everything is good now, I would say it took me a while to get everything set up. I had to switch from a G/N network to the N only network, and that helped a lot. And tweeked a couple of settings to get all the media to share from my mac mini, I don't store anything locally on the apple TV, only stream from the mac mini 'server'. But as I said, everything works great after I worked through a few initial problems.
 
SilentPanda said:
What kind of issues were you experiencing? My Apple TV has been working fairly fine for the past few years for me.
Click to expand...

Hmm, it must be the vocal minority who are always complaining here, then!

Mine had all sorts of issues: locking up, ATV can't find itunes, itunes can't find ATV, telling me I don't have rights to play a TV show I just bought from itunes . . . about 6 months ago I ebayed it and use a mini media center. I'm so glad I did . . . just last night I watched the new episode of LOST on my big screen TV, through the Mac Mini. Sure I had to watch a few Verizon commercials (maybe 3 minutes total) but it was free.

Just curious if it worked great for anyone.
 
I'm about to buy an Apple TV tomorrow. The nay sayers have made me nervous over the last year so it's good to hear some "It just works" reports.
 
I have two of these, one hacked with an external drive and one stock. They work beautifully and its the best apple products that I own. Linked it up with my hp mediaserver and house my entire dvd/bluray collection. Friends that come over ask me all the time to help them setup their home theater with a similar arrangement. OS 3.0 has been great as far as speeding things up including the loading of cover art which I am over the top OCD about. It just works.
 
Oh and my TV is old enough that I can't plug in a Mac Mini - my Macbook gives green streaks whenever there are bright white moments in video - or I would have done this ages ago...
 
What are most of the issues? Synching? That problem solved by copying all content locally to the ATV? If all content is local, then your Mac w/ itunes doesn't have to be up, correct?
 
I like it, but sometimes wish it could do more. And as for 'just work[ing]', mine drops the connection to iTunes all the time. Other than that, it works really well.
 
dont24 said:
What are most of the issues? Synching? That problem solved by copying all content locally to the ATV? If all content is local, then your Mac w/ itunes doesn't have to be up, correct?
Click to expand...

For me, that was the problem. I buy something with itunes (or appleTV), then when I wanted it to go on the other device, it couldn't sync. I never even wandered into the streaming option. To me that was a bag of hurt.
 
We have 2 AppleTVs at home. No problems at all with either one. They are on a wired network, and I specifically sync different content to each one in iTunes. We don't use any streaming.
 
I have 2 tvs

And they are both working great - only use streaming from the server Mac in the basement - only files on the tvs themselves are photos. Connected via ethernet. Recently had a problem on both that was tracked back to a corrupt iTunes database (hybrid of the old and new formats) and getting everything properly into the new format solved that.

Love using my iPhone Remote app to control it from the bed or the couch. All the screens in the house either are computers, have an tv or have been connected to a computer via HDMI so between the tvs, iTunes, my Slingbox, Netflix streaming, and the other internet streaming options I can watch just about anything anywhere anytime.
 
I've had mine for about a year and a half, and it has always been great for me. It does what it is meant to do. I just upgraded the internal drive to a 320GB drive, and couldn't be happier.
 
I continuously had issues with my ATV not wanting to show a picture on my LCD. I found I could ping it but it wouldn't respond. The only way to get it to work was to unplug it and restart.

Then, I upgraded to a new TV and the problem disappeared. The old TV was a cheaper Sanyo 32" and the new TV is an LG 47LH40. I'm thinking there may be some incompatibility with the HDMI output of the ATV and some cheaper TVs.
 
Just Works x2

Let me preface this, because there were some early struggles I had with syncing and dropped connections... These were rectified by the following: iTunes Updates, AppleTV Updates, and removing the AirPort card from my PowerMac G4 (iTunes Server), and sticking with a solid Ethernet connection to AirPort Extreme/n Base Station.

With those in place, I now have 2 AppleTV's (Bedroom/Family Room) working and humming along with no resets, restarts, relaunches!

It just works, and for me thats when it become magical...

Now if I can only get my G5 to take control over the G4 Library so I don't have to double my massive libraries.
 
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