HomePod Homepods as default audio output for Apple TV 4K kills my wifi speed

[Einkoro]

Are these HomePods creating a wifi ad boc so strong it’s causing interference?

Apart from trying dfs channels I get the same result on all wifi 5Ghz channels

It doesn’t look like they use adhoc wifi as nothing shows up when scanning for wifi networks. Even using a spectrum scanner it doesn’t look like there is anything else around for me. My guess is they are using the WiSA standards for wireless home theatre audio which should fall in the U-NII-3 spectrum but there isn’t any real details on Apples implementation anywhere.

I have a ticket open with Apple regarding the issue as it reproduces every few weeks for me.

When you run into the issue give switching from the HomePods to tv internal speakers a try and if the poor performance goes away you can try the following work around:
1) switch the AppleTV output to something other than HomePods
2) restart the AppleTV and HomePods
3) after everything reboots select the HomePods as the output on the AppleTV again

I have found this to consistently fix the issue at least for awhile (days or weeks).

For anyone using UniFi APs the issue should show up in the controller when it occurs as a significant decrease to WiFi Experience metrics for the Apple TV and both HomePods. Screenshots attached for reference.

 

[Brad Smith]

It doesn’t look like they use adhoc wifi as nothing shows up in when scanning for wifi networks. Even using a spectrum scanner it doesn’t look like there is anything else around for me. My guess is they are using the WiSA standards for wireless home theatre audio which should fall in the U-NII-3 spectrum but there isn’t any real details on Apples implementation anywhere.

I have a ticket open with Apple regarding the issue as it reproduces every few weeks for me.

When you run into the issue give switching from the HomePods to tv internal speakers a try and if the poor performance goes away you can try the following work around:
1) switch the AppleTV output to something other than HomePods
2) restart the AppleTV and HomePods
3) after everything reboots select the HomePods as the output on the AppleTV again

I have found this to consistently fix the issue at least for awhile (days or weeks).

For anyone using UniFi APs the issue should show up in the controller when it occurs as a significant decrease to WiFi Experience metrics for the Apple TV and both HomePods. Screenshots attached for reference.

Let me know what you hear! I've been having tons of problems with it the past few days. Even resetting everything as above doesn't seem to fix it. I'm using UniFi U6-Lite as my access point.

 

[Einkoro]

Let me know what you hear! I've been having tons of problems with it the past few days. Even resetting everything as above doesn't seem to fix it. I'm using UniFi U6-Lite as my access point.

Does your wifi experience score for the AppleTV and HomePods drop significantly in the UniFi controller when you notice the problem?

If you have a Mac or iOS device you don’t mind trying the public betas on it’s probably worth using Feedback assistant to submit a report for it and attach your AppleTV and HomePod’s sysdiagnose reports as they don’t have any other reports of the same issue yet according to the ticket. You can reference my report ID FB9311697.

Bug Reporting - Apple Developer

Now with Feedback Assistant available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web, it’s easier to submit effective bug reports and request enhancements to APIs and tools.

developer.apple.com

 

[Brad Smith]

Does your wifi experience score for the AppleTV and HomePods drop significantly in the UniFi controller when you notice the problem?

I'll check when I'm watching something later today. Right now the UniFi controller reports pretty good WiFi Experience Scores across the board (95%+). And that's with 4 HomePods and 2 HomePod minis in the apartment.

 

[Brad Smith]

My WiFi speed seems to remain ok in my testing now. The problems I'm having is with one of the HomePods cutting out and not playing. It isn't consistent which one it is. And sometimes it just stops altogether (I assume if both drop out), which pauses media playback. Haven't figured out what's going on, but it happens pretty regularly.

 

[garethjs]

I don't know how many of you have gigabit internet speed. But if my internet cap was 700mb/s I wouldn't have noticed the issue too. However since Im able to download at 930mb/s over wifi, the drop to 700+mb/s with the homepods connected is obvious.

 

[SamboSoul]

Hello everyone,

I suffer from the same issues described here… I am using an Asus AC86U router which is a very capable router, both my AppleTV 4K (2017) and my two HomePods are connected to the 5GHz network, all devices maxing out the Tx and Rx rate at 866.7Mbps.

As soon as I set up the AppleTV as the HomeKit Hub and select both HomePods as the default output speakers, my bandwidth drops to significantly, at least by 50% according to the speedtest app on my AppleTV. If I run my AppleTV stand-alone, I max out my 200/100 ISP line. Sometimes, I only manage to get 30/70. The download is more affected than the upload.

I am wondering… the A10 chip in the AppleTV 4K (2017) is relatively old… in the meantime new functionalities have been made available. Is it possible that the chip can’t handle all of this anymore and that the A12 in the 2021 AppleTV 4K is better suited?

All other devices connected to the 5GHz network e.g. iPhone, iPad or iMac max out the 200/100 bandwidth. This is not a wireless issue.

 

[garethjs]

The apple tv 4k 2021 has the exact same issue

 

[B/D]

The apple tv 4k 2021 has the exact same issue

Yeah, I suspect that the ad hoc network created between the homepods and the apple tv when set at its default audio output (that circumvent some the limitations of a regular Airplay 2 connection and allows for real time audio system wide with zero latency, surround sound...) is extremely taxing on the network.

Next monday, with the release of tvOS 15 and Homepod OS 15, they will launch this feature for the homepod Minis. Perhaps it is improved, or perhaps is just by design; this feature is very taxing on the network.

In my case I solved all my problems by hardwiring my Apple TV to the router.

 

[B/D]

It seems that this is still not solved with audioOS and tvOS 15. Someone in reddit wrote about this right now:


Hi! I saw your post from a while ago about the reduced bandwidth on Apple TV 4K when using HomePods as a stereo pair. I am facing the same issue (I just recently set up some HomePods). My bandwidth with them connected as default output is between 15-40Mbps and with them disconnected is 200Mbps.
I was wondering if you’ve found a solution to this (besides using Ethernet)?


And my response:

Using Ethernet was the only solution... to the buffering and video quality issues when using the Homepods with an Apple tv 4k.

However I have to revert back to my tv internal speakers after each session because I have found that just leaving the homepods set as the default audio output of the apple tv, without even using them, degrades the wifi of my entire network, of all my devices.

 

[garethjs]

From some day to day testing I can tell you that the interference HomePods cause are quite substantial

so HomePods on its own are ok. The minute u pair them as a stereo pair I loose 50mb/sec of wifi speed.

when u pair them as output speakers again I loose another 50mb/sec

so I have 2 x HomePod mini and 2 x HomePods connected to the atv so that’s a loss of 150mb/sec

I have a wifi 6 router and without the HomePods I get 930mb/sec. HomePods hooked up I get 750mb/sec

if I place my iPad or iPhone next to the HomePods I loose wifi 6 and it drops to wifi 5. Again some form of interference.

but wasn’t this way at the beginning when I first got the minis.

somewhere start of this year with a software update this slowdown started

 

[cutienoua]

Same issue here. Original homepods wifi 6 eero router,latest 4k apple tv wireless.
Normal network speed with homepods individual is 550 Mbps.
Stereo homepods drop my speed to 100Mbps . Not happy.
I tried apple tv hardwire with home pods stereo and no issue with the network speed. Problem is I am using Bose soundbar with this apple tv. I could use the first gen 4k apple tv only to stream music to the homepods.
Bottom line ,we should not have to do this, just because apple does not care anymore for the original homepods.

 

[B/D]

Same issue here. Original homepods wifi 6 eero router,latest 4k apple tv wireless.
Normal network speed with homepods individual is 550 Mbps.
Stereo homepods drop my speed to 100Mbps . Not happy.
I tried apple tv hardwire with home pods stereo and no issue with the network speed. Problem is I am using Bose soundbar with this apple tv. I could use the first gen 4k apple tv only to stream music to the homepods.
Bottom line ,we should not have to do this, just because apple does not care anymore for the original homepods.

A stereo pair of minis set as the default audio output of a wirelessly connected Apple TV 4K cause the same problem.

 

[MrMacintoshIII]

What is with all the complaining here? Do you all not understand the wireless resource cost of ad-hoc stereo sound output??? Hook your Apple TV up via hardwire and be done with it.

Why are people still thinking Wifi is suitable for such time-sensitive operations like sound and video??? Let alone sound and video in synchrony, quickly.

 

[MrMacintoshIII]

Bottom line ,we should not have to do this, just because apple does not care anymore for the original homepods.

Which is why they released a software update literally just the other day for OG Homepods that I bet you gobbled up? Then cry foul of them not caring anymore?

Cry. Me. A. River.

Macrumors users can be SO insufferable.

 

[Itinj24]

What is with all the complaining here? Do you all not understand the wireless resource cost of ad-hoc stereo sound output??? Hook your Apple TV up via hardwire and be done with it.

Why are people still thinking Wifi is suitable for such time-sensitive operations like sound and video??? Let alone sound and video in synchrony, quickly.

No MrMacintosh, the general consumer does not understand the wireless resource cost of ad-hoc stereo sound output. The devices are advertised as supporting Wi-Fi connection and the general consumer assumes this should just work properly.

Also, some people just don’t have the ability to hardwire their ATVs. I have eight ATVs all connected to HomePods and no Ethernet running through my walls. With the layout of my house, gonna cost a small fortune to have someone run that wire. I don’t have the time.

 

[B/D]

No MrMacintosh, the general consumer does not understand the wireless resource cost of ad-hoc stereo sound output. The devices are advertised as supporting Wi-Fi connection and the general consumer assumes this should just work properly.

Also, some people just don’t have the ability to hardwire their ATVs. I have eight ATVs all connected to HomePods and no Ethernet running through my walls. With the layout of my house, gonna cost a small fortune to have someone run that wire. I don’t have the time.

Bravo.

Wi-Fi AC/6 should be more than enough for this , like it is with the normal airplay connection between the apple tv and the homepods (which by the way, plays 4K video and audio in perfect sync without a hitch).

Therefore, it should work perfectly via Wifi even taking into account the extra bandwith required for the ad-hoc link. Lack of optimization and polish, like many of Apple software these days. That´s all.

And I, for the record, have my Apple TV 4K hardwired. But it should work as well without it. Apple, in it setup guide for the home theater mode, do not advertise that ethernet is imperative for good performance, or even required.

In fact, this is currently filled as a bug in the apple feedback app. Is open and under investigation. And I certainly believe that it has to be a bug, because is not normal that a rock solid 300/300 mb connection with almost zero ping , by virtue of just making the homepods the default audio output of the Apple TV 4K, becomes a 3-10mb with a 100ms ping (for example). Thats too much. Not only that, but it also makes the whole wireless network unstable and erratic.


I have noticed, since 15.2, that when the homepods are set as the default audio output of the apple tv, the use the ethernet connection of the apple tv instead of their own wifi for everything and even disappear from the list of wireless devices of my router. This solved instantly the erratic network performance for the rest of the connected wireless devices, so I can at last leave the homepods set as the audio output of the Apple TV permanently.

If I have to guess, I suspect this was done because the Minis can now be set in home theater mode as well, and given that they only have Wifi N (!!!), having them paired to a hardwired Apple TV, and use that connection instead of their own wifi antennas can help immensely to their performance in many scenarios.


This dramatically improved everything on my OG stereo pair as well, from Siri responsiveness, to buffering and loading times when playing back stuff from the cloud, and of course Homekit performance. And while this is very clever and a fantastic feature to have Apple shouldn´t forget the people which dont have their Apple TV hardwired, which I suspect are plenty, or even the vast majority.


If we are insufferable merely for discussing this, then so be it.

 

[Itinj24]

Bravo.

Wi-Fi AC/6 should be more than enough for this , like it is with the normal airplay connection between the apple tv and the homepods (which by the way, plays 4K video and audio in perfect sync without a hitch).

Therefore, it should work perfectly via Wifi even taking into account the extra bandwith required for the ad-hoc link. Lack of optimization and polish, like many of Apple software these days. That´s all.

And I, for the record, have my Apple TV 4K hardwired. But it should work as well without it. Apple, in it setup guide for the home theater mode, do not advertise that ethernet is imperative for good performance, or even required.

In fact, this is currently filled as a bug in the apple feedback app. Is open and under investigation. And I certainly believe that it has to be a bug, because is not normal that a rock solid 300/300 mb connection with almost zero ping , by virtue of just making the homepods the default audio output of the Apple TV 4K, becomes a 3-10mb with a 100ms ping (for example). Thats too much. Not only that, but it also makes the whole wireless network unstable and erratic.


I have noticed, since 15.2, that when the homepods are set as the default audio output of the apple tv, the use the ethernet connection of the apple tv instead of their own wifi for everything and even disappear from the list of wireless devices of my router. This solved instantly the erratic network performance for the rest of the connected wireless devices, so I can at last leave the homepods set as the audio output of the Apple TV permanently.

If I have to guess, I suspect this was done because the Minis can now be set in home theater mode as well, and given that they only have Wifi N (!!!), having them paired to a hardwired Apple TV, and use that connection instead of their own wifi antennas can help immensely to their performance in many scenarios.


This dramatically improved everything on my OG stereo pair as well, from Siri responsiveness, to buffering and loading times when playing back stuff from the cloud, and of course Homekit performance. And while this is very clever and a fantastic feature to have Apple shouldn´t forget the people which dont have their Apple TV hardwired, which I suspect are plenty, or even the vast majority.


If we are insufferable merely for discussing this, then so be it.

Much more eloquently put than my post ?.

I have an eero Pro 6 mesh in my house. I just got my first new gen ATV 4K and I thought it would have the best network performance of all my ATV 4Ks. It actually gets the worst which I’m puzzled by. I was planning on upgrading all my 4Ks for the new gen Wi-Fi 6 but not sure that’s the best idea lol. I do plan on having a GC run Ethernet through my walls soon though. Gonna be a heck of a run.

 

[cutienoua]

yes, the fix was to use apple tv hardwired and the pair of original homepods linked to this apple tv.
If I airplay music to this apple tv, network speed is fine. If I ask siri to play music directly from the speakers, speed will go down again.
So yeah, the latest software did not fix anything!

 

[cutienoua]

Which is why they released a software update literally just the other day for OG Homepods that I bet you gobbled up? Then cry foul of them not caring anymore?

Cry. Me. A. River.

Macrumors users can be SO insufferable.

yes, you are the best illustration of this !

 

[Einkoro]

My WiFi speed seems to remain ok in my testing now. The problems I'm having is with one of the HomePods cutting out and not playing. It isn't consistent which one it is. And sometimes it just stops altogether (I assume if both drop out), which pauses media playback. Haven't figured out what's going on, but it happens pretty regularly.

Are you still encountering this with your UniFi setup? Do you have any thread devices for HomeKit by any chance?

I've had a lot of back and forth with Apple and some with ubnt now and it hasn't really gone anywhere useful yet.

However yesterday and today I might have made some useful progress. I stepped out briefly without pausing music AirPlaying and when I came back noticed it was stuttering and intermittently dropping out. Tried streaming some video on the Apple TV from Netflix and Crunchyroll as well as Plex and it was buffering like crazy. Sure enough the speed tests showed the usual horrible performance and UniFi scores were dropping while reported lost packets on the APs was ramping up. No other devices seemed to be having issues ...except the MBP was reporting a poor experience score in UniFi this time around.

I then wandered into my office grumbling and noticed the MBP sounded like a jet engine on take off with the fans fully ramped. A quick glance at the running processes in Activity Viewer showed mDNSResponder as the culprit maxing out several cores so I quickly checked port 53 with tcpdump and saw a ton of queries to the Apple TV which is awfully strange since it shouldn't be a resolver for DNS. It was an obscene amount of DNS queries (thousands per second) from mDNSResponder on the MBP all querying the Apple TV and absolutely hammering it. Every single query was either an A or AAAA record for the Apple TV (Living-Room.openthread.thread.home.arpa.). Sending a deauth packet to the Apple TV to disconnect and reconnect it from the WiFi appears to halt the queries at least until it begins again later.

Sure enough this occurred again today and the MBP with mDNSResponder flooding the Apple TV seemed to be the problem. I switched the Apple TV over to ethernet afterwards to compare and left tcpdump running on the MBP piping to a log file. While I didn't notice any performance issues there was multiple instances where it was flooding the Apple TV with DNS queries for thread yet again while I wasn't at the MBP.

So to me it almost looks like this might be a issue with thread border routing on the Apple TV and not specific to HT pairing with HomePods but is made more apparent by the performance impact of HT pairing with them. This issue still occurs while wired with ethernet however with the gigabit connection it holds up much better to the flood of DNS requests and isn't noticeable while using the Apple TV or HomePods.

I'd be awfully curious if anyone that can reproduce the their performance issue can try tcpdump (or whatever your preferred option for packet sniffing is) and see if there is a high amount of DNS queries for *.openthread.thread.home.arpa. or anything else unusual.

If you see a huge wall like these two lines scrolling by its likely the same issue:

3:05:42.482483 (proc mDNSResponder:247) IP reiya-mbp.home.lan.62141 > living-room.home.lan.domain: 44133+ AAAA? Living-Room.openthread.thread.home.arpa. (57)
23:05:42.483118 (proc mDNSResponder:247) IP reiya-mbp.home.lan.57593 > living-room.home.lan.domain: 52155+ A? Living-Room.openthread.thread.home.arpa. (57)

 

[eeze]

I purchased my second HomePod mini last week, set it up for default audio stereo pair and within a few days noticed network problems impacting content buffering as well as lag/skip when using the iOS remote for Apple TV. Speedtest app on ATV shows a reduction in download speed, massive spike in ping, and insane spike in jitter (150-200ms).

Removing the HomePod mini stereo pair as the default audio resolved the issue. Unfortunately, for my use case, SlingTV does not support Airplay 2, but HomePods are supported when configured as a default audio source. I spent a solid day tinkering and felt like some of my findings may be beneficial to the community.

I have no way of getting ethernet wired to the location of the ATV. A solution for some who are in the same position would be using ethernet over coaxial solutions.


Two alternate solutions to those in the thread:
1. An Airport Express connected to the ATV via ethernet and to the router via wifi results in no network instability issues. This suggests the wireless chip in the ATV is the bottleneck.

2. Alternatively, a MAC address blacklist for the 2.4ghz spectrum for the two HomePods fixed it as well. My SSID is a combined SSID (by preference), so restricting the HomePods from the 2.4ghz signal resolved the issue for me.

Hardware:
ASUS AC68
Apple TV 4K OG
2 HomePod Minis

I then wandered into my office grumbling and noticed the MBP sounded like a jet engine on take off with the fans fully ramped. A quick glance at the running processes in Activity Viewer showed mDNSResponder as the culprit maxing out several cores so I quickly checked port 53 with tcpdump and saw a ton of queries to the Apple TV which is awfully strange since it shouldn't be a resolver for DNS. It was an obscene amount of DNS queries (thousands per second) from mDNSResponder on the MBP all querying the Apple TV and absolutely hammering it. Every single query was either an A or AAAA record for the Apple TV (Living-Room.openthread.thread.home.arpa.). Sending a deauth packet to the Apple TV to disconnect and reconnect it from the WiFi appears to halt the queries at least until it begins again later.

Sure enough this occurred again today and the MBP with mDNSResponder flooding the Apple TV seemed to be the problem. I switched the Apple TV over to ethernet afterwards to compare and left tcpdump running on the MBP piping to a log file. While I didn't notice any performance issues there was multiple instances where it was flooding the Apple TV with DNS queries for thread yet again while I wasn't at the MBP.

So to me it almost looks like this might be a issue with thread border routing on the Apple TV and not specific to HT pairing with HomePods but is made more apparent by the performance impact of HT pairing with them. This issue still occurs while wired with ethernet however with the gigabit connection it holds up much better to the flood of DNS requests and isn't noticeable while using the Apple TV or HomePods.

I'd be awfully curious if anyone that can reproduce the their performance issue can try tcpdump (or whatever your preferred option for packet sniffing is) and see if there is a high amount of DNS queries for *.openthread.thread.home.arpa. or anything else unusual.

If you see a huge wall like these two lines scrolling by its likely the same issue:

3:05:42.482483 (proc mDNSResponder:247) IP reiya-mbp.home.lan.62141 > living-room.home.lan.domain: 44133+ AAAA? Living-Room.openthread.thread.home.arpa. (57)
23:05:42.483118 (proc mDNSResponder:247) IP reiya-mbp.home.lan.57593 > living-room.home.lan.domain: 52155+ A? Living-Room.openthread.thread.home.arpa. (57)

This activity was noted on the subreddit a month or so ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/rrepay
edit: looks like you found that thread yesterday, haha.

edit2: solid ifixit analysis in PDF available at https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/HomePod+Mini+IC+Identification/141641
4 networking chips: USI UWB transceiver, USI WiFi/Bluetooth Module, Nordic Semiconductor Bluetooth 5.2 SOC w/ NFC and Zigbee, Skyworks 2.4GHz Zigbee/Thread/Bluetooth Front-End Module

 

[Einkoro]

Two alternate solutions to those in the thread:
1. An Airport Express connected to the ATV via ethernet and to the router via wifi results in no network instability issues. This suggests the wireless chip in the ATV is the bottleneck.

2. Alternatively, a MAC address blacklist for the 2.4ghz spectrum for the two HomePods fixed it as well. My SSID is a combined SSID (by preference), so restricting the HomePods from the 2.4ghz signal resolved the issue for me.

#1 was one of the first things I tried and with the 100mbps limitation of the AirPort Express’s ethernet port I was still hitting poor performance intermittently on the Apple TV paired to the HomePods.

With regards to #2 the HomePods wifi shouldn’t be relevant while set as the default audio output for an Apple TV. My understanding from the ticket with Apple is the HomePods route everything through over their adhoc network with the Apple TV’s connection when paired. You can actually see this if you have something like a UniFi controller where the HomePods will mirror the Apple TV’s traffic and experience score more or less identically while paired.

This also is what halves the 2x2 radio performance on the Apple TV since it’s airtime is split between maintaining a connection to the network and the HomePods.

Sending a deauth packet to the Apple TV, or unpairing and repairing the HomePods, or toggling WiFi off and on again for the Apple TV consistently seems to temporarily end the poor performance for me along with the flood of DNS queries. I can also see the performance hit without the HomePods paired as the default audio device or when using gigabit Ethernet to the Apple TV but it’s just not nearly as severe to cause problems streaming or even just browsing Netflix etc.

At this point after poking at this for nearly a year on and off I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of us have varying issues that are just compounded significantly by the WiFi TX/RX rates being halved when pairing HomePods.

I’m fairly lucky here for debugging this as there are no neighbours and both the 2.4 and 5GHz spectrum is completely empty other than my own APs and devices as I’m in a rural area on a large acreage surrounded by forest and ocean so at least that removes any issues with crowded spectrum and noisy neighbours to narrow it down a bit.

This activity was noted on the subreddit a month or so ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/HomePod/comments/rrepay
edit: looks like you found that thread yesterday, haha.

I wish the activity I was seeing was only around 10k queries a day like that thread. In a period of 10 minutes today I packet captured over 900k DNS queries from the MBP to the Apple TV. lol just about a million A and AAAA queries in minutes seems pretty obscene to me for thread and HomeKit.

Four times already today I’ve caught it doing this with captures running on the switch, router, every AP and the MBP. One of those was where I was using the Apple TV and performance immediately went from good to bad. I let it keep going without deauthing the AppleTV and it stopped after about 15 minutes that time.

At least I can say it’s not a broadcast storm from a loop as the traffic is strictly between the MBP and AppleTV over the two APs they are connected to and every other client and switch port is seeing nothing nor is the router.

 

[B/D]

This (very informative and interesting chat). is way over my head. I "fixed" it -in relation to video quality and buffering issues when the homepods were set as the default audio output of my Apple TV 4K- by hardwiring my Apple TV to the router, but it still degrades the performance of the rest of my wifi connected devices, so I only set them up as the default audio output when I´m going to watch something on the apple tv, and revert to my internal tv speakers after I´m done.

My point is... given that this have been an issue since the feature was introduced on 14.2 back on November 2020... it is fixable via a software update?.

 

[Einkoro]

This (very informative and interesting chat). is way over my head. I "fixed" it -in relation to video quality and buffering issues when the homepods were set as the default audio output of my Apple TV 4K- by hardwiring my Apple TV to the router, but it still degrades the performance of the rest of my wifi connected devices, so I only set them up as the default audio output when I´m going to watch something on the apple tv, and revert to my internal tv speakers after I´m done.

My point is... given that this have been an issue since the feature was introduced on 14.2 back on November 2020... it is fixable via a software update?.

So you see poor performance of all your devices on the same AP when paired? Or just those in close proximity of the AppleTV and HomePods when paired?

Really does make it sound like my thread DNS issue is a contributing factor compounding the performance issue when pairing them. Doubly so when I go back through the thread and see a lot of the posts are dated to where it would be a first generation 4K AppleTV without thread.

Short of a new Apple TV using more spatial streams I don’t see how you’d avoid the current performance hit to maximum data rates splitting the airtime up. And that’s assuming there isn’t additional complications like introducing interference. But it’s really hard to say since Apple doesn’t disclose much of any details on how it works. Without a fancy spectrum analysis or being able to jailbreak the like the OG Apple TV it’s pretty hard for me to make a better guess of what Apple is doing. My assumption is the adhoc network uses the same channel as the SSID/AP it’s currently connected to like a lot of TVs do for direct connect WiFi but then again a lot of sound bars and the like exclusively use the UNII3 bands for pairing and I see no improvements avoiding those channels in my case.