Works as Currently Designed — Pixel Envy
I am beginning to think the ways I use AirPlay, which seem entirely normal to me, are exotic outliers heretofore untested by Apple’s engineers because its promise does not match my experience. Here are the two ways I most frequently use AirPlay through my Apple TV:
I want to listen to music on my living room speakers, so I play albums — local and streamed from Apple Music — from my iPhone or my Mac.
I want to watch a movie I previously ripped from disc or a TV show I have in my library, so I will AirPlay from QuickTime on my Mac.
Both of these features are acknowledged on Apple’s AirPlay marketing webpage, but neither works as expected. In the first behaviour, for example, when I change playback from one album to another — or one playlist to another — I expect my AirPlay connection to be retained. But no; every time, I have to manually reconnect and adjust the volume to where I last set it.
It took an embarrassingly long time for me to see that my Apple TV was actually going to sleep, and that is why the connection was dropping. Sometimes, it will also fall asleep in the middle of AirPlay playback. But, strangely, it will often refuse to sleep when truly idle, even for several hours or overnight.
