My Experience of Apple TV

Question

Hi,
I need to get this off my chest, as I've had it with Apple TV. And I need a rant.
I've owned Apple TV for at least three years now, and have had no end of issues with it.
The first issue is the well-document Samsung issue, whereby my TV and Apple TV do not comunicate very well when both are turned on. So every time I want to change channel to Apple TV, I have to unplug it, plug it in, quickly turn to the PC channel when it appears, and hope for the best. Apple don't know much about this, so they just replaced my unit when I pointed it out. To no avail.
Sometimes this trick works fine. Other times (50% of the time) I get a picture but absolutely no sound. So I have to reboot it again.
I've had remotes suddenly stop working with it, and have been forced to re-pair them.
After about half an hour of playing music with my pics as a screensaver, the screensaver gets stuck on one image. Every time.
Sometimes the music stops playing entirely, although I still have sound.
When it works, it works well. It's just a shame it takes me up to 30 minutes to get there, when it should take no more than 5 seconds. And then screws up anyway.
Thanks for letting me rant.
Rp

Answer 1

Phip900 wrote:
The first issue is the well-document Samsung issue, whereby....
The trouble is we don't know if it's a problem with the HDMI implementation on AppleTV or the TV - while many argue other devices don't cause issues on the same TV, I don't think we know for certain that this is an AppleTV fault or AppleTV rigidly adhering to some HDMI spec that the other devices are more relaxed about.
I would have to concede it's more likely AppleTv is at fault if other big brand players devices are ok with Tvs, but there are reports of Samsung firmware updates solving the problem for some sets.
Sometimes this trick works fine. Other times (50% of the time) I get a picture but absolutely no sound. So I have to reboot it again.
Whatever the cause, incredibly frustrating.
I've had remotes suddenly stop working with it, and have been forced to re-pair them.
Never had that.
After about half an hour of playing music with my pics as a screensaver, the screensaver gets stuck on one image. Every time.
I assume this is 'one image' not a particular image - do you use artwork with very large dimensions, I suspect many of mine are 500x500 or so, and I don't have problems though have noticed in earlier software that theer was a stutter when cover art flipped - some had noted this seemed to happen with tracks where the name/info had to scroll to be fully seen.
Sometimes the music stops playing entirely, although I still have sound.
Synced/streamed content? Both?
Some of my units have experienced brief audio only dropouts, then continue - something is not 100% robust about AppleTV playback, but I think some of my issues were router related.
When it works, it works well.
Absolutley - it all depends if it works well 5% or 99% of the time.
For me I'd say it's 95% fine for most things.
It's just a shame it takes me up to 30 minutes to get there, when it should take no more than 5 seconds. And then screws up anyway.
Your experience, as Capaho's, clearly borders on the bad experience most of the time.
Sadly as appleTv is tied at the hip with iTunes, there are far too many variables between iTunes/software, network, and AppleTv itself to categorically point to it being AppleTV.
Sometimes the AppleTV's are plain faulty, sometimes in a particular configuration there'll be minor issues (me), sometimes major issues (Capaho, you), sometimes no issues at all (or so infrequent the user's forget them as they resolve after a reboot of one component or another).
Contrary to what some suggest, I do not regard AppleTV as perfect and will criticise/comment on bad aspects when I experience them personally, but will equally try to be honest when praising it - most of the time it works extremely well, within the confines of what it can do.
Most consumers are probably far more fickle (and why not?), and quite rightly expect an AppleTV or other consumer device to behave virtually flawlessly all the time. In terms of media players I've tried though, none so far have performed perfectly or will just play anything you throw at them.
Unless you use a full blown customizable computer for your media device you are always likely to run into format issues, and even then some platforms may be incompatible or have poorer interfaces than dedicated media devices.