Apple TV authorization is required error

I spent over an hour on the phone with Apple support yesterday and they ultimately confirmed it is a known issue and they are working on a solution. Apparently, something in a recent update broke the connection between the "Computer" app in ATV and iTunes. Current workaround is to use the AppleTV app to stream your purchased movies from the "Library" tab in the app.

If you are running it, there appears to be a bug with TVos 15.5.1 that is causing this authorization failure with purchased content over Home Shares. Many are reporting the same problem, me included.

The fix is either going to be via a MacOS update, or a further patch to TVos.

Until then, the only workaround for now is to stream purchased media via the Movies or Television apps on ATV.

Steve Jobs would have never tolerated this back in the day.

Time for Plex or whatever is best of those options these days. Seems more and more Apple is trying to force us to stream. Playlists in Home Sharing don't work as they once did - mainly Smart Playlists, but even play order on tvOS vs TV App in macOS.

Can confirm I have the same issue with M1 iMac and 4th gen ATV. Everything is up to date. Home Sharing works perfectly fine EXCEPT for with protected content. It plays fine on the iMac and when streaming on the ATV from the TV app or Movie/TV store purchased sections, but trying to play the download version from my Mac via home sharing throws up an “authorization required” message.

Agreed. Plex, and don't look back. It's a much more polished product for these purposes. I'm not waiting months for Apple to grace us with another fix (just in time for a whole new OS release event, and all its usual teething problems for the first few months), while a portion of my library remains locally unplayable. This is not the first time that a portion of my library was rendered unplayable via Apple's playback systems after an 'update'. It's evidence of something bigger.

Apple has obviously shifted its model towards a cloud-based media delivery system. Great for the kids who are happy to "own nothing". But increasingly inconvenient for us who have compiled substantial local libraries, some over many decades. Those of us with big local libraries (and big hardware investments to support them) are now red-headed stepchildren.

Apple's shifting media priorities affects where people will be buying their media going forward. DRM welds you to a very restricted format that leaves you at the complete mercy of the future competency of Apple's software engineers. Steve Jobs had the right idea to remove it from the music a long time ago. Interesting how few have issues with music playback anymore.

This latest bug breaking the local Apple video playback chain is the proof. I can't fully enjoy the media from Apple that I paid for.

My next round of movie and television media purchases will not be from Apple, because I'd like to actually watch them. And I shouldn't need a constant Internet uplink to do so.

Having the same issue her as well! Spent over 4 hours on this mess due to poor UAT. I have been a IT professional for 30 years, if I ran my business the way Apple does these days I would be out of work!

Not only did it break my Home Sharing connection to my 5 ATV's when I went to update iTunes it permanently deleted my entire movie folder of over 800 movies!! I updated, checked tried to play a movie in the library and I get the not found error for every one I tried. Went to look at the folder and sure enough the movie folder was gone! All other folders remained but that one.

Good thing I have daily backups and was able to restore the folder but that took 2 days!

AnonymousMalone you are correct, Steve Jobs would never have allow buggy software to be released to the public like this.

I am not sure it is a bug with 15.5.1 though. I had one of my ATV's that did not upgrade, still on 15.4.1 and it was doing the same thing. Plex is looking more and more an option! I thought it might have been a firewall/port issue on my Win10Pro PC but no dice. All ports are open along with my Firewalla allowing traffic to move to and fro.

I hope they get this fixed soon though they way they put out updates it may be fixed till the end of the year!

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I'm having the same problem - all four 4K Apple TV boxes will no longer play movies via home sharing from my iTunes server. Maybe it's time to go back to disks.

Same here.

Apple TV 4k (second generation), tvOS 15.5.1

macOS 12.4.