Apple TV not finding my library.

Still not working.

*RESOLVED* Enabling the photo sharing on one folder did the trick for me. Prior to that I upgraded to iTunes 10.1, disabled and re-enabled home sharing on the PC and the ATV2 and rebooted both.

Okay, i have had the same issue as many here: updated iTunes, sharing working on iPad and iPhone, but nothing on the appletv. Here's what fixed it for me:

1 open iTunes and confirm sharing settings in preferences.
2. Go back to the iTunes main panel and look for "shared" region of the left toolbar (where it has library, store, shared, and genius headings.

For me, i had to click on shared, select "show" from the right of it, and then found a sub-item. I clicked on that, and had to input my password one more time, and finally confirmed I wanted sharing on. After that, the library showed up just fine.


I hope that helps. I know it's confusing, but I've scrambled my brain too much with frustration and caffeine to have worded this better. 🙂

Thanks, rebooting the router solved it for me too.

Hope this helps at least one of you out there. Problem: AppleTV doesn't see iTunes Library on my Mac, but wife's Mac and mine can both see/share iTunes Library with Home Sharing. AppleTV can see/use wife's library. Problem turned out to be third-pary firewall on my Mac (Intego NetBarrier), which I thought was allowing all traffic on local network. Turns out it's not. I haven't fixed the rules yet, just turned the firewall off for now. AppleTV and Home Sharing now work as advertised.

Point is, the answer was in the Home Sharing troubleshooting doc all the time (check your firewall settings), I had just kind of forgotten about that 2nd firewall app I had running.

Why wife's/my Macs could see each other through Home Sharing even w/ firewall is a mystery to solve another day.

I too can not access iPhoto libraries from my new AppleTV (Gen 2). When I look at iTunes, the Shared item has nothing displayed under it as shown in documentation. Is there someway to reselect folders to share under Home Sharing?

Firewall is disabled, iTunes is uptodate (10.0.1) with Sharing turned on. Mac OSX is 10.5.8. iMac is connected to network via Ethernet to Linksys router. ATV is connected wirelessly to the Router. iPhoto has sharing turned on and is version 8.0.1.

On last thing. On ATV it shows the name of my Sharing computer and it shows one folder of photos and can display all of the photos in that library. But no iPhoto libraries show up.

Not sure where to go with this.

I had to turn Home Sharing off, quit iTunes, then turn Home Sharing back on to get it to work. Everything was working fine until the thing froze while navigating the menus. I ended up having to unplug it (tried the reset from the remote but it didn't work). When I plugged it back in everything was working again but I lost my Home Sharing connection to my library so I had to go to my computer, turn off Home Sharing, quit iTunes, reopen, turn on Home Sharing, then it started working again. It's a pain in the *** to have to go through that but it's the only way I've found to get Home Sharing to work. That feature alone is why I bought the thing.

After trying everything else (multiple times), restarting the router also worked for me. Thanks!

Message was edited by: Timothy Nelson

So, I'm not following this. I've got itunes 10.0.1. I've gone in preferences > sharing and have shared everything. When I got back to the itunes main panel there is no "shared" region on the left. Only library, store, genius, and playlists. Am I missing something?

I'm with you. Here is what I have done:

Restarted the Router
enabled sharing
disabled and enabled sharing
changed network connection from Ethernet to Wifi
unplugged and replugged Apple TV
rebooted my laptop
restarted itunes
turned off my firewall

NOTHING has worked. I also do not have that "Shared" location in my itunes.

I have to say this has to be one of the worst Apple product I've owned (maybe even worse than that first gen time capsule that blew up on me). The biggest reason I bought the Apple TV was so I could stream my movies.

I did find one thing that worked and I hoped Apple takes note of this. I unplugged my Apple TV - booted my PS3 and watched my movies using nullriver. That works much better than Apple TV, was easier to setup, and only cost $20.

Yep, I'm done! I'm not going to waste another minute of my life on this POS.
Apple TV 2nd gen = HUGE failure!

I found my problem! Turns out you need to select an iPhoto source under iTunes Advanced Menu -> Chose Photos to Share. Once I selected the iPhoto option then it worked.

I think this Home Sharing thing needs some work making it more intuitive and adding something to the Troubleshooting FAQ. To me it is not obvious that you need to do iPhoto sharing setup in iTunes especially when iPhoto has Sharing selections under its preferences. This can be confusing. Also, it seems like you can only share one photo thing at a time - either one folder or one iPhotos library and not both and not more than one folder. I see no need for these limitations. Hope HomeSharing/AppleTV developers take note and fill in some gaps and make it easier to understand and use.

Right now I'm a little disappointed with ATV since the main reason I bought ATV is for photo viewing. And of course it sure would be nice if there was an ability to do some web browsing as well. It would be useful when some ad or promo comes on TV with a reference to a web site, to right there and then go look at the web site and do some browsing. Technically I am sure this is doable.