Apple TV G2 and Multiple iTunes Accounts

Declan Lynch wrote:

In the new Apple TV it would appear that you can only setup Home Sharing to a single iTunes account and that there is no way to see the other iTunes accounts on our network.

Terrible oversight if there's no workaround.

Are you running iTunes 10.01?

I too suffer from the same problem.

My wife, son, and I maintain separate iTunes accounts/libraries on our individual Macs. I just purchased the new 2nd Generation Apple TV to replace my 1st Generation one. We set up Shared Libraries on each of our Macs, which we were able to browse/play on our 1st Gen Apple TV. My wife's account was set up on the device for the purpose of renting/purchasing content.

Now with the 2nd Gen Apple TV I no longer see any option for associating Shared Libraries, or browsing anything other than a single iTunes library because of it's reliance on the Home Sharing feature. Also, I can't easily pair up my iPhones/iPod Touch/iPad copies of the Remote App unless they too are set up using Home Sharing on a single iTunes account. Sure, with the promise of AirPlay we may one day be able to stream video (we can do audio now) from all our Macs, but without the ability to browse all our libraries from one simple interface (like we could on the 1st Gen) the newest Apple TV has limited usefulness for our family.

I don't suppose someone out there might know of a hidden method to re-enable this feature, or if it might be released in a patch in the not-too-distant future. I'm going to give it a few days, but this device will likely find its way back to the Apple Store it came from (minus the re-stoking fee).

I have the same problem in my household. This is an absolutely terrible decision/oversight/mistake that Apple has made with this product. We have three 1G Apple TVs and bought new 2G versions to replace those. Removing functionality from this device has extremely limited its capabilities and usefulness. Apple could easily include the home sharing option with the old options for pairing computers and the iphone/ipad remote app.

Another thing that appears to be gone is streaming music to remote speakers. Now if I want to listen to internet radio, I cannot stream it directly from Apple TV to an airport express. I know I can stream from my computer to an airport express and to the Apple TV and achieve the same result, it is just more convenient to do it all from my 1G Apple TV rather than messing with waking up my macbook pro. This is another feature that has vanished with this new device.

I have been looking forward to getting this product and now I am extremely disappointed. I too may have to return all of these devices if this is not fixed very, very soon. These are features I have come to expect and I use them regularly. Apple, you have made some bad decisions here.

I have authorized my computer for both my wife's media and my media. I can seem to access all of the media on my computer even though I am purchasing separate content. Could it be as easy as authorizing the computers for multiple accounts on Itunes? This happened a good while ago when I was playing music that my wife had purchased. Since the DMA was still intact then it forced me to put in her account on my computer to play the music. Try going to store+authorize and authorizing to play content for that account and see if your stuff shows up.

Yes, there is something you are missing. The "home share" needs to be a single iTunes account, but you can share multiple iTunes accounts.

Let's say you have your AppleTV set up with john@smith.com as the Apple ID for the home share. Then all the iTunes libraries just need to use that same id. It has nothing to do with the apple id that owns the library. So go to each and every iTunes account and choose "Advanced->Turn Off Home Sharing". Then immediately choose "Advanced -> Turn On Home Sharing" and type in the Apple ID john@smith.com and the password for john@smith.com.

Remember: john@smith.com is an example! Use the Apple ID that you used for the home share on your Apple TV.

- John

That did it! Hero!

I had my eureka moment late last night also, discovering the following sentence in an Apple knowledge base article ( http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4363):

"The iTunes account used to purchase the content in any of your libraries can be different than the iTunes account used to set up Home Sharing."

After seeing that, it was smooth sailing.

Cheers!

Hey Thanks a ton for posting this!!

Currently I have my daughter's MacBook setup to Home Share with an iMac Media Center computer in the basement. Every time she buys a song, movie, TV show iTune automatically moves a copy to the Media Center computer. She does not, and I do not, want my media mixed in with her media on that Media Center computer, nor do I want all of her purchases ending up on my Office iMac.

If I turn off Home Share for both computers that are logged in under her account and log them into my account, where will the new movies, songs, and TV shows she buys be copied to? Will they still go to the Media Center computer? Or end up on my iMac?

I'm glad that John and others had success with this and were able to share multiple accounts, but I had no such success. After an entire day of creating and destroying home networks, using any combination of the apple accounts that we currently own I am still not able to see more than one iTunes library through the Apple TV interface. It was one of the worst apple experiences I have ever had, and I have owned apple products for decades. Compared to my Roku experience it was an "F".

I now have all my macs able to see each other using Home Share, and share libraries between them, but the Apple TV unit will not see more than one. While it is as easy as pie to spend more money, no shock here, the iTunes library that already contains hundreds of dollars of content is invisible. Lesser libraries are invisible too. This is a total loss for our household. I wish that this had been ready before it was released.

Yay! Thanks for the post. I never owned the 1st gen ATV but the 2nd Gen paired with home shared i tunes libraries blew away my Windows Home Server/PS3 media server solution. I think that the 2nd Gen ATV is a solid solution if you want to serv MOvies, Music & photos through your home. Oh yeah the other internet services like netflix look great!

Unfortunately, that's still not good enough.

I should be able to use my iPad with my own home sharing network at home, and with my friend's network when I visit. AppleTV2 can't do this.

I should be able to allow guests to control my AppleTV2 from their own devices. Apple can't do that either.

I should be able to have multiple, independent home sharing networks within my home. Apple can't do that.

Strangely, AppleTV1 could. I wonder who thought that making the device less useful would be a good idea.

Glad I found this out before purchasing one. Color me unimpressed.

Message was edited by: SaraMG

Excellent. I just did this and both my iTunes Library and my husband's iTunes Library are listed under Computers and all content is available. Thanks, this was a great help.

@SaraMG

I think you will be able to share content from iPad to any ATV when iOS4.2 released in Nov? You can stream over airplay...

Not sure if this will allow photo displayed on ATV but will allow audio & video