- Oct 9, 2002
- 28,298
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AirPlay used to be one of those great things about Apple that "just works." I don't know what happened, but trying to use it now is always an exercise in frustration. I don't want to buy a new Apple TV or replace my Airport Extreme router. I'm about to give up on AirPlay. Has AirPlay gone haywire for anyone else?
Around the time iOS8 came out, I started having HUGE problems with AirPlay at my apartment. It's hard to describe because practically everything goes wrong.
Numerous times, I tried restoring each device to factory defaults and configured them again from scratch. My Apple devices are iPhone 6 Plus, iPad mini 2 (Retina), AirPort Extreme (5th gen), and a single Apple TV (3rd gen). All of them have been restored and reset multiple times. When I set them up from scratch, I do not restore a backup or transfer settings from another device.
The same problems keep coming back, no matter what I do.
I usually configure the AirPort Extreme so the SSID of the 5GHz network clearly says "5Ghz" and I always connect the ATV to the 5ghz network. The router is on the other side of the wall, directly behind the Apple TV. I always connect my mobile devices to the 2.4GHz network because that penetrates walls better and I might have WiFi for a bit longer as I walk away from my apartment. That said, I have tried restoring defaults on the AirPort Extreme and leaving it with one SSID for the whole network. If I recall correctly, I still had most of the same problems.
I purchased an ATV3 for my mother. When I go to her place, I experience none of these issues.
1) There might be something wrong with my AirPort Extreme 5th gen. Perhaps it's doing something strange with that Apple Bonjour networking protocol and it thinks my Apple TV is actually 2 devices. I did the factory restore again last night (hold the reset button while plugging-in the power cord, keep holding for 6+ seconds until the light starts blinking on the front). The AirPort utility on my iPad never saw the router come back on. I thought it was bricked. I checked the AirPlay utility and WiFi networks list on my phone and on my iPad, and there was no sign of my AirPort. Rebooting the iDevices didn't help. I was forced to use the outdated AirPort Utility for Windows on my Win8 system with a wired connection. It showed as "Base Station XXXXXX" in the utility. I connected and it showed WiFi enabled with no security. I set manually set my custom name with WPA2 security and saved changes. After doing that, it was finally visible to my iDevices.
2) There might be something wrong with my Apple TV. I recall an update about a year ago that took over 8 hours to finish. That was the install process. Not the download. Something was really wrong with that. When Apple recalled some of them a while back, the initial employee memo leaked and the range of affected serial numbers included mine. Months later, I made the trek to the Apple Store for other reasons and brought the ATV3 with me. I tried to swap it as a recalled unit, but was rejected because they had revised the recall to exclude my serial number.
3) There might be something wrong with iOS 8 and the environment at my apartment with neighbors and their devices. Most of my major problems started after iOS 8 was released. Perhaps this started when Apple enabled peer-to-peer AirPlay over Bluetooth? I've never specifically enabled that feature. I don't see a way to make sure my iDevices only show AirPlay systems from my home network. I actually use Bluetooth in the car and, occasionally, with a speaker that remains off when I'm not using it...so I don't want to disable/enable Bluetooth all the time. I just want to leave it turned on.
Around the time iOS8 came out, I started having HUGE problems with AirPlay at my apartment. It's hard to describe because practically everything goes wrong.
- The Apple TV no longer wakes up quickly enough for AirPlay to engage, so I have to enable AirPlay again.
- Video will often try to stream as audio (?!) with no album art.
- Streams keep getting interrupted for no particular reason.
- Resuming after pausing is risky.
- Most of the time, it's futile to even think you can skip back or scrub to a different position.
- The player on my iPad or iPhone will hang or get confused about whether-or-not AirPlay is enabled. Sometimes, when AirPlay is going haywire, I'll try to disable it from Control Center on my iDevice, switching it back to my device (iPad or iPhone). Then the app or web video still thinks it's playing to another device and shows the AirPlay logo instead of the video.
- I keep seeing multiple devices in the AirPlay list. Very often, I'll see "Apple TV" listed as an AirPlay device right above my actual unit (which shows my name). If I try to select it, my device sometimes pretends to be using that (doesn't really work though). Other times, my device hangs up and "Apple TV" disappears from the list. Sometimes, I'll select the one with my name and then find that it's actually trying to connect to the generic one, then things become unresponsive, the generic name disappears, and I have to connect to mine again. Based on strange behavior like that, I'm fairly certain both names are somehow coming from my one Apple TV device.
- A mystery AirPlay device occasionally appears in the list as "Batpod." Tapping that one shows a "Mirroring" toggle switch -- so it's definitely not an audio-only AirPlay device or Bluetooth speaker or anything like that. If I try to select that one, things hang up for a little bit and then it disappears. If that's an ATV from a neighboring apartment, visible via Bluetooth instead of WiFi, then I don't want to see it! There needs to be a way to suppress that from showing. I'm not really sure when I first started seeing "Batpod."
Numerous times, I tried restoring each device to factory defaults and configured them again from scratch. My Apple devices are iPhone 6 Plus, iPad mini 2 (Retina), AirPort Extreme (5th gen), and a single Apple TV (3rd gen). All of them have been restored and reset multiple times. When I set them up from scratch, I do not restore a backup or transfer settings from another device.
The same problems keep coming back, no matter what I do.
I usually configure the AirPort Extreme so the SSID of the 5GHz network clearly says "5Ghz" and I always connect the ATV to the 5ghz network. The router is on the other side of the wall, directly behind the Apple TV. I always connect my mobile devices to the 2.4GHz network because that penetrates walls better and I might have WiFi for a bit longer as I walk away from my apartment. That said, I have tried restoring defaults on the AirPort Extreme and leaving it with one SSID for the whole network. If I recall correctly, I still had most of the same problems.
I purchased an ATV3 for my mother. When I go to her place, I experience none of these issues.
1) There might be something wrong with my AirPort Extreme 5th gen. Perhaps it's doing something strange with that Apple Bonjour networking protocol and it thinks my Apple TV is actually 2 devices. I did the factory restore again last night (hold the reset button while plugging-in the power cord, keep holding for 6+ seconds until the light starts blinking on the front). The AirPort utility on my iPad never saw the router come back on. I thought it was bricked. I checked the AirPlay utility and WiFi networks list on my phone and on my iPad, and there was no sign of my AirPort. Rebooting the iDevices didn't help. I was forced to use the outdated AirPort Utility for Windows on my Win8 system with a wired connection. It showed as "Base Station XXXXXX" in the utility. I connected and it showed WiFi enabled with no security. I set manually set my custom name with WPA2 security and saved changes. After doing that, it was finally visible to my iDevices.
2) There might be something wrong with my Apple TV. I recall an update about a year ago that took over 8 hours to finish. That was the install process. Not the download. Something was really wrong with that. When Apple recalled some of them a while back, the initial employee memo leaked and the range of affected serial numbers included mine. Months later, I made the trek to the Apple Store for other reasons and brought the ATV3 with me. I tried to swap it as a recalled unit, but was rejected because they had revised the recall to exclude my serial number.
3) There might be something wrong with iOS 8 and the environment at my apartment with neighbors and their devices. Most of my major problems started after iOS 8 was released. Perhaps this started when Apple enabled peer-to-peer AirPlay over Bluetooth? I've never specifically enabled that feature. I don't see a way to make sure my iDevices only show AirPlay systems from my home network. I actually use Bluetooth in the car and, occasionally, with a speaker that remains off when I'm not using it...so I don't want to disable/enable Bluetooth all the time. I just want to leave it turned on.
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