Why does Apple TV Photo Slideshow SUCK so much?

[qwimjim]

I have 5000+ photos in iphoto for it to draw from yet it grabs what seems to grab about 50 photos and then I'll see tons of repeats even in those 50 photos. The next time the slideshow loads you would think ok, at least it will show 50 complete different photos, but no, 30-50 of them will be ones you saw last time the screen saver played.

It's maddening how **** this feature is, when it's a really important feature, when they've had years to do it right and three hardware iterations. I don't get it? How does this get over looked?

I can activate the screen saver on my iMac and mirror it on my tv with Airparrot and it works flawlessly, it's obviously not an issue of wi-fi bandwith.. there's no reason why it can't work on the Apple TV.. it would be something as simple as the Apple TV fetching photos from the Mac and -only- resorting to its microscopic photo cache as a last resort. I don't get it. There are years worth of threads and hundreds of people complaining about this on the Apple Support forums... and nothing.

Urgh

 

[carlgo]

From the beginning I set up albums of photos that I liked, were of certain subjects, etc. Most contain 50-100 or so images. Since I haven't noticed any duplication problems, the smaller number of images to choose from must be the answer. You might try spitting your collection into two albums, then four and so on to find what the limit is.

I think iTunes has the same problem. If I use shuffle on a limited playlist it works well, but if I use my entire lot of purchased tunes, I get duplicates like a bad AM radio station. Not a scientific analysis, but it seems to be this way...

 

[qwimjim]

From the beginning I set up albums of photos that I liked, were of certain subjects, etc. Most contain 50-100 or so images. Since I haven't noticed any duplication problems, the smaller number of images to choose from must be the answer. You might try spitting your collection into two albums, then four and so on to find what the limit is.

I think iTunes has the same problem. If I use shuffle on a limited playlist it works well, but if I use my entire lot of purchased tunes, I get duplicates like a bad AM radio station. Not a scientific analysis, but it seems to be this way...

But yet when I use the Artsaver third party screen saver, I can select a folder of photos with thousands of photos and it will never show me a duplicate, works just like you imagined it should. And then with airparrot I can view the truly random full library slideshow on my Apple TV.. but this is not exactly convenient, but it shows that there's no reason why Apple can't implement this properly. The slideshow feature could be one of the best things about the Apple TV, if it was done right..

 

[majuha]

When home sharing your iPhoto Library and load it on the AppleTV, does it have to load the entire library every single time, or is it just once?

Thanks!

 

[lsvtecjohn3]

I have 5000+ photos in iphoto for it to draw from yet it grabs what seems to grab about 50 photos and then I'll see tons of repeats even in those 50 photos. The next time the slideshow loads you would think ok, at least it will show 50 complete different photos, but no, 30-50 of them will be ones you saw last time the screen saver played.

It's maddening how **** this feature is, when it's a really important feature, when they've had years to do it right and three hardware iterations. I don't get it? How does this get over looked?

I can activate the screen saver on my iMac and mirror it on my tv with Airparrot and it works flawlessly, it's obviously not an issue of wi-fi bandwith.. there's no reason why it can't work on the Apple TV.. it would be something as simple as the Apple TV fetching photos from the Mac and -only- resorting to its microscopic photo cache as a last resort. I don't get it. There are years worth of threads and hundreds of people complaining about this on the Apple Support forums... and nothing.

Urgh

It's been like this for years. Tons of people have the same problem and I'm one of them. From my understanding theres no fix. I really wish Apple would fix this problem. I have over 12,ooo pictures and I might see a few hundred.

 

[zedsdead]

Same problem here. One of my biggest annoyances with the iOS apple TVs.

Also the lack of a filtering system for tv shows and movies like the old model had.

 

[zhenya]

Is your iMac generally sleeping when you use the AppleTV? I've noticed the same issue, but for me it's usually that the iMac hosting the photo library is asleep. It doesn't seem to wake it up to grab new photos. If its awake I see far fewer duplicates.

I do agree it could be better though.

 

[jdag]

I have a similar problem accessing photos through Aperture, not iPhoto. I haven't completely figured it out, but I believe it has to do with "Previews" that Aperture creates.

Basically, the previews are smaller copies of the original photos and therefore more readily usable in external apps. I would guess that iPhoto uses previews too.

When adding or removing photos in the Aperture group that supplies my AppleTV screensaver, sometimes those photos either don't appear or still appear. In other words, the change made in Aperture is not immediately available to the AppleTV.

The way I've gotten around this is to occasionally rebuild my Aperture library.

I too would love to know if there is a better solution.

 

[Skoopman]

Just a question, do you guys use the Photostream function or access your shared photos? The Photostream didn't download all my photos either, only about 450 from 670, still a lot. When I access my shared photos it displays them all.

 

[tgrushka]

For historical perspective, 10 years later (!!!), Apple TV Photos still sucks really, really bad and seems to have gone steadily downhill with each new Apple TV release:

• The slideshow and screen saver transitions are way too fast. Each photo is only on screen for 3 to 4 seconds. Not even 5 seconds. And you can't slow it down -- there are no transition time settings anywhere, either in Settings or in the Photos app.
• You must manually favorite each and every photo you want to show up. When iCloud Photos is turned on under settings, you can't turn on photo streaming and vice versa.
• When I choose "Activity" or "Family," I get only one photo in the slideshow.
• You can't favorite groups of photos on your iPhone. Nope, it's one at a time for that!
• On my Mac, I had to go in and select groups of many photos at once to favorite. Then, on one group, the favorite icon was grayed out. I dug around and found that photos that have been shared with you are not favoritable (how stupid is that!!!) -- so if they're selected as part of a group, the entire group is not favoritable!
• Only after I favorited several hundred photos did they show up in my Apple TV screensaver. And then, the same 10 photos played over and over again, and there was no logical rhyme or reason to the order.
• You cannot even browse an entire Memory in Apple TV Photos. You only get about 10 of the photos Apple chooses for you from the Memory.

Apple spent $4B on an office park, but they cannot even hire decent UX designers or writers, and are riding on the coattails Steve Jobs laid out before he lost his mind and tapped Tim Cook to succeed him.

 

[Boyd01]

I used my photos as a screensaver from my Mac with homesharing on two AppleTV 3's for a number of years and they worked great. This never worked properly at all when I upgraded to two AppleTV 4's (AppleTV HD). I can choose them in the screensaver settings and the preview works perfectly. But they just don't display at all when the actual screensaver kicks in.

Finally gave up, it just wasn't worth the aggravation. Now I just use the standard aerial screensaver.

 

[w5jck]

But yet when I use the Artsaver third party screen saver, I can select a folder of photos with thousands of photos and it will never show me a duplicate, works just like you imagined it should. And then with airparrot I can view the truly random full library slideshow on my Apple TV.. but this is not exactly convenient, but it shows that there's no reason why Apple can't implement this properly. The slideshow feature could be one of the best things about the Apple TV, if it was done right..

Apple doesn't have a clue about Photos, so their app sucks. It always has. It is designed for people with no organizational skills and little brain power, and tries to do everything for you, but falls flat on its face because the Apple developers are clueless. And even worse still, if you have 10-bit images the screensaver function in ATV 4K displays them in 8-bit color which causes color banding. I think Apple uses a lot of developer contractors who never use the apps. Either that, or they are just clueless morons over in the Apple development departments.

The built in screensavers also repeat ad nauseam...

 

[markdief]

Apple should be embarrassed. Displaying photos should be their strength. Kill off the Apple photostream or fix this darn thing. I have several Apple TVs and none of them will display more than 50 photos of any given photo stream. I don't know if I am more mad at Apple over this problem or them continuing to make the Iphone in China.