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New Apple TV not buffering movies over Home Share?

BulkHedd

BulkHedd

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 13, 2006
497
18
The other day I sat down to watch Ant-Man, purchased from iTunes. I downloaded it to my Windows desktop PC. I have been doing this for a few years now. I use the Apple TV to stream the movies from the PC using Home Sharing.

But when I tried to watch Ant-Man with the new Apple TV it did not seem to be buffering and the movie kept pausing. Note the movie is completely downloaded and saved on the hard drive on my PC.

I tried resetting the router, rebooting the PC, restarting the Apple TV but nothing would happen. I seem to recall that with the older Apple TV I could see the progress bar buffered past where I was currently playing from. But on this ATV it never moved beyond the point where it was playing.

I ended up streaming the movie from the cloud and it never paused at all once it started.

Anyone else experiencing this?
 
BulkHedd said:
The other day I sat down to watch Ant-Man, purchased from iTunes. I downloaded it to my Windows desktop PC. I have been doing this for a few years now. I use the Apple TV to stream the movies from the PC using Home Sharing.

But when I tried to watch Ant-Man with the new Apple TV it did not seem to be buffering and the movie kept pausing. Note the movie is completely downloaded and saved on the hard drive on my PC.

I tried resetting the router, rebooting the PC, restarting the Apple TV but nothing would happen. I seem to recall that with the older Apple TV I could see the progress bar buffered past where I was currently playing from. But on this ATV it never moved beyond the point where it was playing.

I ended up streaming the movie from the cloud and it never paused at all once it started.

Anyone else experiencing this?
Click to expand...
Hi Bulkhead,
There seems to be a few others having this problems including a guy who's bought the same film...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/home-sharing-buffering.1938787/page-2
 
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BulkHedd said:
The other day I sat down to watch Ant-Man, purchased from iTunes. I downloaded it to my Windows desktop PC. I have been doing this for a few years now. I use the Apple TV to stream the movies from the PC using Home Sharing.

But when I tried to watch Ant-Man with the new Apple TV it did not seem to be buffering and the movie kept pausing. Note the movie is completely downloaded and saved on the hard drive on my PC.

I tried resetting the router, rebooting the PC, restarting the Apple TV but nothing would happen. I seem to recall that with the older Apple TV I could see the progress bar buffered past where I was currently playing from. But on this ATV it never moved beyond the point where it was playing.

I ended up streaming the movie from the cloud and it never paused at all once it started.

Anyone else experiencing this?
Click to expand...
Happens to me a lot. Restart the ATV (Settings>System). Works every time for me.
 
I had the same problem with both music and films.
I found no way to fix it. Works fine on the ATV3, so i just returned the 4.
 
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BulkHedd said:
The other day I sat down to watch Ant-Man, purchased from iTunes. I downloaded it to my Windows desktop PC. I have been doing this for a few years now. I use the Apple TV to stream the movies from the PC using Home Sharing.

But when I tried to watch Ant-Man with the new Apple TV it did not seem to be buffering and the movie kept pausing. Note the movie is completely downloaded and saved on the hard drive on my PC.

I tried resetting the router, rebooting the PC, restarting the Apple TV but nothing would happen. I seem to recall that with the older Apple TV I could see the progress bar buffered past where I was currently playing from. But on this ATV it never moved beyond the point where it was playing.

I ended up streaming the movie from the cloud and it never paused at all once it started.

Anyone else experiencing this?
Click to expand...

I experienced the same thing when I first tried streaming via home sharing on the new ATV. Strangely, streaming from the cloud worked perfectly. The problem seems to have fixed itself however. Streaming is now smooth regardless of where I'm streaming from. Hope yours gets sorted out! Good luck!
 
This has been pissing me off all day. My wife was giving me a hard time about how much the new Apple TV sucks. 9.1 better come out fast!
 
I experienced this problem watching a movie from my Mac Mini last night. It is even connected to my ATV4 via a powerLink rather than wifi, so I was very surprised.

The ATV4 just gets worse and worse at the moment... :(
 
If you purchased from iTunes isn't it auto download on all devices? If not why not go into iTunes Store on Apple TV and manually download it there since it's always purchased?
 
I don't think the ATV stores any media locally, just apps.

And when I looked at media I have already purchased in iTunes on the ATV it seemed to want to charge me again? Certainly, it didn't have the little cloud icon you would see on you iPhone or Mac.
 
Do yourself a favor and dump home sharing for plex
Apple will not update home sharing to make it better while plex will

Try it out for a week is free , if you don't like it go back to homesharing

Is the same thing but better , instead of having iTunes running , you will have plex media server running
 
Che Castro said:
Do yourself a favor and dump home sharing for plex
Apple will not update home sharing to make it better while plex will

Try it out for a week is free , if you don't like it go back to homesharing

Is the same thing but better , instead of having iTunes running , you will have plex media server running
Click to expand...

That's good advice and I'm a big fan of Plex, but it doesn't work with DRM protected movies (such as those bought from the iTunes store)
 
Phil A. said:
That's good advice and I'm a big fan of Plex, but it doesn't work with DRM protected movies (such as those bought from the iTunes store)
Click to expand...
You can remove the DRM I use Tuneskit

I just did so with over 1000 movies as the home sharing interface is totally useless for large collections

Apple dropped the ball big time in this, I spent good money with them, thousands, but got shafted, slow internet so can not rely on streaming from the cloud as they seem to think is the only way

Been Apple user for 30 years but they are beginning to lose me of late
 
xraydoc said:
This has been pissing me off all day. My wife was giving me a hard time about how much the new Apple TV sucks. 9.1 better come out fast!
Click to expand...
Ha! This is exactly what my wife said! "Why do we need this new apple tv when the old one worked way better?"
 
Chill2 said:
You can remove the DRM I use Tuneskit

I just did so with over 1000 movies as the home sharing interface is totally useless for large collections

Apple dropped the ball big time in this, I spent good money with them, thousands, but got shafted, slow internet so can not rely on streaming from the cloud as they seem to think is the only way

Been Apple user for 30 years but they are beginning to lose me of late
Click to expand...

I also purchased Tuneskit to remove DRM from all of my iTunes purchased movies so I could play them through Plex. I was forced to do this because my Apple TV 4 constantly paused when streaming movies from my Mac Mini using home sharing. I really hope Apple fixes this issue in 9.1.
 
BulkHedd said:
The other day I sat down to watch Ant-Man, purchased from iTunes. I downloaded it to my Windows desktop PC. I have been doing this for a few years now. I use the Apple TV to stream the movies from the PC using Home Sharing.

But when I tried to watch Ant-Man with the new Apple TV it did not seem to be buffering and the movie kept pausing. Note the movie is completely downloaded and saved on the hard drive on my PC.

I tried resetting the router, rebooting the PC, restarting the Apple TV but nothing would happen. I seem to recall that with the older Apple TV I could see the progress bar buffered past where I was currently playing from. But on this ATV it never moved beyond the point where it was playing.

I ended up streaming the movie from the cloud and it never paused at all once it started.

Anyone else experiencing this?
Click to expand...


Yes I stream from a big old 2009 Mac Pro silver box that I run headless and store all my movies and TV shows on as well as archival backup for my files and such from my macbook.

Never had issue with old apple TV 2 but this happens all the time with my new Apple TV 4 as well this is a real pain in watching movies. But it is inconsistent. Sometimes it will work and others the issue you see enough to be a major pain. Times when it pauses I cannot get it to start again and have to go out, reboot replay and resume to get it going. Not a good solution.

I also have the latest airport extreme WIFI and all in my system. Not sure what the issue is if it is with the old Mac pro and this new Apple TV, WIFI issues, but your observations on buffering seem valid.

Russ
 
Great news the TVOS 9.1 out today fixes this problem. Now my HD homeshare movies buffer fully and properly no more pauses, stalls and stuffering when buffer limit is reached because the whole movie is now buffered from my home share
 
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