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How to make your Apple TV load faster

Posted on by Jerad Hill

I was an Apple TV early adopter back in the day when the Apple TV had an actual hard drive in it. With the latest version of the Apple TV, I have found that it takes a lot longer for movies and tv shows to start playing. It is often that a video will buffer for a while which interrupts our viewing. The Apple TV no longer has a hard drive inside for storing content. It has a small amount of storage that it uses as a buffer to keep your content playing smoothly. The problem these days is that movies and tv shows stream in HD and those HD files are quite large. On top of that, we have multiple devices that are connected to our Wifi network which makes the router work harder to transmit the signal the Apple TV needs to stream content uninterrupted.

Due to the layout of our previous home, it was easier to connect the Apple TV over Wifi. We could not get our cable internet modem or router close enough to the TV to connect the Apple TV by ethernet cable. About 6 months ago, we moved and I decided to place the cable modem and router behind the tv. We instantly had the same issues as before with buffering and the Apple TV becoming disconnected from the Wifi signal. This prompted me to just plug the Apple TV in directly to the router using an ethernet cable.
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Only On Netflix

Posted on by Jerad Hill

Ok, so Netflix has just been killing it lately. The Original Series productions they have been putting out exclusively to their members have been fantastic. Now comes an extension of the Dreamworks animation Turbo. Turbo F.A.S.T. is a 5 exclusive episode series only available on Netflix. The majority of the content my kids consume is on Netflix. If you have kids, you know that On-Demand is where it’s at. We don’t like our kids to watch too much television, but when it’s time for them to watch a show, they are specific as to what they want to see. Cuing up DVDs is annoying, and in our household, a thing of the past. We go to Netflix where we have a profile setup for our kids that shows kid friendly shows and omits all of the stuff we would not want them to see. My kids are not old enough yet to use the remote to start their own shows, but in the future, these parental controls will be nice.

Netflix is continuing to create value, which is why I appreciate their service. It’s $7.99 for streaming access which allows our TV and Mobile devices to connect. That is cheap considering the average cable bill is around $80 per month. We also have a Hulu+ subscription, which is also $7.99 per month, but we spend most of our tv viewing time on Netflix. It’s pretty fantastic. Plus, the quality of the video is getting better. I have watched a few movies on Netflix that were on par with Blu-ray disc. That is pretty good for video streaming over the internet.

What do you think about Netflix? Have you made the switch from cable or satellite to streaming only? If not, what are your reasons for holding on to regular tv?