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New Apple TV, my 2 cents.

F

fieldy au

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 12, 2009
36
0
as a longtime fan of the original I bought the new version at the earliest opportunity. As much as I really want to love this thing it is slightly flawed.

First of all its a bit buggy, now it may just be that I have a bit of a dud but im having a number of issues, minor ones but issues none the less.

1. its crashed on multiple occasions, leaving me with no choice but to pull the power out and do over.
2. the screen saver fails to recall what setting its on and reverts to animals (by the way anyone else notice the stock picture of the mountain cat from Windows 95?!)
3. Streaming seems slower than on my old :apple:TV. I have a wireless n network running through a airport extreme.

It just seems under cooked. I'm really looking forward to the future with this device and for $100 its definitely good value but the updates need to come through fast, lets hope the competition from Google helps push those updates through..
 
I have non of those issues.

Going on 2 1/2 weeks with new Apple TV and it has not once crashed, streaming is more reliable than my old Apple TV and the buffering is so much better. I don't have much of an opinion about the screen saver issue because I've kept mine on 'Animal'
 
ChargerSteve- I've had the same impression as you. I have been a supporter of Apple to date based on the superior performance of their products but this ATV2 is completely lack luster.

I've owned both ATV1 and ATV2. Although both are a great idea neither seem to have been throughly QAQC'd. Even after synching my first gen ATV there was frequent judder watching HD movies which is unacceptable to me given the fact that it is playing straight from a local hard disk. I observed the same problem on a friends ATV as well.

With the ATV2 the performance across my wireless network using an Airport Extreme base station (802.11n) with excellent signal strength is horrible. I have frequent pauses in playback and frame judder about every 5 seconds. This weekend I bought two powerline network adapters and cabled it directly into my LAN. Although there has been significant improvement and I have no pauses I still have frequent frame judder every minute or so.

If you look at the ATV2 Help Forum on Apples webpage you'll see that hundreds of other users are experiencing similar problems. I think Apple really underperformed on this product. Hopefully competition from the new Goggle TV will resolve this, it appears to be a far superior product except for the fact that I wont be able to stream my iTunes content on it :(

Steve
 
fieldy au said:
as a longtime fan of the original I bought the new version at the earliest opportunity. As much as I really want to love this thing it is slightly flawed.

First of all its a bit buggy, now it may just be that I have a bit of a dud but im having a number of issues, minor ones but issues none the less.

1. its crashed on multiple occasions, leaving me with no choice but to pull the power out and do over.
2. the screen saver fails to recall what setting its on and reverts to animals (by the way anyone else notice the stock picture of the mountain cat from Windows 95?!)
3. Streaming seems slower than on my old :apple:TV. I have a wireless n network running through a airport extreme.

It just seems under cooked. I'm really looking forward to the future with this device and for $100 its definitely good value but the updates need to come through fast, lets hope the competition from Google helps push those updates through..
Click to expand...

Isn't it 9900 cents ?
 
I don't have your problems. Never crashed, remembers my screensaver setup (vacation pics), rarely even pauses during a stream off an old salvaged hard drive attached to my Airport Extreme feeding 720p content. The computer streaming with iTunes is my old macbook G4 with 1 meg of ram. Maybe your setup isn't as good as you think it is if I can do it with this minimal effort.
 
No problems here.

It just works. :)

I have only used Netflix so far...but I have used it quite a bit.

-via iPad
 
I haven't had any problems either. The old Apple TV would have problems syncing and staying connected and the menus would hang from time to time but the new one has been rock solid. The new capabilities and features over the old one is just gravy. Can't recommend it enough! We're having a blast with ours.
 
My internet connect is too slow to enjoy movie rentals or Netflix but I'm digging the ability to stream my iTunes movie collection at 720p to my plasma.
 
I'm sure the minor problems that I'm having will be corrected in future updates but one thing you really do need is a fast connection to really enjoy the new :apple: TV.

I live in Australia so slow speeds are the norm (I'm on a so called fast ADSL 2+ connection that is under 4-5mbps) and it does somewhat handicap this otherwise great little device.
 
I played with it for a couple of days. The interface is somewhat simplistic and using the remote to enter any information is tasking. Aside from renting from iTunes, which is a slightly cheaper than my canoe company charges, my blu-ray player offers very similar features plus plays DVDs and blu-rays and cost a mere $40 more, not to mention a more functional remote.
This is an out of a box experience and not spending additional money for add on gadgets.
I don't spend a lot of time down load ripped movies or rip them myself. I'll stream or pop in a disk.
As far as networking songs an what have you, I use the 360.
For me the atv2 is a gadget with little added value to my system.
I have played with airplay and so on, but my out of the box experience is not negative, just not OMG I want one for every room.
The wdlive for $20 more than atv2 may get a second look.
 
fieldy au said:
...I live in Australia so slow speeds are the norm (I'm on a so called fast ADSL 2+ connection that is under 4-5mbps) and it does somewhat handicap this otherwise great little device.
Click to expand...
Don't feel too bad. The average broadband speed in the U.S. is under 5Mbps so you're doing pretty well by our standards. My AT&T DSL is only 3Mbps (rated, 2.5Mbps measured) and I live in a semi-metropolitan area of southern California. Unfortunately, cable never came into my area (if you want premium TV content you have to use satellite), so DSL is the fastest connection I can get.

In any case, Netflix is so-so and okay at 2.5Mbps but for iTunes rentals you definitely have to wait (better to rent several hours in advance, or maybe for the next day). Podcasts in "large" or "HD" resolution, however, are actually pretty good even on my relatively slow connection.

I've only watched a few hours of content on my ATV2 (mostly Netflix and streaming from my MacBook) and I've not noticed any significant problems.
 
I've only had my new aTV for several days (18 months with the original). I have seen it crash once on me where I had to unplug. It also lights up now and then indicating some activity but when I set the TV input to it the TV reports no signal. Otherwise, though, I'm pretty happy with it. The video quality to my eye is a bit better than the old one and the streaming is definitely better than the old on my 5GHz channel.
 
Yes there are some bugs in there that pop up occasionally.

Had to unplug the device a few times to get Netflix or local streaming to work.
 
I've also had none of those problems. The only issues I've run into is the occasional slow load times of YouTube and Netflix content. However, those are most likely a problem with YouTube and Netflix, as opposed to the AppleTV.
 
I have had it not wake up correctly a few times, is that what's happening by you mean crash? Like my TV will be on and then I try to wake it up and the the little white light will turn on but there will be no picture on the TV. I try to rotate through inputs on my TV and go back to it but still no picture. So a couple times I have to go get the Apple TV from behind the TV and unplug the HDMI and plug it back in. I assume though this might be a bad HDMI. Anyone heard of this happening?
 
My new Atv has been very reliable. Much more so than my old one, which I had to reset by unplugging probably once a week. This one seems to work much better with my HDMI switch.

Once I got it set up, which took longer than I would have expected, it works fine.

However there are a few flaws in the interface & design which still bug me.

I HATE that it doesn't mark TV shows as watched after it has been watched.

I HATE that it doesn't group shows by name, and I have to scroll through season after season of shows.

I HATE that they disabled using the Atv as speakers through Air Tunes.
 
Just an idea: I had problems with my :apple:TV and called support. I had unplugged everything and plugged things back, etc, trying to fix it.

After working the issue more we found that the network plug wasn't seating in the jack well. The :apple:TV wasn't getting a solid connection to the network and my Mac Mini and couldn't play stuff and YouTube and video podcasts weren't playing well.

I swapped ends and wiggled it in the jack on the :apple:TV and *ZING* the damn thing started working like never before. The agent was ready to swap mine for a 'new' one too when all of the sudden it started working like a champ. I was surprised that the jack could be so fussy... People with the 'old' :apple:TV might want to try swapping network cables. It just might work.
 
tkilian said:
I HATE that it doesn't mark TV shows as watched after it has been watched.

I HATE that it doesn't group shows by name, and I have to scroll through season after season of shows.

I HATE that they disabled using the Atv as speakers through Air Tunes.
Click to expand...

You can still use AirPlay and play music from iTunes from your computer.
 
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