Q: itunes is currently unavailable

Still experiencing the problem here in the US (NY) as well.  Trying a factory reset now.

I agree with Chipmunksdad; Vudu has been a great experience in the Ultraviolet (UV) world.

I've tried Flixster, CinemaNow and Vudu; I think there may be more UV compatible services, but these 3 I have tried and Vudu is by far the best.

To have all content available on 1 device locally on a network would be awesome. Vudu comes close to this as they allow downloads of HDX to the PS3, however, we still need an ATV to access the content purchased in iTunes, and anything purchased on Amazon needs to be streamed via the Amazon app.

If Apple came out with the ability to view/use UV on the ATV the same way ATV uses iTunes with Home Sharing, that would be amazing. For the time being, our digital libraries are fragmented between UV, iTunes and Amazon...sad face.

It would be a great service to the consumer if the movie studios would pick a format and make it universal, or allow multiple formats until the industry makes a decision. Currently consumers can only get SD quality in iTunes from Paramount and Warner Brothers; Disney allows HD in iTunes (and now Vudu if linked) while Universal allows HD in both UV and iTunes.

Sorry for the ramblings. Right now I would be happy if the ATV worked as it should...what a bad time to stop working...everyone in the US is home wanting to watch "Elf" and they can't because their ATV is failing them. A small problem in the grand scheme of the world, but a nuisance just the same.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It just started working again across all of my ATV's and Airplay from iPad.  I didn't change anything...

They have probably been working on their servers because they are expecting lots of traffic for the Star Wars trailer!!!

Absolutely ridiculous, it's been down for about 5 days now on all my 3 apple devices I've tried just about everything because I can't imagine a company the size of Apple can leave such a service in shambles for so long so therefore the issue had to be with me.

After all my attempts of fixing this issue and finding this thread, it is clear that it's not an issue on my end.

Not cool Apple, not cool.

Found a workaround as others have posted by downloading content to an apple computer/laptop or phone/ipad and then airplaying it but that's quite annoying especially if you're low on disk space    I understand if things like this happen and the outtage lasts a few hours at most but this has been almost a week as far as I know, so it might even be longer.

Trailers works, but that's about the only thing, any tv show or movie, it hangs right after authorizing with the dreaded message we've all come to see in this thread :/

#fail

Interestingly, my old, 1st Gen Apple TV is working just fine.  I can download movies and watch them from ITunes without issue.  The new ATV that I purchased last week is the one having the issue - same mac account used.  This isn't an account issue, I think it's a versioning issue. We've resorted to just switch the HDMI cable between the two to watch movies.  I opened a ticket on Tuesday, 11/25 and have only received a canned "we're working on it" email from Apple.

I just got an e-mail from Apple telling me to contact support.

This is FRUSTRATING. Now it's a week that I keep getting "iTunes is Currently unavailable. Try again later."

I've repeatedly reset, restored, unplugged my router, unplugged Apple TV and I'm getting NOWHERE!

So I'm now on hold...told the wait time is 15 minutes...

It's been down since at least November 21. We tried literally everything, and even bought a new Apple TV on Nov 23 (same thing happened with it) just to get phone support. When I finally got through to phone support (on Nov 25, **** Central Time support), I described all the things I'd tried (my monologue took about five minutes) and the support technician didn't even suggest anything else: he simply apologized profusely, said it was a bug on their back end, that they'd had people reporting it all day, and that their engineers are working flat out for a fix.

They know it's a major disaster. It's been down for at least a week, and is still down right now (I just checked it again).

If you're reading this thread for the first time, I wouldn't bother trying ANYTHING other than checking for software updates and restarting, until people start posting that Apple's engineers have fixed their back-end. You can literally burn a day of time trying everything, all for naught.

Correction, it just broke again after watching different content for 1.5 hours.  It stopped right in the middle of the new LEGO: Brick Saga episode and will no longer work again.  Logged out and back in again and no change.  I too enabled Family Sharing last week.  How do I turn that off to see if it will work again without enabled?

J-Rod: We totally disabled Family Sharing within the first hours of this problem a week ago; no change. When we bought the new Apple TV on Sunday and set it up by touching the iPhone to it, Family Sharing had been completely off for two days. Still no dice.

I wouldn't go through that pain until we hear word that Apple's engineers have actually fixed the bug on their back end.

John:

You seem to be the authority on this thing......

Q:  Is:        This content requires HDCP for playback  error message part of the same issue?

Placed Support Call Appointment - On Call Now with Josh.....he's got me on-hold looking into it.

Kurt: No, I'm only referring to the "iTunes is currently unavailable. Try again later." bug. That's the only error message I've seen throughout this ordeal.

Same issue on 2 Apple TVs, 2nd and 3rd generation. iTunes Match doesn't work on ATV either. It was working a couple hours ago, as I was listening to music with iTunes match on my third generation Apple TV and it suddenly cut out and gave me the iTunes unavailable message. I tried resetting the AppleTV but nothing has worked. I just get the iTunes cannot connect message when trying to listen to music or watch a TV show or movie purchased from iTunes.

Same problem here unable to play purchase really spoiled my night after purchasing a new movie was unable to watch it later after shelling out dollars..really really poor form  by Apple..i cannot access other purchases keep getting the dreaded iTunes unavailable try again later message (happens after the word authorizing)..Previews will play but not purchased content.yes we've tried unplugging,logging out, reboot both router and Apple TV and reset or the option that installs update (sorry early morning here)..bottom line is we've paid for a purchase which has been unable to be viewed..Apple please fix this really annoying and below par customer experience..

I was just watching a movie I purchased.  It ran for about 20 minutes.  The Apple TV shut down and re-started.  When I went to play the movie again I received the "iTunes is currently unavailable.  Try again later." message.  Now, none of my iTunes purchases are working on my Apple TV.