Q: Home Sharing drop out with Apple TV2

SpidermonkeyCVO - I was having all the same problems people are posting here (home sharing not connecting, having to restart the ATV, having to restart iTunes, having to log off home sharing and log back on in iTunes. All of it. Interestingly though, I am up to date on all versions of iTunes, OS and ATV software and I am still not having any more issues. So while I agree that there was a break somewhere between versions of iTunes that they need to fix, making the necessary changes to allow the flow of data to travel from the internet, to iTunes and then through to your other devices is in my opinion the key to this. There were other small configurations I had to make to my iMac and ATV as well.

On a side note, I have read awhile ago about someone discovering that if they had their iPhone or iPad set up to wirelessly sync, that it caused a communication breakage when one would have it activated and went to upgrade to the newer version of iTunes. They had to remove the sync via wifi, uninstall iTunes. Reboot. Re-install iTunes. Once they did that, the communication breakage wasn't there anymore.

My ATV goes to sleep and when I wake it up, my library is there. Renting a movie and streaming it from iTunes works in about 30 seconds. I don't have to restart iTunes ever. My iPads and iPhones can see the iMac library and play everything from it. I can mirror my iPhone and iPad to the ATV. Essentially, everything works they way it should without any compromises.

I'm not sure, but this sounds like a different issue. Our issue is corrected by closing and restarting iTunes. I don't believe any of us have had any issue with username/password. You may want to contact support as it may be an account issue.

Well sadly this morning my iPhone, iPad and ATV would not connect to my iTunes 10.4.1. So I'm out of ideas here and also leads to my other theory that something happened in the last month that caused this. Others are saying that there may be a network/router problem what I cannot believe that is true in my case. The only hardware change I made was to add two more of the newest ATVs to my network wired. I'm pretty sure that this worked for at least a few days in this scenario before it broke.

I'm out of ideas. Anyone got an idea what to try next?

HELLO APPLE!!! Serious problem here.

I don't see how this could be an account issue. The same ID & password worked when I turned off/on home sharing on my imac. This same ID/password does not work on the apple tv.

Frobo I almost cried when you said that. Has anyone called Apple? Do we know what they're saying?

Frobo- This wasn't caused by anything YOU did. It was working for me just fine and then the next day, it stopped. Given that particular scenerio, the culprit may be changes in iTunes servers thus the reasoning that even previous versions are broken as well. I'm more convinced now that it is changes they made in how your account data communicates with iTunes servers. Even though your actual data is stored on your computer, iTunes still communicates with their servers for authentification. Any distruption in the syncronization of your iTunes on your computer and their servers, in my opinion causes the problems. Thus, restarting iTunes re-establishes a fresh connection until the syncronization of the two begins to fall apart over time and ultimately, the break is made. This is the reason why the changes I made to my router, ATV and iMac have opened those lines to remain stable.

It sounds pretty stupid but one of the changes made was to set the ATV date and time to manual instead of automatic, just making sure your time zone is the same as your computer running iTunes. Have the computer running iTunes be set to automatic. The ATV will get its time from the computer with iTunes. This way, you ensure that the clocks on both are the same. This may be one of the issues and is an easy thing to do.

Another is to make sure that if your devices are using DHCP and getting their IP address from the router automatically, that the lease period for those devices are longer than 1 hour. This has caused drop issues for some people when the device goes and asks for another lease from DHCP. I personally recommend NOT using DHCP for your computer running iTunes and your ATV. Use DHCP for your other devices is fine.

@spma3, can you please give me a comprehensive list of the changes you made to your router so that I can mirror those steps? So you've had no dropouts since you've made the changes?

Solution for Apple TV 2, Xfinity router, Ethernet connection and Home Sharing

This is my original post and subsequent posts with more detailed information on what I did. Although the changes are pointed specifically towards an Xfinity router, the concept for your specific router should be the same. Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to walk your through your situation.

As a side note, my wifi was working just fine before I did this. I wanted to take advantage of my 17MB/sec download speed that the ethernet connection would give me so I made these changes for my ATV to have an ethernet connection.

I have not had any dropouts since I made these changes. On my iMac, my wife and I have separate accounts to log on the computer with. She would log off my account to use hers and of course, the ATV wouldn't see my library. When I would log back in and start iTunes again, the ATV was up and running again. No hiccups.

This is clearly an apple issue. Give them a couple of weeks and it will magically start working again.

bsewelljr - I like your faith in Apple but if you look at the beginning of this thread, this has been an issue not just recently but people have been having problems for over a year. Apple doesn't monitor these message boards so unless many people (which they have recently) start calling Apple and inquiring about these issues, it won't be fixed.

I may have finally solved the problem with Apple TVs dropping the homeshare signal.  I realized that I might been approaching the problem in the wrong way.  I decided to figure out if Windows (this may not be helpful to MAC folks) might be trying to solve the problem in the wrong way.  I decided to try stream from Windows Media Player to my PS3.  I realized that if Windows 7 was causing the problem then it may have the same problem streaming to the PS3. 

I fairly quickly realized that Win7 + Virus Protection was causing problems with streaming to the PS3 and that might be causing the same problems with Apple TV.  I think that my virus protection software (AVG) along with the Win7 security system was shutting down the Apple TV homeshare network.  In my case - the newer Apple TV was shutting down after a few minutes while my older Apple TV would play for up to an hour.  I still dont understand the difference (maybe the older Apple TV was able to provide a bigger buffer, but 1 hour seems to long).

1.  My Windows firewall was killing the network.  Previously, I had been able to keep the Win 7 Firewall ON while I used Apple TV.  That no longer appears to be the case. 

2.  I stopped using AVG.  Once I disabled AVG the steaming networks became more stable.

After taking these steps - I was able to stream to both the PS3 and both Apple TVs.  I prefer the Apple TV because the PS3 interface stinks and its wireless modem is pretty balky. 

In other words, check your Windows Firewall and your virus protection.  I initially had ignored these possibilties because I had been able to connect to the homesahring network.  I assumed that meant that these weren't the issues.

In other words, check network security settings on Windows and turn off your Virus protection to see if that solves any of your problems.  I think the most recent Apple software upgrade may have cause issues with these aspects of Win 7.  Additionally, if anyone is using Virus protection on your Mac this might be the culprit. 

I will disable AVG as soon as I get home to see if this solves the problem tonight. will let you all know in the morning.

I have the newest APPLE TV 1080p and the problem is still the same!!

can anyone please HELP????

regards,

This does not work for me. Turned off my Kaspersky. Problem still the same... in fact, can no longer connect even by restarting APT2, which I could earlier today.

I upgraded my ATV2 to version 5.0 and the homesharing network was dropping out.

Just got off the phone with Apple and they seemed to have fixed my dropping issue.  It seems that Homesharing actually connects to their iTunes servers and is not just on my home network.  Restarting my actual modem, including taking out the battery, and not just restarting my Router fixed the issue for me.  I was having the same issue...  with homesharing dropping out every 5mins or so of playback.  One restart of the modem and so far so good!

Thanks Apple.