I have a client that has 3 ATVs on their network. They are pulling movies through home share from a Mac laptop. I was there on Friday and tried to play a purchased movie and it took forever to load. When it did load it would stop every 10 minutes. I also checked their Internet download speed and they were getting less than 1 Mbps from their bell 2 wire ISP service. It's my understanding that the Internet would have no bearing on purchased movies because it should be pulling from iTunes on the laptop correct? This is what else is on the network.

8 - Crestron TPMC - 3SMD
1 - Crestron MC3 processor
1 -Crestron Cen Idocv
2 - IPhones
3 - IPads
1 - Netgear 24 port switch (12 POE)

ATVs are rarely running movies at the same time and are wired into the network.

Any idea why this is happening? I'm also trying to understand how home sharing works on the network. TIA.

I have never seen on the latest generation apple tv the ability to stream a movie from another laptop in the sense you are talking about. I believe it's only for music and photos and at that it hardly works. With an apple purchase once you buy it you can see it on your apple tv and your streaming right from Apple's servers if it's the same account. The network speed you posted is unusable for any kind of streaming service and needs to be upgraded asap.

Then that would explain the problem.

Stream movies to AppleTV's from computers all the time. If sharing is on I can copy a movie into iTunes and then play it on any AppleTV on the network.

Is this option under the home share menu on the Atv?

Even if you can stream from a computer, I thought anything under the purchased tab is being streamed from the cloud.

+1

That's what my thoughts were based on what the OP said.

if you purchase a movie from iTunes and download it onto your laptop and go to the computer tab on the home screen of the apple TV, it will allow to stream it straight off your computer instead of thru the cloud. you have to have home sharing setup on your laptop and apple TV with the same account. if your go to the movie tab and go to purchased then it will just stream straight off of the iTunes servers and that internet speed is to slow to stream them.

Ok. But if you purchase a movie direct from the ATV can you not sync to iTunes ?

I am fairly sure that in that instance, the movie will populate in iTunes but have a cloud icon next to it. Clicking the cloud icon should give you the option to down load it directly to your iTunes folder.

I just tried it. You can even sort the movies and or music but the clous icon in the top menu bar.

As i know you can have upto 5 ATV (maybe more) with the same acount so you can watch the same movies or music that you have in the same acount in itunes , i have 2 at home and 1 in the office and i dont have any issues .

I also have strated using OutClass Apple TV Server which i think its great for sharing all the movies in the same network and no need to download as they all stored in the NAS .




This way i use the apple tv as the player for all media in the NAS .

I have a client that has 14 ATV on one account. No issues with having that many, but there are limitations to how manny can be used at once. From testing I found that Netflix and Hulu allow two simultaneous steams, and I think iTunes allows three.

Yeah, situation was a bit different with ATV 1 though. It was regarded as one of the limit of 5 'authorized computers'. According to MacForum this was due to the internal HDD enabling content to be stored. That restriction seems to have been lifted with the later 2 & 3 models which are basic network clients without any storage.