Apple TV stutters streaming video

[Mindflux]

Sometimes my AppleTV stutters or pauses when streaming video off my iMac. I'm on a wireless b/g/n router (Airport Extreme).

The connection between the Apple TV and the router is "N", as well as the one between my iMac and the router.

movie specs are 765 kbps

664x274 resolution

This is well within the AppleTV's capabilities if I am not mistaken.

The AppleTV is 6 feet from the wireless router. iMac is through a wall and 15 feet or so.

 

[Jestered]

Although I don't know why it is not capable of stutter free streaming on a b/g/n network... it is not.

One thing to keep in mind is that even though you have an airport extreme, you are not going to get n speeds unless the base is set to n only. If you have it set to b/g/n capable, you will only get about half the speed of n (even if you only have n machines connected to it). The only way to get the full n speed is to set the router to a n only network.

By having an n only network you won't have anymore stutters with the appletv (at least I don't anymore).

The way my network is setup, since my iPhone needs the b/g network to get on wifi at home, I have my airport extreme setup as the dhcp server and it is set as a n only network. This way I get the full n speeds for all my n machines and my appletv. I hardwired (ethernet) my airport express to the extreme and it is set to be a bridge. This way I have two wireless networks. The extreme for n only (full speeds) machines/devices and the express for b/g capable machines/devices.

Using the above setup I can access the remote speakers and printer on the express base even if I am on the extreme network. I can also access the airdisks/printers that are on the extreme base even if I am on the express network.

If you don't have any b/g devices, make your extreme base a n only network and you will not have problems.

You can check your link speed by going to Network Utility, click on the info tab and look for the link speed. If your extreme base is set to be b/g/n capable, your link speed on an n machine will be something like 130. If you make the extreme base a n only network, and then check the link speed, you will see that you are now getting a link speed of 300. The only way to get that 300 speed is by having a n only network.

 

[Mindflux]

Yes, but you get 130Mbit N, not 300Mbit N. It's STILL a huge difference over a G network.

The AppleTV does have an N card, does it not?

Both my nintendo ds and nintendo Wii use b or g.

 

[NightStorm]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3B48b Safari/419.3)

I've found that restarting my appletv on a weekly basis helps with stuttering problems I notice when streaming via native 802.11n.

 

[Mindflux]

Well I streamed directly off my airdisk last night and it was much more smooth than off my iMac. Which is weird considering the interface on the iMac is faster (SATA 3Gb/s vs USB 2.0).

All I can think of is OS overhead causing it.

Maybe I'll just move all my stuff to my air disk.

 

[gkarris]

Is your host computer on wireless? That might cause too much wireless traffic between the host and the TV.

My host is a PC which is connected directly wired to the wireless router. I get no stuttering on g..

 

[Mindflux]

Is your host computer on wireless? That might cause too much wireless traffic between the host and the TV.

My host is a PC which is connected directly wired to the wireless router. I get no stuttering on g..

Yep, host iMac is wireless..

None the less it streamed fine right over my airdisk. AppleTV is wireless to Airport Extreme.. so shouldn't have been too different.

Now i need to figure out how to mount my air disk the way I want.

 

[billabong]

I've been having this issues lately too, I'm streaming through an ethernet cable. Haven't had issues before, but in the past few weeks it freezes up when playing HD content.

 

[NightStorm]

I've had problems streaming HD content (at ~4750kbps) where it simply stops listening on the network. The stream is going by with no problems when it all of a sudden stops, freezing the picture on the screen. I believe this is an issue with the way AppleTV handles large streaming files, as I am getting ~22Mbps up to the point it freezes, and it doesn't freeze if the file I am watching is less than 60 minutes in length (it finishes buffering the entire file to the AppleTV hard drive).

Here's to hoping the upcoming update to the Leopard OS platform (which will undoubtedly happen if they do in fact release an update this week) fixes this issue.

 

[sandman42]

Yep, host iMac is wireless..

None the less it streamed fine right over my airdisk. AppleTV is wireless to Airport Extreme.. so shouldn't have been too different.

Now i need to figure out how to mount my air disk the way I want.

If you're streaming data that's stored on an Airdisk, I think the data follows a complicated path through the wireless system. It passes through the AEBS once as iTunes reads the data from the Airdisk, then another time when iTunes then sends the data back to the TV through the AEBS. I don't think the system has the capability to bypass the streaming computer and send the data from Airdisk to TV directly.

Other people have reported having problems with this type of setup, but it seems to work for some. It's a lot of data flow for the AEBS to handle at once, and it might be near the limit of what the system can handle. It might depend on the quality of your wireless connections, how much interference there is, etc. Also, are you sure everything on your network is running at 'N' speeds? If anything's connected at 'G' rates, I think it will slow your whole network down (like what happens with mixed b/g systems).

 

[Mindflux]

If you're streaming data that's stored on an Airdisk, I think the data follows a complicated path through the wireless system. It passes through the AEBS once as iTunes reads the data from the Airdisk, then another time when iTunes then sends the data back to the TV through the AEBS. I don't think the system has the capability to bypass the streaming computer and send the data from Airdisk to TV directly.

Other people have reported having problems with this type of setup, but it seems to work for some. It's a lot of data flow for the AEBS to handle at once, and it might be near the limit of what the system can handle. It might depend on the quality of your wireless connections, how much interference there is, etc. Also, are you sure everything on your network is running at 'N' speeds? If anything's connected at 'G' rates, I think it will slow your whole network down (like what happens with mixed b/g systems).

These don't go through iTunes at all. In short, AirDisk->AEBS->AppleTV.

 

[26139]

yeah...

The reason you'd have skipping over via the iMac instead of the AirDisk is simple. The connection to the airdisk is faster, is it not?

 

[sandman42]

These don't go through iTunes at all. In short, AirDisk->AEBS->AppleTV.

Hmmm. It would be nice if it worked this way, but I don't think it does. The TV streams from iTunes, which is installed on your computer, and iTunes in turn accesses the data from the Airdisk, which are independent wireless operations. This has been discussed in other threads and the consensus is that this is how it works, which explains why it may be too much wireless traffic to run smoothly. Try connecting the HD with your iTunes library on it directly to your computer and see if the performance is improved.

 

[theBB]

Although I don't know why it is not capable of stutter free streaming on a b/g/n network... it is not.

I have g network and I stream high bitrate videos without issues. Your network might be experiencing a lot of interference, your base station might be dropping the connection etc. Wireless networks are not as robust as I wish they were.