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

[B/D]

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.

Poor performance in all of my wireless devices on the same AP when the homepods are set in home theater mode with the Apple TV 4K. The regular airplay connection, which by the way is still possible, do not cause any issues but then you loose real time audio with no latency and Dolby 5.1/7.1/Atmos simulation.

So my current way to approach this is to make the homepods (a stereo pair of the original model, which I believe do not support thread), the default audio output of the Apple TV 4K (also a first gen model without thread), watch the content, and then unpair them after I finish.

@Einkoro. Thank you for your time, findings and contribution. Could you report this report this to Apple?.

 

[Einkoro]

Poor performance in all of my wireless devices on the same AP when the homepods are set in home theater mode with the Apple TV 4K. The regular airplay connection, which by the way is still possible, do not cause any issues but then you loose real time audio with no latency and Dolby 5.1/7.1/Atmos simulation.

So my current way to approach this is to make the homepods (a stereo pair of the original model, which I believe do not support thread), the default audio output of the Apple TV 4K (also a first gen model without thread), watch the content, and then unpair them after I finish.

@Einkoro. Thank you for your time, findings and contribution. Could you report this report this to Apple?.

Do you still have this issue @B/D ? The thread dns issue has been closed as fixed and I haven’t seen the issue for sometime now nor have I noticed any periods of severely degraded wifi performance from the AppleTV.

And if anyone’s interested you can now see the home theatre pairing’s adhoc network using WiFi Explorer from Intuitibits. It’ll show up with WiFi Alliance as the vendor on whichever channel your AppleTV and HomePods are using to connect to your access point. The moment you switch from the HomePods as the default audio output you’ll see it disappear again.

 

[garethjs]

Ive noticed that now with the 2 new large homepods that when setup as output to the Apple TV that only one of them stays connected to the router.


for instance if I reboot both homepods, both appear to connect to my router. Some time later only 1 remains connected and the other drops the connection. But everything still works. I can airplay from iOS, both can stream and according to the home app both are "connected"

So essentially one homepod is connecting to the internet via the other and not individually.

I dont have my OG homepods anymore to test but those 2 remained connected to the router throughout.

hichever channel your AppleTV and HomePods are using to connect to your access point

So this seems to be the issue as its causing interference by being on the same band.