I have an AppleTV 3. It is an incredibly buggy device. As an audio device it has been a source of frustration for me since day one, to the point where I now no longer use it - ever - as part of my BitPerfect test regimen. It is relegated to use in my Gym, where I watch YouTube or Netflix with it while working out.
The AppleTV has an annoying habit of dropping its WiFi connection periodically. Actually, it doesn’t so much drop its connection - it is more like its entire WiFi system shuts off. This happens after between a few minutes and a few hours of use, and has persisted across several firmware updates. The solution is to re-boot it. Sometimes it takes three or four re-boots. Rarely do I get through a solid hour without it failing.
Today it appears to have given up for good. I can’t get it to come back up at all. I have just found out that there is an Apple recall program in place and that my AppleTV is one of the affected units, so it is now boxed up and ready to go back to Apple. Let's see what happens.
So, while dealing with that, I got round to thinking a little. If you have read my recent posts on AirPlay, you will have noted that I spent a few days exhaustively testing AirPlay with BitPerfect under Yosemite and iTunes 12.0.1 with mixed results. I was using both my AirPort Express and the AirPlay receiver in my Classe CP-800 as the target AirPlay device. It may not have come across in my post, but my test experience seemed to go through two phases. The first was an initial three-hour phase during which nothing seemed to work at all. This was followed by a lengthy period during which AirPlay seemed to function with at least some semblance of predictability, as reported in my post, a situation which still persists this morning.
Here is what is going through my mind. Is it possible that when my AppleTV was active on the network I was having uncontrollable AirPlay problems? And that as soon as its WiFi transceiver ‘died’ (causing it to drop off the network) things started to play more predictably? As I write this, it occurs to me that whenever the AppleTV is active on my network, my RMBP seems to want to select it as its ‘default’ AirPlay device whenever it can, even though I never want to use it in that role and therefore never - ever - select it. Hmmmm….
Read on here....
