Improved WiFi Syncing - Update 2.0.8

Our goal with Playlister is to provide you a world-class software solution to make your life easier. With that goal in mind, we are releasing today’s update to improve WiFi syncing and downloading media.

Grant Glas
April 1, 2019
Church Software

If you have experienced a blank white screen or a loading icon that never goes away, it is likely that two things have happened:

1. Your Playlister Device is connected to WiFi
2. The network connection is weak and affecting the performance of your device

I sent a note about these issues last week to all customers. Since WiFi is not a direct network connection like ethernet, there is the possibility that a device on a slow WiFi network (or a WiFi network with weak signal) can fail to download your content (in technical terms - this is due to packet loss that occurs on a weak WiFi connection). The Playlister Team released a new update (Version 2.0.8) that improves syncing while on WiFi while providing the person using the TV status updates on the download process.

With this new update the TV user will see when content is downloading.
With this new update the TV user will see when content is downloading.

With this new update the TV user will see when the WiFi is down.

With this new update the TV user will see when the Apple TV is connected to WiFi.

I tested this update while in a coffee shop during lunchtime. We wanted to check in the worst WiFi conditions possible to try and solve the issues we’ve seen reported. During the test my iPhone showed a strong WiFi signal and so did the Apple TV.

Grant Glas testing our the Playlister app update in a local coffee shop

Using www.speedtest.net in the coffee shop, we could see that the internet was less than 0.5 Mbps up and down (the worst WiFi connection possible!).

Results of a speedtest.net test. Download speed was 0.18Mbps while the upload speed was 0.26Mbps
The worst WiFi connection possible!

Our development team understands that even in these conditions we need to make Playlister work. Therefore we developed a proprietary method to downloading media files non-concurrently vastly improving the ability to get the media onto the Apple TVs quickly and efficiently. Think of this new process like building a 5-lane highway for rush hour traffic. Before this update, it was like having a highway with no lane lines. A road with no lane lines works fine when there isn’t much traffic but the more traffic (your media files), the slower it would get and the more likely there would be collisions. Now we have lane lines to keep the traffic of your downloads flowing optimally.

Traffic one one side of a highway

We plan to continue to improve the download process in the next two weeks and keep getting feedback from you. We are excited for you to provide feedback on this update. Please reach out to us anytime.

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