Steps to diagnose frequent streaming interruptions

Question

I have an AppleTV 2, to which I frequently try to stream movies / TV shows from both a MacBook Air and an iPad.  Since a few months (hard to pinpoint when the issue started), we're getting frequent interruptions, where the screen simply goes to black and then jumps to the menu.  When playing from the MacBook, iTunes will typically give a spinning beachball when this happens (perhaps trying to restore the signal? unclear).
Steps we have already taken:
- We've checked the wifi signal strength on the AppleTV using the built-in check, which gave good signal.
- We checked the wifi signal quality and consistency on the MacBook using iStumbler (after reading other posts here), which seems to show consistently good signal, no interruptions
- We've synced a number of our movies from the MacBook to the iPad and played them from the iPad - no difference, we get interruptions no matter what the source device is
- We gave the AppleTV an ethernet connection instead of wifi, which did nothing to improve the problem
- We switched from playing the content on the macbook with airplay streaming to the AppleTV, to letting the AppleTV access the content through the MacBook's home sharing library - this seems to significantly improve the situation when playing from the MacBook, but doesn't help when streaming from the iPad.
I'm wondering what next steps we can take to try to diagnose what is going on?  Any tips appreciated.  All devices are running their respective latest OS.

Answer 1

Sounds like you already have diagnosed the problem.  Streaming video over WiFi rarely works well even when you have the high end WiFi equipment needed to support it.  In this case you are doubling the WiFi load by trying to stream from the iPad to the hub and then another WiFI connection hop to the ATV.  Stick to just using the ATV menus to select the content you want to watch.  That way there is only one connection instead of two concurrent ones.  You will also save your self a lot of headaches if you keep ATV connected via Ethernet.  If you want to use your IPad you can get the remote app and use it to control the ATV means to select the content you want.
- We've checked the wifi signal strength on the AppleTV using the built-in check, which gave good signal.
That does not actually tell you anything.  It is just the strength of the radio signles but what you really need to know is the volumn of data you are getting across your connection and the number of dropped packets.
- We gave the AppleTV an ethernet connection instead of wifi, which did nothing to improve the problem
But was the source device (iPad, MPB) still connected via WiFi?  Try it with just the ATV and the source device on Ethernet.