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User profile for user: GhostCruiser
GhostCruiser Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Many movies missing when using Home Sharing

Our Movie/Music library is on our iMac, running Catalina (latest OS update). We have two Apple TVs (4th generation) that connect to our Library via Home Sharing (they're running the latest TvOS update). The Home Sharing connection is fine and we can browse the Movies, TV Shows, and photos using the Computers app on the Apple TVs. Unfortunately, there are several movies and a few TV shows missing from the lists. When we browse the library from the iMac, all the movies and TV shows show up (and play).


As a part of troubleshooting this problem, we've:

  • Deauthorized and reauthorized at the iMac in both the TV and Music app.
  • Disabled and re-enabled Home Sharing on our Apple TVs.
  • Renamed the library in the Media Sharing settings in System Preferences.
  • Attempted to leverage home sharing from an iPhone and iPad (they each see different subsets of movies, but never all of them, seriously wonky).


I've tried to find a pattern in which movies and TV shows are missing on devices, but there's not an obvious one. I thought it could be that the missing movies were purchased on the Apple TV instead of from the iMac, but all of the purchased movies (regardless of device that made the purchase) have been downloaded to the iMac. There is also no correlation between ripped DVDs and purchased movies versus the movies that are missing. Naturally, some of these movies are digital copies that came with DVD purchases, but all of our oddball accounts for the digital copies are linked to our iTunes account, and I haven't been able to find a correlation between the missing movies and a specific service.


One extra factor in our installation is that our Music and Movie libraries are stored on an external drive connected to the iMac via USB. The advanced settings in the Music and TV apps control the path to the media files. We've used this setup for several years and these paths were migrated forward with the Catalina upgrade. It's been working fine for months and only started having trouble in the last few weeks (perhaps associated with a recent system update?).


I don't know what else to do to test/fix this. Suggestions are appreciated.

Apple TV HD, tvOS 13

Posted on Apr 26, 2020 11:15 AM

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User profile for user: GhostCruiser
GhostCruiser Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Posted on May 22, 2020 9:51 PM

After a long escalated call to Apple support, we determined the following:

  • As suggested earlier in this thread and in several other discussions, HLS movies are not currently compatible with Home Sharing. I don't have a workaround for that.
  • The other 90 movies that were not appearing over Home Sharing were all of the kind "Purchased MPEG-4 video file". To get them to show up via Home Sharing, I have to delete the current movie from the library and re-download it. After the re-download, the movie "kind" shows up as "Protected MPEG-4 video file" and subsequently appears via Home Sharing.


It is important to note that only about half of the "Purchased MPEG-4 video file" movies in my library had this problem. Most of the movies that had the problem were originally digital downloads from other movie services like MoviesAnywhere and linked to my Apple account.


After the re-download, I can now see the movies via Home Sharing from the AppleTV, an iPad, or an iPhone. I'll now slowly work through the 90 movies that need to be re-downloaded, spreading the ~360GB of download data over two billing cycles for my internet to avoid overages. A cumbersome workaround to be sure, but the problem (hopefully) won't come back.

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User profile for user: GhostCruiser
GhostCruiser Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

May 22, 2020 9:51 PM in response to GhostCruiser

After a long escalated call to Apple support, we determined the following:

  • As suggested earlier in this thread and in several other discussions, HLS movies are not currently compatible with Home Sharing. I don't have a workaround for that.
  • The other 90 movies that were not appearing over Home Sharing were all of the kind "Purchased MPEG-4 video file". To get them to show up via Home Sharing, I have to delete the current movie from the library and re-download it. After the re-download, the movie "kind" shows up as "Protected MPEG-4 video file" and subsequently appears via Home Sharing.


It is important to note that only about half of the "Purchased MPEG-4 video file" movies in my library had this problem. Most of the movies that had the problem were originally digital downloads from other movie services like MoviesAnywhere and linked to my Apple account.


After the re-download, I can now see the movies via Home Sharing from the AppleTV, an iPad, or an iPhone. I'll now slowly work through the 90 movies that need to be re-downloaded, spreading the ~360GB of download data over two billing cycles for my internet to avoid overages. A cumbersome workaround to be sure, but the problem (hopefully) won't come back.

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User profile for user: GhostCruiser
GhostCruiser Author
User level: Level 1
4 points

Apr 28, 2020 10:31 AM in response to GhostCruiser

Update: On the iMac's TV library, I updated a bunch of movies last night to use the new 16:9 artwork instead of the old portrait artwork. Today, we checked the Computers app on one of the Apple TVs and the total number of movies dropped by another 30 titles. Several of the movies that got new artwork are still visible on the Apple TV, so replacing the artwork isn't the smoking gun (or even, perhaps, a contributing factor).


Is there some way to rebuild the TV app's database on our iMac? Perhaps it's been corrupted in some way.

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Many movies missing when using Home Sharing

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