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AppleTV Syncing Sooooo Slooooooow????

C

Civilian1981

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 10, 2008
7
0
I've just set up my AppleTV and it takes about 5 minutes to sync a single song. I've got thousands so this will take days! Is this normal?

My Mac is connected wirelessly, but I have my AppleTV hardwired to the modem because I thought this would be a little faster.

Does anyone have any suggestions to speed up the file transfer?
 
A couple of questions:

1. When you say you've got it hooked directly up to the modem, does that mean it's got a hard-wired ethernet interface with your computer?

2. What format are your audio files and how large are they? If they're 160 kbps mp3 files, they should sync pretty quickly. If they're lossless or uncompressed, it going to take quite a bit longer.

The initial sync can take quite a while, though, so I wouldn't worry too much about it (my first sync took several hours).
 
Details...

Yeah, hardwired as in ethernet cable connecting to modem.

The music files are your every day mp3's, average quality and compression. I had it running for about 6-7 hours and it only got through about 1,000 songs. I've still got 6,000 to go. Will this take all week?
 
My setup is exactly the same as yours (ATV connected to AEBS via Ethernet cable, wireless desktop).

Do you happen to store all of your media on an external hard drive? If so, do you have a USB hub connecting the hard drive to the desktop? If you do, make sure the hub is using USB 2.0.

I got a new desktop recently and didn't realize my old hub was only USB 1.1. As soon as I swapped it out, it was lightning fast as expected. I never noticed it before since the external hard drive used to be attached directly to the old desktop, and the hub was used for other stuff.
 
Connection...

Everything I'm using is USB 2.0, or wireless. I have an external drive for backups, but that is not turned on, or used in anyway with the ATV.

Just my iMac and ATV. I've been search forums, but can't find any reason why the transfer would be so slow. I imagine pulling the ethernet cable from the ATV and going wireless with that as well would slow things down even more!?!?
 
Civilian1981 said:
Yeah, hardwired as in ethernet cable connecting to modem.
Click to expand...
When you say modem, do you mean wireless base station, cable modem or what? How it's connected to the modem does not say how the AppleTV communicates with your computer (modem is for internet, not network). If there's wireless in any portion of the connection between your computer and the AppleTV, what version is it?

Also, the suggestion about an external hard drive being connected via USB 1 is a good one. This would definitely prove to be a bottleneck.

I had many more songs than that and it took hours to sync (wireless on a "g" network), but not as long as your's is taking.
 
Connection...

Don't have a base station. A modem hardwired to a wireless router. G or N network, can't remember which. Whichever the faster of the two is.

The cable internet comes from the modem, through an ethernet cable to the wireless router. The computer connects to the router and the ATV wirelessly, but the ATV is connected via ethernet cable to the router.

I have an external connected to my iMac, but it's USB 2.0, and only used for back up, it's not even turned on unless I'm backing up files. The music is coming straight from my iMac wirelessly to the ATV.

Does that help?
 
When you first plugged in the ATV, was the ethernet connected to it? If not, unplug it, connect the ethermet, then plug it back it.

The ATV looks for whichever connection it has when it first boots up and will not change until a reboot.
 
Connection...

Yes, the ethernet cable was plugged the first time I turned the ATV on. I've also rebooted a couple times to try and speed things up... no luck though.

For roughly 5,000 songs, how long should it take to sync? I've spent 6-7 hours and only synced 950.
 
Can you hookup your iMac using ethernet for the initial Sync? it might be a pain, but it should be as fast as possible with a fully wired network...
 
connection...

I could prolly run a 300 foot ethernet cable... I'll give that a shot.

Thanks everyone!
 
That happened to me at first. Turns out my router was crapping out. I replaced it with an AEBS, and now it flies. :)
 
802.11n

My network is running from an 802.11g wireless router from Motorola, running the DD-WRT firmware. Usually I get around 2.5MB/second transfer rate when syncing my AppleTV. Not bad!

I purchased an 802.11n Netgear router from Office Depot recently. Even after screwing around with every possible feature on the router and attempting to speak with their India-based technical support (fail!), I was not able to get a transfer rate over 75KB/sec! Yes, 33 times slower than my 802.11g wireless router!!!

Beware with the 802.11n standard. It STILL has not been ratified, so non-Apple routers may give you the same sub-standard transfer rates I was experiencing.

-Aaron-
 
^^^Wow, that is pretty bad. But look at the bright side: Netgear gives you a lifetime guarantee on your equipment.
 
I'm getting the same slow speeds as others. I'm trying to move a single 4GB movie and it's literally taken 2 hours so far. Below is my setup:

Main computer with all files on the computer
AEBS
Apple TV 40GB
Wireless N/G compatible mode for the AEBS

The thing I can't figure out is that other items work fine. I've streamed TV shows and YouTube clips so I know the connection speed is there...it's just the Sync process that's slow. I tried streaming this movie and all I got was the Apple logo that's why I tried syncing it.
 
Solved my slow sync problem

Hi,

Just after the Apple TV 2.0.2 update syncing wireless was extremely slow. I tried several things: reset to factory defaults (v1.0), changed wireless channel from Auto to e.g. 5. But no result.

Finally I changed my Airport Extreme base station (Time Capsule) from 802.11n (b/g compatible) to 802.11n (n-only at 2,4 Ghz).

That seems to solve the problem: syncing is now very fast and without errors.

What router do you have ? Can you switch the:) network protocols ?
 
Connection...

I'm using the D-Link DIR-625 Rangebooster (wireless N)... it's just set to the default settings. Is there something I should change?
 
A single song syncs on my G network in literally a few seconds or so. Syncing a 230MB TV Show takes about 2 minutes.

Might be the router bottle-necking the Apple TV's bandwidth?
 
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