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Have to say the remote makes an excellent prank on unsuspecting people. Well, it used to..... Back when front row was included, you could quietly press the menu button on your remote and drive "friends" crazy!!

Had a couple of issues with my ATV "crashing" and rebooting. The first time was while watching an iTunes Match movie from a digital copy of StarTrek that came with a DVD/BlueRay/Digital Combo pack. It stopped playing and I quit out of the video player and could not get back in to anything, so turned it off using the sleep button, then back on. After that, the ATV would reboot as soon as I tried to go to any button. So, I pulled the plug and it was fine. The second time was while I was out and my wife said it stopped playing, rebooted and went back to playing the same song.

Other than that, I like the new ATV. I have an ATV 2 upstairs as well. For the most part, I like the new firmware, but I am not happy about being forced to scroll through all the sports icons I'll never use. OK, scroll is a bit dramatic, but I am really hoping Apple will add the ability to turn off unused icons.

When your remote no longer controls the Apple TV for whatever reason, use the "Remote" app on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. It will likely discover and connect to your Apple TV and you can navigate to that place in the settings with the app and re-pair your remote. I've had to do that a few times.

I'm pretty sure I confirmed this weekend that the latest Apple TV update has an issue with extended networks. When hooked into a network extended through an Airport Express or second Airport Extreme, the Apple TV would drop the connection periodically, totally losing the home sharing computer it was playing through. I disconnected the extended network and no further problems occurred.

Since I updated the whole thing is a mess. First I had to find on the internet how to update, I ended up changing the DNS so I could. Now when I try to stream the music on my iPhone it doesn't work, I have to try several times. Apple used to be fun and easy, now there is something really wrong.

scrooks, on 19 March 2012 - 08:49 AM, said:

VERY interesting information! I never thought of that. I happen to have an Apple Airport Express behind my TV providing an extended network to feed an internet signal to my Sony BD player w/o built-in Wi-Fi via Ethernet. It is possible that my AppleTV is acquiring the Wi-Fi signal from the AE and not the original base station in the other room. Since updating my ATV2 to 5.0, the Home Sharing link drops constantly when playing video from the Mac. Doesn't seem to be a problem with music from the Mac or internet streaming content. Within a few minutes of watching video from my Mac, the video stops and kicks back to the main menu with no computers displayed. I have to quit and relaunch iTunes, but after a few minutes more, the link breaks again. I will unplug my AE and see if that solves the Home Sharing bug until Apple can issue a fix on that one.

Hey Chris Breen,

Your suggestion of streaming 720p instead of 1080p for slower internet connections seems logical, but may not help in this situation. You might think the 1080p files would be larger than the 720p files since they are higher resolution, but that is not always the case. It seems Apple is using higher compression with the 1080p files. As an example, I was browsing Pixar's The Incredibles as I was downloading my free digital copy so I can have it in the "Cloud". I was changing the iTunes Store settings within iTunes from 720p to 1080p to see the changes in file sizes. The SD file is 1.6 GB. The 720p file is 3.6 GB, and the 1080p file is 3.2 GB. So in this example, the 1080p file is smaller and would take less time to download. Suggesting the 720p version in this case would actually take longer to begin playback. I think your only solution is to download the file to your Mac, and host it from your Mac through Home Sharing to the AppleTV. Assuming you have Wi-Fi N for the faster speed over Wi-Fi G. (Also assuming Apple solves the Home Sharing bug in which the AppleTV continually loses the link when playing video).

Using a Logitech Harmony 700 remote provides a much better AppleTV experience than using the basic and limited Apple remote. You don't have to pick up another remote to control the ATV, and you can use the standard transport controls as well as the arrows and select buttons to control the ATV. Much easier.

classicmacs01, on 19 March 2012 - 02:02 PM, said:

I spoke to Apple about this 1080p versus 720p streaming stuff and they specifically said that if you have a slower broadband connection you want to go with 720p or SD rather than 1080p because of the size of the files.

Chris Breen, on 19 March 2012 - 03:19 PM, said:

But in my example, the 720p version of The Incredibles is larger than the 1080p version. About 400 MB larger. Maybe that won't be the case with other movies.

classicmacs01, on 19 March 2012 - 06:47 PM, said:

That's what I'm thinking. I do know that when streaming a 1080p version of a TV episode it took quite a bit longer for the show to begin streaming than did a show of similar length encoded for 720p.

Chris Breen, on 19 March 2012 - 06:50 PM, said:

iTunes won't show the file sizes of individual TV episodes. The left column only indicates that 1080p or 720p is available. So I checked out the latest movie, My Week With Marilyn. The 720p version is 3.11GB and the 1080p version is 2.95GB. Young Adult with Charlize Theron, another new release is 3.46GB for 1080p and 2.98GB for 720p. So I think it is a toss-up. Some content at 720p will be larger than 1080p and some will be smaller at 1080p. It all depends on the video content and how well the compression handles the video being compressed. At least the files aren't vastly different in file sizes. The HD versions for both 720p and 1080p are both considerably larger than their SD counterparts, which is a given. The SD versions of both movies are 1.26GB and 1.31GB. You also have to wonder if people were skipping 720p downloads and waiting for 1080p, thinking those files would be considerably better in quality, and now experiencing the longer download times over the SD versions.

scrooks, on 19 March 2012 - 08:49 AM, said:

I did some testing with this scenario, since I have an Apple Express extending my network for my BD player connected to the AE via Ethernet. I was experiencing the Home Sharing link failure ever since I updated to 5.0. I unplugged my AE to force the ATV2 to connect to my main Apple Extreme base station. To clear the ATV2 memory, I used the new Restart command in Settings to reboot it. Then I launched iTunes. I watched a TV episode streaming from my Mac. No failures, played right through. I quit iTunes and plugged my AE back in and let it re-acquire a signal. I rebooted the ATV2 again and checked the signal (now at 100%) to ensure that it was connecting through the AE. I launched iTunes and watched another TV episode from the Mac and it also played right through, which was surprising. So reconnect your extended network and reboot the ATV and test it again. I will continue to test this since it was driving me crazy losing the Home Sharing link every few minutes when trying to play video from the Mac.