Anyone struggling to Airplay to a smart TV?

[davehutch]

2021 M1 MBP (14.5)
In the past few weeks, I've tried Airplaying (Screen Mirroring) to two different TVs, both modern, one a Sony and the other an LG.
On both TVs, 90% of the time I can't mirror. Obviously both connected to the same WiFi network.
My wife also can't mirror from her M1 MBP

Very occasionally it works, but there's no pattern to it.

Any ideas?

 

[ignatius345]

So hard to diagnose. Smart TVs have generally just the worst interfaces on earth.

 

[haralds]

It often depends on whether their AirPlay supports full DRM.

 

[davehutch]

It isn't that it doesn't work at all. It sometimes does, mostly doesn't so I don't think the DRM thing is the answer. I'm not streaming content, just screen mirroring

 

[JamesMay82]

I’ve always had this issue and even on Apple TV it’s a bit hit and miss and can take ages to buffer. I only did it for watching videos and photos from my phone so now I upload all to photos in the cloud and watch back via photos app on the Apple TV and that works.

 

[adrianlondon]

Many TVs seem to drop their wifi randomly.

You could check if you can see the TV connected to your router, or you could start a smart-tv app (youtube, netflix, whatever) just to check it's connected, and then try Airplay.

 

[DaveEcc]

Not that I ever tried it, but I know my Sony TV (X90H I think) was known to be plagued with known problems with Airplay. Often won't connect, drops connections, single-digit frame rates when working. I'd be inclined to blame the TVs, as others have said.

 

[bzgnyc2]

2021 M1 MBP (14.5)
In the past few weeks, I've tried Airplaying (Screen Mirroring) to two different TVs, both modern, one a Sony and the other an LG.
On both TVs, 90% of the time I can't mirror. Obviously both connected to the same WiFi network.
My wife also can't mirror from her M1 MBP

Very occasionally it works, but there's no pattern to it.

Any ideas?

Had similar problems on a family member's Roku-based TV. However, I believe Apple likes to control the AirPlay module of licensing TV manufacturers so it's possible we're all suffering the same issues even if different TV OS. I have found macOS to TV less reliable than I would liked. I also found that sometimes I had to clear out the related Keychain entries and start a fresh handshake. Also I recall that having Apple's firewall turned on messed things up and turning it off helped. However that's not something I am willing ot leave off.

On the other hand, my iPhone always seemed to work with the TV. Which could have been because there's no firewall to turn on there...

Anyway, when it worked it worked great. Unfortunately it evolved through not working, working, not working, etc. Always complicating the situation is that every vendor now insists on autoupdating what used to be called firmware. So did the TV autoupdate and now it's broke? Or did the TV autoupdate a few weeks ago and we're just noticing that now because AirPlay isn't working... I do remember at least one macOS didn't work well (I want to say Mojave or Catalina) with that TV on a particular firmware but the next macOS (I want to say Catalina or Monterey) did...

As such i would try these things:

• Test iPhone mirroring to same TVs?
• Correlation to recent updates of your laptops' macOS?
• Detach/reset screen mirroring on both sides, disable firewall, reestablish AirPlay connection? If that restores it, does then turning on the firewall again break it again?
• Establishing AirPlay connection from a new profile from one of the Macs
• If you established the AirPlay connection from an Admin account, you might try finding and deleting all system-wide Keychain entries related to AirPlay

 

[cadec]

14.6.1 updated & new bug: unable to / no longer will cast/airplay from intel iMac to Roku tv

TBH could have happened from a previous 14.4 & newer update but just discovered this one on 14.6.1 when attempting again. (after multiple restarts, troubleshooting, etc. just won't work anymore.

 

[Reverend Benny]

@davehutch

I know that some routers are just useless at mixing 2.4 & 5Ghz, a good start could be to check so that you are on the same band.
If you have a router that supports both, try and create a dedicated 2.4ghz wifi and connect a TV and the laptop you can't to work on that band and see what happens.
Alternatively log in to your router and check the connectivity your devices have. If they are on separate band that could be the issue.