Anyone else getting 'no network connection' during viewing?

[Prorege1]

A proper router is essential, it doesn't need to cost a fortune.

Ubiquiti has a new nice all in one Wifi 6 router up for testing, is can be extended with additional Wifi access point(s).

It's currently sold out, but for USD 79 it's value for money. Max throughput (Beta tests) is about 650 Mbps, I have one set-up in my network with 23 clients, 3 (recording) surveillance cameras and additional 4 access points - no issues whatsoever with the 2021 ATV on Wifi 6.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I'm glad I don't need a mess of wires like that (or the rack that Linus Tech Tips has!). I'm a fan of clean and neat and not being seen. The tiny little LinkSys router is the only thing that shows (the cable modem is hidden) and no wires. Nothing I do requires a total rack system that you'd expect of a business.

Best part is that it's a set and forget setup. No constant config or admin needed. I kinda have that same thing going with any tech in the house; I don't want blinking lights or showy LEDs or people to 'know' that I got fancy tech. Everything is kinda out of the way, and my decor quite traditional. When the TV or the stereo are off, they're off. No standby lights, no flashy.

My place is a testament to 2010 in a lot of ways. Very little is brand new, and I'd prefer to not live in a starship when it comes to flashing lights or beeps or boops. I'm old school that way.

 

[ugfish]

UPDATE: The messages don’t seem to be appearing any longer. I took no additional action outside of what has been recorded here. Not sure if there has been an update or anything.

 

[rumbletum]

UPDATE: The messages don’t seem to be appearing any longer. I took no additional action outside of what has been recorded here. Not sure if there has been an update or anything.

I hadn’t seen any for the last few days either, but then they appeared again yesterday, but only briefly. I’m hoping it was just a temporary connection issue yesterday, and it has been sorted.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Ironically my router needed a restart today (I added in some smart lights that use wifi and I finally reached the hard limit of connected devices at 40) but I only knew because my Apple TV just up and stopped playing content, got hard frozen till I backed out to the home screen. No warning about connection status though.

The reason was because it remained on the wifi but lost the internet connection through the DNS server (was able to temporarily recover before rebooting the router by using '8.8.8.8' as a DNS to finish what I was watching) so there was no reason for it to show 'no network connection'.

I found out though that the message comes up if it drops the Wifi entirely, even for a second (usually it recovers instantly so your content doesn't stop working) because when I switched to the 5GHz band today it did show this message as it disconnected from the 2.4 when I told it to go to the 5. So the message is a disconnection from your wireless access point, not an internet issue, and since the Apple TV normally recovers pretty fast, and doesn't show any sign of it recovering (no message saying 'everything's fine!') you never see your content stop. I just feels like a false positive.

If, however, your ATV remains on the wifi but loses the internet or DNS server, you won't get any warning and your content will buffer endlessly until you get an error or back out to the home screen.

Just some things I learned today. Now, if only I could figure out why I randomly get black screens off and on when using HDR...

 

[Mactabulous]

ATV4K on wired connection, experiencing exactly the same. It has boggled my mind for two months. Updated to latest tvOS today, but no cigar. So infuriating! Apple needs to fix this asap or gtfo!

 

[nickdalzell1]

Have you considered a used PlayStation 4 console? It supports the Apple TV App, and the Pro can output 4K. Seems to be doing perfectly so far, and it goes with my other 2013 and prior tech that makes it fit in more. Since the PlayStation 5 is the 'newest' (and IMO supremely overpriced for a console) the PS4s are going super cheap. Sometimes you can 'make' a better ATV than use the real deal. Also bonus for games.

 

[Eternal21]

I've been plagued with this problem for years now (I'm on Ethernet connectinon). It comes and goes away. I tried looking for a pattern, but it seems to be random, the only common factor is the ATV4K. I tried eliminating every single point of failure and at this point I believe it's just a defective unit. Also there are no remedies that work. I tried restarting, updating to latest version, enabling/disabling beta updates, swapping network cables and ports, bypassing the router, messing around with DNS addresses. This thing just sucks and keeps popping up the error messages. I would've thrown this piece of crap in the garbage a long time ago, if it wasn't the only streaming device I own that supports Dolby Vision. Sadly Sony's PS5 doesn't, so I'm stuck with 'No Network Detected' errors.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I didn't say PS5. (do you really want to pay over $1500 for a console?!) I said PS4 Pro. I don't know what Dolby Vision or Atmos is, but my Yamaha receiver with 5.1 surround is amazing for whatever I'm getting from it. I am not an audiophile so I probably can't even tell the difference, but then I can't tell the difference between a CRT and a LCD watching the same episode of Knight Rider either.

 

[Eternal21]

I said PS5, because I own one (got one for $500 on launch day). Dolby Vision has nothing to do with sound.

> Dolby Vision is Dolby's version of HDR (High Dynamic Range), which allows for an expansion of the color palette, contrast range, and limits of brightness and darkness in the source material, not the display itself. Displays have raved about contrast ratio, color reproduction and brightness levels, but have always been limited by the source material. Not anymore.

If you have an OLED TV, Dolby Vision is how you want to consume your content. Sony dropped the ball with Playstation and never implemented the standard on it. Like I said before, the only reason I'm even trying to get AppleTV to work is because it's the only streaming device I own that supports DV.

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

Hulu, Apple TV app, Netflix have started doing this on my ATV 4K. It works perfectly fine, but during a show it will show 'No network connection--please check your internet connection' on the upper right corner for a few seconds, but the show never rebuffers or changes the video quality, just plays perfectly normal. I'm still running tvOS 13.3 ( refuse to update) and in settings-->Network it seems to have a perfectly strong signal and again, the shows play fine. Just curious what's causing this 'false' error. Just started this evening.

Mine did it last night, and the video did not resume. I had to get back to the menu in Amazon Prime, and then had to go back to the video, which started over. I went to bed. There were no network outages that I was aware of. Another bug? Yippee... I thought it was AT&T, but that was a message I've never seen before.

Thanks for posting. I'll lurk and see what's going on.

 

[nickdalzell1]

I can't even tell when HDR is on even when I used an Apple TV other than it was the only time the picture randomly blanked out for a few seconds at a time for no reason and then got some lame HDCP error forcing a hard reboot of the ATV and then swiftly turning HDR off. Again, 99% of my TV shows are super old, say, Leave it to Beaver and so on. None of that was ever remastered in HD much less HDR.

 

[Mactabulous]

The HBO Max app reacts to this notification, claiming the connection is lost. Perhaps the buffer is too small to maintain streaming and/or the notification triggers a behavior in the app, resulting in a false positive. We had to resort to watching HBO on our smart TV interface from LG. Lo and behold: no dropped connections. Would upgrading to the gen. 6 ATV solve this? Not sure what gens the rest in the thread are using. KTHX

 

[nickdalzell1]

I was using an Apple TV 4K. Box has writing and a copyright 2017, Apple, Inc. on it. I don't know what generation it was but I paid a good amount for it in 2018. Like $199. My first Apple TV long ago only cost $99 and I was surprised they raised the price $100.

I'm old fashioned and I live by an old credos. If your product ends up causing me more frustration than enjoyment I don't buy another of your products. I got a Sony PlayStation 4 instead and it works fine. It's an old credos people used to follow decades back, and why brands such as Fisher, Curtis-Mathes and Sony were popular. They made decent stuff and you could get 30 years of use from it. Some of that stuff still works today. But lately people just keep letting companies screw them over and over and they just keep buying. They can suffer from Antennagate, Bendgate, touch disease and broken butterfly keyboards and still buy the next Apple product. I don't know why, and if you were a company trying to scam people like that back in the 1960s you'd be bankrupt in days. "Don't buy that brand! it's garbage! Falls apart in a year or less. Buy a Sony, you get what you pay for and it lasts" were the types of comments you'd hear on the street.

I can't tell for certain whether it's the intelligence level of consumers dipping to an all-time low or if companies stopped caring about their customers entirely, or both.

 

[Mactabulous]

Unless this is a universal issue affecting all devices or a large batch, this is probably a fluke, limited to a few handfull of devices (judging by this thread, but I could certainly be dead wrong about the scope here). I’m eager for a possible solution, regardless.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Oh, the Apple discussion forums are chock full of issues similar to this. Not sure how that depicts total numbers of devices sold, however. It's got to be either a server issue (whatever the device uses to verify internet connectivity) or an app issue (most of my issues revolved around the Hulu app) or finicky router configs, or any combo of the three. Only Apple knows what the true culprit is, and like everything else they do, they ain't tellin'.

 

[911jason]

Bought a new AppleTV 4k (2021), installed it today using all three cables from my existing previous gen AppleTV 4k in the same location. Moved the old one to another room. Started getting these message popups periodically throughout the day on the new one. Never once saw that message on the old one. Hard wired Ethernet connection, tested on the ATV4K itself at ~350 Mbps shortly after the first message. Video quality never dropped or stuttered. Should I exchange it for a new one?

 

[Prorege1]

Bought a new AppleTV 4k (2021), installed it today using all three cables from my existing previous gen AppleTV 4k in the same location. Moved the old one to another room. Started getting these message popups periodically throughout the day on the new one. Never once saw that message on the old one. Hard wired Ethernet connection, tested on the ATV4K itself at ~350 Mbps shortly after the first message. Video quality never dropped or stuttered. Should I exchange it for a new one?

Could be a cable problem. In the ATV settings video and sound what is the outcome when you test the HDMI-connection? Are you using proper Cat6 ethernet cables?

 

[danb1979]

Bought a new AppleTV 4k (2021), installed it today using all three cables from my existing previous gen AppleTV 4k in the same location. Moved the old one to another room. Started getting these message popups periodically throughout the day on the new one. Never once saw that message on the old one. Hard wired Ethernet connection, tested on the ATV4K itself at ~350 Mbps shortly after the first message. Video quality never dropped or stuttered. Should I exchange it for a new one?

No; it's an issue with Apple itself

My folks have a brand new one; exactly the same error message pops up but disappears; causes zero issues with playback...

It's clearly a bug/glitch that needs fixing

 

[nickdalzell1]

I was getting random black screens when attempting to use HDR (only during watching video--home screen was fine) and occasional HDCP errors if it couldn't recover. Sorry, Apple, not going to spend tons of $$$ on a super-high end HDMI cable just to not be able to tell the difference between HDR and non-HDR during an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. PlayStation 4 is where it's at!

 

[911jason]

No; it's an issue with Apple itself

My folks have a brand new one; exactly the same error message pops up but disappears; causes zero issues with playback...

It's clearly a bug/glitch that needs fixing

I got mine from Amazon, so I started a return this morning. They offered to ship me a replacement immediately and I then have 30 days to return the original one. Hopefully this will resolve the issue. I'll report back.

 

[nickdalzell1]

Whatever happened to the time when a company screwed up and people simply stopped buying their products? Why are you all still trying to gamble on a 'good' ATV box? Clearly Apple screwed up. Why not try another company? Why trust the one who messed up?

 

[911jason]

Whatever happened to the time when a company screwed up and people simply stopped buying their products? Why are you all still trying to gamble on a 'good' ATV box? Clearly Apple screwed up. Why not try another company? Why trust the one who messed up?

Why do you assume that we haven't tried others? I've had many different Roku devices, from the stick to the Ultra and currently have a TCL 6-series Roku TV. I've had Chromecast and Android TV. I like my AppleTV the best out of all of them! Have had zero issues with my original AppleTV 4k, which is now plugged in to the Roku TV since that interface got clunky in less than a year. This one minor issue is not enough to make me throw in the towel.

 

[danb1979]

I got mine from Amazon, so I started a return this morning. They offered to ship me a replacement immediately and I then have 30 days to return the original one. Hopefully this will resolve the issue. I'll report back.

As said, it's not an issue with the ATV itself rather that it's an issue at Apples end...

Replacing the device won't make a difference, it'll still have the same niggle

 

[911jason]

As said, it's not an issue with the ATV itself rather that it's an issue at Apples end...

Replacing the device won't make a difference, it'll still have the same niggle

How can you be sure? I don't see nearly enough complaints online to think that everyone who has bought this device is having the issue. My older AppleTV 4k is not.