Itunes 10.2.2 not playing along with ATV2 or iphone remote

[MorgensterBE]

Hi,

since getting the ATV2 in januari I have not been able to get it to work reliably once.
I was looking forward to using airplay to stream music and movies to my tv and stereo but so far this doesn't really work well enough to enjoy.

First my setup:
1 ATV2
1 iMac core2duo 2.6Ghz (3 years old, I think)
1 iphone 3GS 32GB white
1 all in one wireless cable modem and router provided by my cable company
All devices are on the same network with the different IP's and the same router IP. All have no trouble at all connecting to the internet.

Second the issues:
- ATV2 will sometimes see my itunes library and I'll be able to browse and play stuff. If I let it play the connection will cut out after an unpredictable amount of time (anywhere from 5mins to 1hr).
- connection with my iphone was dodgy as well until I connected the ATV2 to the ethernet port on the router. Since then iphone and atv play along nicely.
- remote app in iphone will only sporadically have access to itunes even though itunes is running virtually all the time. When it does connect, the connection will drop at an unpredictable time as with ATV. What's worse is that if I manage to get remote to connect to itunes and then it drops the connection between iphone and atv is temporarily out as well. I've reproduced this pretty reliably. After a while (10-20 mins) iphone and atv play along again.

I'm glad I can already get iphone to stream to the atv reasonably reliably, but I bought the ATV to get to my library in itunes on my imacand preferably by using my iphone as a remote instead of the streaming device.

I've scoured the fora, googled and searched and so far all I can find is that many have similar issues with these devices and virtually none are the 100% the same. I'm also past the whole rebooting devices and restarting applications thing. I'm getting a little desperate because I'd like to know that I didn't just throw $ 100 down the drain.

So does anyone have a list of suggestions other than the obligatory reboot this and restart that? I'd like to be able to show off my toys without having to tell people redfaced that I have to restart something first for it to maybe work.

edit: forgot to mention that all devices are up to date and none are jailbroken. I'd also like to avoid jailbreaking, not because I think it is wrong, but because I believe the products should just work as intended.

 

[Krad3130]

iMac and atv2 distance from each other?

How far away is your iMac from your ATV2? If they are pretty far away it may be your connection and not something wrong with the devices. I saw this only because when you hard wired your ATV2 your iPhone was able to play without any issues. I am thinking that possibly your wireless network isnt that strong.

I am just speculating, wireless anything can be finicky at times

 

[MorgensterBE]

How far away is your iMac from your ATV2? If they are pretty far away it may be your connection and not something wrong with the devices. I saw this only because when you hard wired your ATV2 your iPhone was able to play without any issues. I am thinking that possibly your wireless network isnt that strong.

I am just speculating, wireless anything can be finicky at times

AFAIK it's the distance to the router that counts and that's about 6 meters. Either way, all devices have full reception and transmission and are within the same space (8 x 4 meters).

Thanks for chiming in.

 

[MorgensterBE]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

No Takers?

 

[Penquin79]

Not playing along

How old are your wireless phones? Was having the same problem until I noticed the streaming would drop if one of the wireless handsets was being used. Seems the old phones interfere with the wifi signal.

 

[MorgensterBE]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

No wireless phones nearby. Also, new development: it seems that the connection re-establishes itself after a while without the need to reset anything... WTF?

 

[MorgensterBE]

I'm at my wits end here.
So next question:
is there info on how many people have these issues and whether matters improve by using an airport extreme basestation instead of a generic modem/wifi-router? I'm considering trying to make it work through a network on an Apple basestation but I want some confirmation that the machines will work flawlessly before investing in that.

 

[Enigmafan420]

I'm at my wits end here.
So next question:
is there info on how many people have these issues and whether matters improve by using an airport extreme basestation instead of a generic modem/wifi-router? I'm considering trying to make it work through a network on an Apple basestation but I want some confirmation that the machines will work flawlessly before investing in that.

I had a somewhat similar, though less serious problem when I first got my ATV2. I was using an APE but it was quite far from my living room and since all antennae are internal on the APE, the Apple TV2 was not getting a good signal.

I helped the ATV2 buy purchasing an Airport Express Base station which is plugged into a wall socket right next to the ATV2. I am using it as a repeater and have not had any issues since. I guess this wireless setup is expensive ($180 + $100)! Could get three ATV2s for that, but it has solved my connectivity issues.