I’ve been using an Apple TV for two months now, and I think I’ve finally bid farewell to the spinner. At first, I was plagued by an absolutely maddening product. If you think the spinning beach ball on a Mac is bad, the black-and-white one spinner is 10x worse on a TV because television is one product where boot time or processing time does not exist.

To preface, I have a MacBook Pro and an Airport Extreme Base Station in one part of the house. At the other end, resides an AirPort Express Base Station and the Apple TV. Previously, the Airport Express and the Apple TV were located in different rooms. However, as an experiment, I plugged the AirPort Express into an electrical outlet right next to the Apple TV, and connected an ethernet cable between the AirPort Express and the Apple TV.

Now, the spinner only appears for a few seconds when queuing up the next video. No more spinner that cycles for minutes at a time. But, correlation is not causation, so YMMV. However, I hope the problem is solved.