Wife is fed up with ATV - Suggestions? (Sorry long post)

[Wardotron]

There are a few things you could do:

1. Don't download TV or movies from iTunes directly via the TV. I find that the unit becomes quite unreliable (slow, locks up) when I do. Buy media via your computer and sync from there.

2. Hardwire the TV via ethernet. If you do use WIFI at any point (e.g. administering an iTunes library shared on AirDisk on an AEBS), lock your router to 802.11 N only, not A/G/N.

Doing those two things has improved my reliability no end.

As an extra, have you considered installing ATV Flash? It doesn't cost a lot and adds extra functionality that the TV should feature straight off the bat, e.g. external USB disks, drag and drop, extra file formats, plus support for Boxee and XBMC. Well worth it.

 

[BillHarrison]

Did they ever fix the fans in those things? My 360 just sits because I can't hear the TV over it.

I would return that thing, or get the speakers in your TV fixed. I had a launch day box that was a tad on the loud side, but only while gaming.

If you cant hear your tv over it, something is definitely wrong.

 

[TheCheapGeek]

Thats very sad, the Apple TV is a mixed bag. Me and my wife love both of our Apple TV and they now work great. Putting big drives in the Apple TV sounds like your best option, but really with the purchased content you are kind of screwed. Plex is really only other software that will play itunes purchased content.

 

[PixelFactory]

Is your imac set to go to sleep after a certain amount of time. If it is and you do not have "wake for network access" checked in the Energy Saver control panel, you will lose the connection to iTunes when the iMac goes to sleep.

Depending on the age of your iMac, you may need to have it wired to the network for this to work. The newer models can do this over WiFi.

 

[rayward]

Is your imac set to go to sleep after a certain amount of time. If it is and you do not have "wake for network access" checked in the Energy Saver control panel, you will lose the connection to iTunes when the iMac goes to sleep.

Depending on the age of your iMac, you may need to have it wired to the network for this to work. The newer models can do this over WiFi.

+1

I had exactly the same problem as the OP, and this was the fix. I'd upgraded to Snow Leopard, and it reset the power management settings to put the CPU to sleep after three hours. My Mac is too old for wake-over-LAN so, once it went to sleep, that was the end of syncing and streaming. The "wrong format" error message on the ATV is generic and 99 times out of 100 means that the iTunes link is lost.

Go to the Power Management settings, and set your CPU to always on. It still turns the screen off, so it's not a massive power drain, and your ATVs will always have all your content available.

 

[jeffreco74]

My Fix

I had the same problem with my ATV. I went ahead and paid for ATV Flash as I had read a lot of good things about it. One of the features of that program is that it enables the use of an external hard drive with AppleTV. I went and bought a 2TB WD extnernal hard drive and now I sync to that. No more problems. All videos are right there on the drive, so there are no playback issues.

 

[mattwolfmatt]

I had the same issue (almost exact) except my wife was never really sold on the ATV. When it started acting up (wifi issues, won't connect to itunes, etc) she had it. Gave up.

I sold the ATV and found a used mac mini. Sure it's more money, but how much is a happy marriage worth?

Way better than an ATV, because now I can watch shows streaming (The Office, LOST, etc) instead of buying them from itunes. I also have a 1TB external connected via firewire 800; this is faster than accessing the internal HD.

Good luck!

 

[jaw04005]

No PROPRIETARY formats! Everything I have is in easy to use formats, I don't have to worry about. I rip everything myself and store all the movies on large external drives. Originals are put away for safekeeping.


Nothing against apple, but microsoft just has a much better and more capable media solution with Windows Media Center and the 360 extender than apple does with the aTV.

Really.

What do you call those DVR-MS/.WTV files that Microsoft stores your TV recordings in? The same DVR-MS/.WTV files that wouldn't play on other Vista PCs until Microsoft finally relented and shipped an optional software update years after Vista was released? Not only are both DVR-MS and .WTV proprietary, but they're also wrapped in DRM. DRM that was actually added by Windows Media Center because over-the-air and QAM broadcasts are encoded in plain, non-DRMed MPEG-2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVR-MS

By the way, both AVI and DiVX are proprietary formats. MPEG-4 and h.264 are not.

And while we're discussing Media Center Extenders, what about the fact that the Netflix and Internet TV sections of Windows Media Center 7 don't play on Media Center Extenders?

With Media Center, you're essentially just trading iTunes for Windows Media Player or Zune. However, now you're relying on your PC to provide your media playback interface too since Windows Media Center Extenders can't even boot without a remote connection to a Windows PC.

With all of its limitations, at least the Apple TV can operate as a stand alone device.

 

[fpnc]

Is your imac set to go to sleep after a certain amount of time. If it is and you do not have "wake for network access" checked in the Energy Saver control panel, you will lose the connection to iTunes when the iMac goes to sleep.

Depending on the age of your iMac, you may need to have it wired to the network for this to work. The newer models can do this over WiFi.

No, the "Wake for Ethernet network administrator access" won't help at all since that only responds to a signal that can be sent by a number of special administrator utilities (i.e. just any old network activity won't do). You can check this out on Google, there are a few utilities that are designed to work with this option, even some that work on the iPod touch and iPhone (in the latter cases you can use the iPod touch or iPhone to wake your Mac). However, the Apple TV can't wake a sleeping Mac/PC and once a host enters sleep mode you won't be able to stream content from it and you'll get errors on the Apple TV if you try to access content that is stored on the now sleeping Mac/PC.

My Apple TV is nearing its three year anniversary and I've actually had very few problems. However, WiFi issues can cause real havoc and I'll admit that I've spent more than a few hours over the past several years optimizing my network (for my Apple TV and other equipment). The only other major problem I've ever seen was an old bug in the iTunes application that caused purchased content to be deleted from the Apple TV (but that was fixed with an update to the iTunes application more than six months ago).

By the way, my Apple TV is now running in a bridged WiFi/wired network setup. The Apple TV is connected to an ethernet switch which is also connected to a PS3, a SlingBox SOLO, and an old G4 Mac mini (which is synced with the Apple TV). However, all of these devices get their internet connection through a single Airport Express N which acts as a wireless bridge to my Airport Extreme located in another room (where I have my main desktop system and my cable modem).

 

[gdeusthewhizkid]

Plex is the heart and soul of all HTPC Mac based computers!! It is an awesome app, the will categorize all of your movies, tv shows, music automatically, you can play videos, music, stream netflix and hulu, all from the application itself, and if you have a ton of iTunes videos, it can also play that with the Front Row plugin. It does take a while to setup, but once it is, you forget about it and just use it, no need to tinker with it much after initial setup.

isnt that what itunes does.. i dont see the big deal about plex...

 

[PixelFactory]

No, the "Wake for Ethernet network administrator access" won't help at all since that only responds to a signal that can be sent by a number of special administrator utilities (i.e. just any old network activity won't do). You can check this out on Google, there are a few utilities that are designed to work with this option, even some that work on the iPod touch and iPhone (in the latter cases you can use the iPod touch or iPhone to wake your Mac). However, the Apple TV can't wake a sleeping Mac/PC and once a host enters sleep mode you won't be able to stream content from it and you'll get errors on the Apple TV if you try to access content that is stored on the now sleeping Mac/PC.

Actually, Apple enabled this in Snow Leopard to work when sharing the iTunes library with other machines. I use this with my macbook and my AppleTv and it works flawlessly.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3774

 

[fpnc]

Actually, Apple enabled this in Snow Leopard to work when sharing the iTunes library with other machines. I use this with my macbook and my AppleTv and it works flawlessly.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3774

Okay, I stand corrected, this is a new Snow Leopard feature and it requires either an Airport Extreme/Express or a Time Machine and one of the newer Macs if you want to be able to wake over WiFi. In any case, don't confuse this (as I did) with the previously available "Wake for Ethernet network administrator access" which still functions as I described earlier. Furthermore, it seems like it is the Airport Extreme/Express or Time Machine that is waking the Mac, not the Apple TV (that is to say, the Apple TV must access the Mac through an Airport Extreme/Express or Time Machine -- the Apple TV alone apparently can't do it but I see no reason why they couldn't add this capability directly to the Apple TV).

 

[Transporteur]

isnt that what itunes does.. i dont see the big deal about plex...

Plex is way more organised than iTunes and IMO presents the media in much more convenient way.
Just take a look at it, it's really gorgeous.

However, I'm moving away from Plex as it is absolutely not stable on my machine. I get continuous crashes when playing my BluRay rips (handbraked to .m4v), whereas Quicktime, iTunes, VLC and Boxee play them without any issues.
It's a shame cause Plex is absolutely superior to iTunes or Boxee in terms of functionality and user interface.

 

[rgarjr]

Plex plays pretty much any format, unlike iTunes.. this is Key.

 

[tommylotto]

I have about ten years of family photos in my iPhoto library. My wife can spend an entire evening drinking a glass of wine (or three) and watching the AppleTV screensaver float photos by. On more than one occasion I have caught her crying.

No. Replacing the AppleTVs is not an option.

I too have had sync problem for over a year. I even started a thread about it over at AVS forums. But those problems completely disappeared.

Here is my recipe: 1) latest AppleTV software; 2) latest iTunes software; 3) wired network (not wireless); 4) Computer running iTunes never goes to sleep; 5) Computer running iTunes starts iTunes upon start-up; and 6) media connected directly to computer running iTunes (not network attached).

 

[tommylotto]

Plex plays pretty much any format, unlike iTunes.. this is Key.

Except iTunes content, which is also key...

 

[Sky Blue]

I have about ten years of family photos in my iPhoto library. My wife can spend an entire evening drinking a glass of wine (or three) and watching the AppleTV screensaver float photos by. On more than one occasion I have caught her crying.

No. Replacing the AppleTVs is not an option.

Same here, but we use the slideshow on Plex, it's not really any different.

 

[srexy]

At the risk of becoming a Plex fanboi - Plex will do the following that iTunes/Frontrow can't:

- look at the name of a media folder (eg Ronin, Big Love season 2) and automatically download the synopsis of the individual movie or episode, give it a PG/R etc. rating, give it a rating from 1 - 10 (based on IMDB/TVDB individual reviews), download associated theme music for TV shows, download fan art for all media and then play whatever is in that folder whether it's 1080i, 720p, mkv, mp4, video_ts, rar, iso (the list goes on)
- play Netflix instant queue content
- youtube, vimeo, hulu, pandora, joost, and a slew of cable feeds
- interface seamlessly with iTunes and iPhoto
- recognize a slew of preset Harmony commands as well as offer customization

All of this wrapped up in the most gorgeous eye-candy. Front row is a mangy dog in comparison.

 

[rayward]

Here is my recipe: 1) latest AppleTV software; 2) latest iTunes software; 3) wired network (not wireless); 4) Computer running iTunes never goes to sleep; 5) Computer running iTunes starts iTunes upon start-up; and 6) media connected directly to computer running iTunes (not network attached).

Is iTunes pulling content directly off your Mac's HDD, or off an external drive attached to your Mac? I had a problem with iTunes auto-starting, in that it would open, look for the NAS, not find it immediately and then default back to the on board HDD, which had no content on it.

Now, if I have to reboot my Mac, I manually start iTunes after the NAS has mounted.

 

[Jorad]

Syncing problems with Apple TV - Just change the channel.

I used to have problems with syncing on Apple TV. The only thing that would fix it was to change the channel setting on my wireless modem from automatic to whichever channel had the least interference ( I used iStumbler to figure out which).

My base station is Airport extreme, but I have used this to fix problems with other brands as well.

 

[mrfrosty]

I have 2 Apple TV's connected to an iMAC wirelessly ....the iMAC has network storage over a wire to a Solaris box running ZFS with 6TB of disk.

Streaming works perfectly to both ATV's. I had the stability of connection issue to iTunes once, i just disabled UPNP on my local router and things fixed themself. I also occasionally had it after itunes software updates but nothing super serious (i.e. a reboot of both ATV's fixed it).

 

[dmm219]

After 2 years and 2 atv's, i can say i've NEVER had this problem. I am having issues right now with choppy playback when streaming, but I know thats because I am using mixed B and G on the Time capsule (i have no other choice except buying a new TC or AEBS for the dual band...)

The funny thing is that I have SO many wireless networks going on in my house...wireless phones, wireless security system, two networks (one for WPA, one for my old WEP only devices), wireless headphones on 2 tvs, even a wireless baby monitor...still never have a problem with atvs dropping out of itunes...

 

[jlasoon]

I have the base model with no additional memory or anything and I haven't seen any trouble with full 1080p MKV's. These are straight off the disc, not reduced in bitrate at all. Some are 35 gig files. My ATV has a hard time with 5000kbps 720p movies.

I'm still amazed at how much people complain about 5000kbps 720p movies for the TV. I encode all my Bluray movies using Compressor with the TV preset just to able to watch my movies on my TV. My Samsung Bluray player is a pain in the butt. Movies encoded for the TV using proper techniques result in a beautiful picture, a small file size, and a perfect streaming experience.

I used Handbrake once and deleted the program. The colors were off, the bit-rates were all screwy, and the TV could never stream these movies properly. The difference between my Bluray encode of Wall-E and the original source material is minimal at best. I'll take a 2.8 gig file over a 32 gig file. Most can't tell the difference.

 

[bcrguy]

Bought an Apple TV a year ago. As soon as my wife saw how easy it was to use, she was bought in (the main factor). Between netflix streaming on the 360 and ATV, we quit cable and haven't looked back.

Fast forward to today, we have two Apple TV's, about $300 worth of iTunes video and well over 200 DVD's imported via handbrake. I have been fighting with iTunes sync the entire time! I've done everything. Bought an AEBS, installed every update, reset to factory settings several times, reinstalled iTunes, completely wiped the iMac, static IP's....trust me I've tried everything. To this day, the Apple TV is not reliable enough when using sync. It still drops out of iTunes for no reason. I consider having to restart iTunes routinely an unacceptable solution, and that's best case scenario for us. We also love routinely being told our content won't play, even though a restart of ATV and a little patience makes this message take a coffee break.

My wife finally had it. She no longer uses the Apple TV, opting to just use Netflix on the 360. Her comment was, "It never works for me so I stopped using it". Me, being a total tech...I mean crap that's my career...am also fed up. Here's the problem:

I don't want to go back, re-encode everything and buy $300 of the same video in another format. I considered the following:

• XBOX 360 local storage (iTunes videos wouldn't play)
• XBOX 360 via Connect360 (again...iTunes video wouldn't play)
• Media Center & 360 (Don't know how well it works and I doubt all my iTunes videos will play)
• Install USB hack, hook up external drives to ATV's and sync content local to ATV (Would like this, but it has to be easy and reliable and not require continuous hacking b/c I just don't have time w/ 2 kids)

in order to copy al of your stuff from your imac you dont need a usb hack..
(assuming all your stuff is on your iMac as well as the apple tv) attach an external drive and find all of your movies/tv/whatever in your itunes folder, drag and drop it onto your drive then take them wherever (use this as a backup..) handbrake can also be used to just encode stuff so at the beginning of a day for work( or at nihgt while you are asleep) create a queue in handbrake to encode to a different format..

if you COMPLETLY reconfigure your ATV and it still dosent work id take it back to an apple store..

 

[prostuff1]

XBMC uses the same scrapers as Plex so it picks up all the same content and besides the HD stuff will play it perfectly. (note - I don't know how XBMC handles iTunes content either - I don't have any)

Technically, Plex uses the same scrapers that XBMC uses. Plex is a fork of XBMC that is made to run "more native" on a mac. I use an orginal Xbox with XBMC on it currently but am looking to upgrade to an new HTPC sometime in the near future. I am probably going to go with a Acer Asipre Revo single core Atom machine that run the Nvidia ION chipset. If I combine that machine with XMBC Live I can plan any HD content I want. The Linux version of XMBC does GPU offloading via VDPAU so 1080p content is no sweat for the Aspire Revo.

I am not sure if XMBC can do downloaded iTunes content but I dont buy anything from the iTunes Store.