So I've had my iPad since November 10th, and the Apple TV since late October. Everything was going along great. Surfing the web on the iPad; YouTube video's galore on both. Recently Apple released the new iOS 4.2.1 and all was even better with all the great new features on the iPad such as multitasking and the other bells and whistles of iOS 4, until I tried streaming HD YouTube videos. On the Apple TV, it would take literally 10 minutes for a 3 minute HD video to buffer, and the same for the iPad. I can load my desktop or laptop with the same video, and it'll start playing right away (I have highest residential Comcast Internet, and 802.11N WiFi. My wireless laptop that's still on 802.11B has no issue buffering the HD video. I thought it was possible that there might be some radio interference locally so I plugged an Ethernet cable directly into the Apple TV, with the same results: slow YouTube buffering. I reconfigured my router, trying different channels and different configurations. I played around with the settings on the iPad and Apple TV, and nothing worked. I read that there may be issues with DNS on iOS 4 on WiFi so I decided to use Google's Public DNS on my Apple devices, and sure enough everything YouTube streams like a champ now!
Here's what I did:
- iPad:
- Open the Settings app and choose "Wi-Fi"
- Tap the blue > on your connected Wi-Fi network
- Tap the IP address in the DNS entry
- Update your DNS address to: 8.8.8.8 (I used Google's Public DNS service).
- Close the Settings app, and restart your iPad by holding down the power button for 5 seconds, then swiping "slide to power off"
- Turn on your iPad and try playing your HD YouTube video
- Apple TV:
- From the Home screen, click over to Settings and choose "General"
- Select "Configure TCP/IP"
- Click "Configure Manually"
- Click "Done" on all settings, keeping the default settings* that are already applied to IP Address, and Router Address until you come to DNS (*Note: this will hardcode your Apple TV's IP address, and it will no longer be pulled via DHCP. To avoid later DHCP issues, take note of the Apple TV's IP address and remove it from your router's DHCP pool)
- On the DNS IP address, enter "008.008.008.008" and click "Done"
- Click and hold the menu button to go back to the Home screen
- Open up Internet > YouTube and try streaming an HD YouTube video
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Here I am outlining some tips that will help you to make YouTube faster for you:
* Start from repairing your Windows registry and fixing your Windows errors that become the cause of many browser and applications errors causing a conflict situation.
* Test your computer for viruses and spyware.
* Run SpeedTest to test whether you have sufficient bandwidth available to smoothly play YouTube videos without causing the site to run slower.
* Disconnect your internet and then reconnect it to know why is YouTube slow and whether it is because of the poor internet at your side.
* Disable ads through some of the browser plug in that will allow you to run fewer background services while you are playing videos online.
Most likely your ISP's DNS is not necessarily optimized for the Youtube streaming servers (or using Google's DNS that is optimized for their load balancing). Google's DNS is optimized for load balancing between their services, so their DNS will give you a server to stream from that's most optimized for your connection/location/etc. I would note that I've had some issue with renting iTunes content after switching to Google DNS as well as OpenDNS (I've tried both and my ISP's as well, with different results). I've heard mixed experiences, so try it and it it works, awesome!
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