Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Do not use ATV2 for Netflix

Saying your picture is "great" and actually getting the best stream Netflix has to offer are two entirely different things. Yes, you can get a good/great picture (depends on your idea of what's good/great) at 1.32mbps but to get the highest quality streams Netflix offers you will need at least 4 to 5 mbps because that is the bit rate they stream the highest quality at.

Netflix will downgrade the quality based on what they are able to see your connection's streaming ability. Whether that matters to your or not depends on your requirements and the size of your tv.

Anyway, as this thread clearly shows most people are very happy with Netflix streaming on the Apple TV. After owning and using several Netflix devices I can say with experience that it's the best Netflix device on the market right now. It has the least issues with streaming, the best UI, and starts up and accesses Netflix the quickest. Now that it offers 5.1 audio there really is no point in me using the PS3 for Netflix anymore. The Roku and Wii aren't on the same level as the ATV2 and PS3 in my opinion.
 
Last edited:
Coldsmoke said:
Well thanks for being God's gift to the, (in your view),technically incompetent.
I am afraid its a little more pervasive than, "if you have it working then all is well".

If you read this and other posts online there are a variety of users experiencing the problem. I too have experienced the problem and confirmed that it is unique, specific, and consistent to the Apple TV2 when using the Netflix option. Others have indicated issues with viewing Podcasts as well although I personally have not tried that. As it relates to a Netflix movie, I have further confirmed that it does not occur when streaming rentals of movies or TV shows from Apple.
In addition to the above, I have installed a packet sniffer on the network to monitor network activity during each of the above events and the pattern of activity for the same movie is considerably different when a streaming event from Apple is active. I did not take it any further than to say enough is enough and went back to using the Apple TV1. I mean, after all, how much time are you going to spend trying to get a $99 gizmo working. I make more than that in an hour.
In summary, try thinking outside the box and look at some of these issues from other people's perspectives sometime. It might give you a refreshing view of technology in general. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Never said people were tech incompetent. What I was referring to is the general tendency of people to immediately throw up their hands and say the ATV is to blame and barely give a thought to the notion that something is wrong on their end. ESPECIALLY the self-described tech experts who have tweaked their settings on the ATV and TV to death and wonder why it doesn't work. It's easier for some people to blame Apple than to look at what they're doing. It's this "it can't be on my end" notion and "I am offended you even suggest that idea" that irritates me. We are trying to help you with ideas that have worked for others. If YOU look at this thread, you'll see at least as many people saying they have NO issues. Ask them how they are successful and you might find out what's going wrong in your case. Hmm, just like success in life in general, right?

Of course the packet pattern is different for different providers. Netflix serves movies with a completely different methodology than Apple. I don't know what knowledge you hoped to gain with that test.

As far as I'm concerned, immediately blaming the device is the closed-minded approach. When I have issues with a device, I look at ALL the possible causes. I take the initiative to clean up my end first.
 
newagemac said:
Saying your picture is "great" and actually getting the best stream Netflix has to offer are two entirely different things. Yes, you can get a good/great picture (depends on your idea of what's good/great) at 1.32mbps but to get the highest quality streams Netflix offers you will need at least 4 to 5 mbps because that is the bit rate they stream the highest quality at.

Netflix will downgrade the quality based on what they are able to see your connection's streaming ability. Whether that matters to your or not depends on your requirements and the size of your tv.
Click to expand...

I know all of that. I work with video for my profession so I know a good picture when I see it. My definition of a great picture is a sharp image with no blockiness, glitching and no color banding in the gradation areas, like in shadows or sky. The picture looked as good as any local 720p movies I've streamed. I've seen some bad video coming from Netflix in the past, too, but on that particular test I had a great picture on a 46" lcd with only 1.32 going out according to Netflix. I was surprised but that's what it was. So, my point is, with only 1.32 it is possible to have a great HD experience with Netflix and that maybe that's not why people are having issues or that 1.3 is the low threshold to meet.

What I'd like to know is, is the 1.3 all the stream I could handle or all the the stream I was getting. That's a big difference in issues. Does Netflix have different streams for different devices (so that's why ps3 had 5.1 before anyone else)? So could they have underestimated the stream needed for the ATV? Total conjecture here.
 
Last edited:
netflix looked terrible on my ATV as compared to my PS3. i don't know if it's the 720p or what. i have a 60' TV so maybe the 720 vs 1080 difference is something...i'm assuming the ps3 outputs at a higher quality than atv.
 
msw123307 said:
netflix looked terrible on my ATV as compared to my PS3. i don't know if it's the 720p or what. i have a 60' TV so maybe the 720 vs 1080 difference is something...i'm assuming the ps3 outputs at a higher quality than atv.
Click to expand...

Netflix is all 720p but if you are getting a better stream on the ps3 that could be the difference.
 
laurim said:
Never said people were tech incompetent. What I was referring to is the general tendency of people to immediately throw up their hands and say the ATV is to blame and barely give a thought to the notion that something is wrong on their end. ESPECIALLY the self-described tech experts who have tweaked their settings on the ATV and TV to death and wonder why it doesn't work. It's easier for some people to blame Apple than to look at what they're doing. It's this "it can't be on my end" notion and "I am offended you even suggest that idea" that irritates me. We are trying to help you with ideas that have worked for others. If YOU look at this thread, you'll see at least as many people saying they have NO issues. Ask them how they are successful and you might find out what's going wrong in your case. Hmm, just like success in life in general, right?

Of course the packet pattern is different for different providers. Netflix serves movies with a completely different methodology than Apple. I don't know what knowledge you hoped to gain with that test.

As far as I'm concerned, immediately blaming the device is the closed-minded approach. When I have issues with a device, I look at ALL the possible causes. I take the initiative to clean up my end first.
Click to expand...

Nothing I have read in this thread addresses the issue I had - the ATV2 plugged into an Apple Extreme router had stuttering problems while a PS3 and XBox 360 plugged into the same router did not. It was not a bandwidth issue, not a wireless issue, not a DNS issue, nothing in my control. People are not tweaking these just for the hell of it - they are tweaking them because it doesn't work for some out of the box while it does for others. I changed nothing on my end aside from updating the latest version of firmware last week, and magically it started working. Clearly, it WAS something in the ATV2. You got lucky yours worked out of the box.
 
richpjr said:
Nothing I have read in this thread addresses the issue I had - the ATV2 plugged into an Apple Extreme router had stuttering problems while a PS3 and XBox 360 plugged into the same router did not. It was not a bandwidth issue, not a wireless issue, not a DNS issue, nothing in my control. People are not tweaking these just for the hell of it - they are tweaking them because it doesn't work for some out of the box while it does for others. I changed nothing on my end aside from updating the latest version of firmware last week, and magically it started working. Clearly, it WAS something in the ATV2. You got lucky yours worked out of the box.
Click to expand...

And you got lucky that it was something Apple could fix. By tweaking I meant people who jailbreak with third party software and people who change the settings on their tv from the default to something for a very specific situation incompatible with the ATV. We don't know what people have tried, what their network situation is and whether they've tried everything so all we can do is keep suggesting things to try. We don't know if their problem is something Apple can fix, especially when so many people solve their own problems. And so we get yelled at when we try to help because you're frustrated and just want someone to fix it for you with an easy update.

Seriously, I give up trying to help people. If the ATV doesn't work for you and you think you've done all you can, get rid of it. It's not a necessity of life.
 
laurim said:
I know all of that. I work with video for my profession so I know a good picture when I see it. My definition of a great picture is a sharp image with no blockiness, glitching and no color banding in the gradation areas, like in shadows or sky. The picture looked as good as any local 720p movies I've streamed. I've seen some bad video coming from Netflix in the past, too, but on that particular test I had a great picture on a 46" lcd with only 1.32 going out according to Netflix. I was surprised but that's what it was. So, my point is, with only 1.32 it is possible to have a great HD experience with Netflix and that maybe that's not why people are having issues or that 1.3 is the low threshold to meet.

What I'd like to know is, is the 1.3 all the stream I could handle or all the the stream I was getting. That's a big difference in issues. Does Netflix have different streams for different devices (so that's why ps3 had 5.1 before anyone else)? So could they have underestimated the stream needed for the ATV? Total conjecture here.
Click to expand...

Exactly I'm not having problems, but why does Netflix measure the stream to my ATV at 1.41 mbps while measuring the stream to my Wii at 3.5-4 mbps?

Could I be getting a better picture? My Netflix picture has always been pretty good. But I also am never comparing it to a BR or a good HD NFL broadcast either.

Do movies streamed to the ATV compress differently?


I know the DVDs I've ripped to my computer have higher bit rates than 1.41 mbps.

I think they look better too than Netflix. But Netflix was never horribly blocky or anything. Once in awhile I see some of that, but for the most part decent picture.

Still not sure I'm the best judge. I was watching dvds on a 27" sdtv not too long ago. Everything is a step up in terms of clarity for me. Its hard to complain given that perspective.

Still would like to know why the difference.

EVeryone that is and isn't having problems should call up Netflix and ask for their bit rate to their ATV and post it.
 
rockinred said:
Exactly what the title says. Wanted to share this with anyone considering buying ATV2 specifically for Netflix streaming. Save you some heartache....I have 2 ATV2 and PS3 and a Wii. ATV2 is the worst and I constantly get buffering and timeout during movie play. This is with a 20Mbps download speed wired connection. If I switch movie to other source I do not have the problem at all!

Very disappointed and wanted to share this. Personally I feel it is intentional, but who knows. What I do know is that I don't experience it with the other devices. To me it is a bad deal since the ATV2 device has very limited functionality and is designed for streaming, and it performes the worst?

So my advice is to get it for other reasons, but DO NOT get it for Netflix....there are other better options.

Recent updates did not fix bugs on this, and i think it is unnacceptable. This is a known problem and Apple could care less about all the complaints and concerns that have been voiced. Pretty annoyed about it.
Click to expand...

I have the ATV2. And I dont have any problems with Netflix.
 
I finally just moved my Roku back to where the ATV2 was located and use that for Neflix like I did before purchasing the ATV2. Kept my ATV2 there for youtube, rentals, home sharing, etc. though. A pretty ridiculous work around, but a workaround nonetheless. Watched a Netflix movie with my wife for the first time in a few weeks without it pausing over and over! :)
 
After doing the last Apple update on the :apple:TV2, I started getting constant re-buffering mid-movie on Netflix. Prior to this I had no issues. I switched over to my PS3 and the movie continued playing with zero problems. I then rebooted the :apple:TV2 (pull the power cord) and it seems to have corrected itself for the time being. Hopefully it will stay like this. Both PS3 and :apple:TV2 are wireless with an Airport Extreme router and rock solid FiOS connection to the house.
 
zachlegomaniac said:
I finally just moved my Roku back to where the ATV2 was located and use that for Neflix like I did before purchasing the ATV2. Kept my ATV2 there for youtube, rentals, home sharing, etc. though. A pretty ridiculous work around, but a workaround nonetheless. Watched a Netflix movie with my wife for the first time in a few weeks without it pausing over and over! :)
Click to expand...

Don't forget that there is a private YouTube channel for Roku! Works great.

If you have an iPhone, if you're not already familiar with it, DVPRemote is awesome. But I suggest giving your Roku a DHCP reservation to make life easier. Why can't we just give the Roku a static IP?! Sigh.
Love the Roku. So far, very happy I got it instead of an ATV2. I really want the ATV2, but I would have had to jailbreak it and even then Hulu+ and other online content support is iffy. The Roku is limited for sure, but has way more online streaming options than ATV2 for a lot less hassle.

Of course, a PS3 or mini HTPC is much more full featured, but also much more expensive. Still might end up that route, but for less than $100, the Roku XD picks up a lot of a slack for a bloke without cable.
 
msw123307 said:
netflix looked terrible on my ATV as compared to my PS3. i don't know if it's the 720p or what. i have a 60' TV so maybe the 720 vs 1080 difference is something...i'm assuming the ps3 outputs at a higher quality than atv.
Click to expand...

Wow, a 60 ft screen! Where do you keep it, in an airplane hangar?
 
Results vary with all this stuff ....

I bought an AppleTV to try, and we use Netflix very regularly around here. It's been working pretty much flawlessly for us. (Only real issue I had was the evening of the latest AppleTV update, when by coincidence, Netflix suffered from an outage. I was thinking the firmware update caused all my issues logging into it until about an hour later, I saw a friend's Facebook post documenting the outage!)

I also have a PS3 and it works well with Netflix too (possibly supporting higher resolutions in some cases also). But that's not to imply your issues aren't very real.

I don't really know what the culprit is .... possibly a combination of issues. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it has something to do with your router or network switch(es) you use though, and how they interact with AppleTV 2?

One thing I can tell you? If you have AT&T U-Verse and receive their digital TV along with broadband Internet? You have to be kind of careful what you do with expanding your LAN with that setup. They transmit the TV streams as multicast IP traffic. If you simply plug in a cheap network switch off of one of their ethernet ports on the back of the "residential gateway", to allow more total wired network devices to attach to your LAN? All that multicast IPTV traffic starts flowing down all the ports, effectively crowding out/flooding out your data network.

I had this configuration, and had to buy more costly Netgear "smart switches" that had web interfaces to custom program them. They had functionality like the ability to block the multicast traffic, except on specific ports.

Otherwise, it would certainly cause hiccups with things like trying to view streaming Netflix content ....


rockinred said:
I'm not sharing this to argue on here. Just looking out for others. I would say it was just a bad deal, but after my second atv box in the living room with same problem as my bedroom....I am going to say it is not an isolated incident. Also, do a google search it is all over the web. Glad some don't have to deal with it, but it is a real issue for many. Especially when the ps3 is plugged into the same switch and doesn't do it.
Click to expand...
 
kingtj said:
I bought an AppleTV to try, and we use Netflix very regularly around here. It's been working pretty much flawlessly for us. (Only real issue I had was the evening of the latest AppleTV update, when by coincidence, Netflix suffered from an outage. I was thinking the firmware update caused all my issues logging into it until about an hour later, I saw a friend's Facebook post documenting the outage!)

I also have a PS3 and it works well with Netflix too (possibly supporting higher resolutions in some cases also). But that's not to imply your issues aren't very real.

I don't really know what the culprit is .... possibly a combination of issues. I wouldn't be surprised to find out it has something to do with your router or network switch(es) you use though, and how they interact with AppleTV 2?

One thing I can tell you? If you have AT&T U-Verse and receive their digital TV along with broadband Internet? You have to be kind of careful what you do with expanding your LAN with that setup. They transmit the TV streams as multicast IP traffic. If you simply plug in a cheap network switch off of one of their ethernet ports on the back of the "residential gateway", to allow more total wired network devices to attach to your LAN? All that multicast IPTV traffic starts flowing down all the ports, effectively crowding out/flooding out your data network.

I had this configuration, and had to buy more costly Netgear "smart switches" that had web interfaces to custom program them. They had functionality like the ability to block the multicast traffic, except on specific ports.

Otherwise, it would certainly cause hiccups with things like trying to view streaming Netflix content ....
Click to expand...

Could you expand on this Uverse explanation. I have this problem w/ apple tv as well and I am interested in this port overflow info. My Uverse gateway is Internet only plugged in to an airport extreme dual band router. I also have the 2wire Att wireless switch off, as it is only used to provide the internet feed.

How do I know, or gather such intel that this could be 1. My issue, or 2. Can be fixed. Are you saying that placing a switch between the 2wire and my apx can potentially alleviate mt buffeting issues w/apple tv?

I have no issues with the speed or buffering on any of my devices in my home other than this one.

Thanks for the input. :)
 
xMClass said:
Just picked up my ATV2 a couple days ago and I've been using Netflix on it with no issues on my Samsung HDTV.
Click to expand...

All of the issues i was having have been cleared up with the latest update. Even with the pausing we used our two ATV's to watch Netflix. My wife has zero patience with any type of setup that is overly complicated or requires too many remotes.

She hated our DVR from the cable company, my daughter is pretty much the same way, but now with the Apple TV they love how simple it is and we have been able to cut out cable altogether. That $10. month Netflix bill is much better then the $60 we were paying for cable.

I do all of the behind the scenes work, ripping our DVD collection, encoding, tagging and dumping into iTunes (which i kind of enjoy doing "geek") and they just enjoy the watching. With our EyeTv hooked up to the iMac i keep a steady stream of all of our Tv shows in Itunes we never even use the tuner on our Tv anymore.

With NetFlix, or home collection of shows, the current programming through the EyeTV, youtube and podcast (my wife has found tons of stuff on there about photography and crafting) we are a happy group.

Before i had all of these great movies and Tv Shows on DVD and would maybe watch 1 time (some exceptions) and the just store them and forget about them, now with the ATV we have this great graphical interface i have set up playlist on actors, genre, directors etc... and it has been great.
 
This is an issue...

What bugs the hell out of me is that Apple won't acknowledge that there is a problem with Netflix streaming. Everything points to an issue with the ATV2. I've personally had good nights and bad nights trying to stream Netflix movies. I have a kickass internet connection and the ATV2 is hardwired to my Time Capsule and I still experience hesitations and buffering. :mad:
 
re: U-Verse and potential issues

If you're only subscribed to Internet broadband via U-Verse, and you aren't paying for the television part of the package, you shouldn't have any special issues with it.

What I was talking about was the fact that AT&T U-Verse streams their television content as though it was additional Internet traffic, over a specific range of IP addresses. Unlike your typical "unicast" type of TCP/IP traffic though, their IPTV data is "multicast" - meaning it doesn't have a specific "destination" IP address that's supposed to receive it. Multicast traffic flows to ALL devices capable of listening on your network. That way, any and all set-top boxes you have attached to your network will receive the traffic, and decrypt the encrypted content according to the paid TV subscription you've got, allowing you to watch your channels. (When you press the arrow buttons on your U-Verse remote or on the front of one of the boxes to change the station, you're really telling it to decode the next higher or lower IP address in the range it knows contains their TV streams.)

Now, the thing is, U-Verse can be wired up two different ways. They support the coaxial cable that cable TV providers typically use, to connect the set-top boxes to the main "residential gateway" modem, AND they support CAT5e ethernet for those connections. With the installation they did at my house, they used ethernet for everything. (I don't know for sure, but I suspect that when the coaxial wiring is used, it may keep all of that multicast IPTV traffic limited to the coaxial wires? That would be nice, if they didn't re-broadcast all that traffic over your Internet-connected devices using the 4-port switch on the back of the gateway.... but it would have the downside that you couldn't add more set-top boxes anywhere on your home network, just by plugging them into an available ethernet port someplace.)

Anyway -- when everything's going over ethernet, you have to find some way to filter out that multicast IPTV traffic so it only flows to actual set-top boxes plugged into your LAN, and not to all your computers or networked printers. Otherwise, you'll see really poor performance copying large files over your network and things like streaming Internet video will be unreliable.


tigres said:
Could you expand on this Uverse explanation. I have this problem w/ apple tv as well and I am interested in this port overflow info. My Uverse gateway is Internet only plugged in to an airport extreme dual band router. I also have the 2wire Att wireless switch off, as it is only used to provide the internet feed.

How do I know, or gather such intel that this could be 1. My issue, or 2. Can be fixed. Are you saying that placing a switch between the 2wire and my apx can potentially alleviate mt buffeting issues w/apple tv?

I have no issues with the speed or buffering on any of my devices in my home other than this one.

Thanks for the input. :)
Click to expand...
 
I was a little concern when buying Apple TV after reading this thread, but went ahead and got it last weekend and so far no problem, Netflix connection works fine with excellent HD quality, I'm on FIOS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back