AppleTV + Homesharing + 2 iTunes Accounts?

I think you're misunderstanding me.

My iTunes account is my Apple ID, which is my MobileMe information. Home Sharing asks me to authenticate to my iTunes account. When I enter that username and password into someone else's machine, that information is saved somewhere, or else they would need to re-authenticate to Home Sharing every time they started iTunes. The logical place, it seems, to keep that information is the Keychain. So that person could open Keychain Access at any time and have my iTunes account (AKA Apple ID, AKA MobileMe account) information.

Again, the confusion in this thread is an indicator of how unnecessarily complex this all is. And my original assertion in this thread was, making things this complex was dumb and there was nothing wrong with Bonjour discovery of devices on the local subnet and entering a 4-digit code to associate those devices.

Agreed... they don't need my password stored on their machine full time. This works great in a family house where everyone knows each others passwords or has extreme trust of one another (although I can see a clever teenager running up some credit card bills this ways as well), but not in a roommate situation.

What we did in our apartment was to create an itunes account for the apartment and tied no credit card to it. We then use that as our homeshare account... since its a shared account with limited purchase ability (the roommate tossed an itunes card on it one day as a lark) we don't mind the password exposure.

Does seem like there could be an easier way.

I sold my first generation aTV, and just hooked up the aTV 2 last night. First issue was an HDCP hiccup not allowing me to view Netflix or any of the movies I've purchased. That took me a long while to even understand what it meant, but unplugging and re-plugging the HDMI cord seemed to fix it (for now).

Then I turned on Home Sharing using my account, but couldn't figure out how to stream movies from my partner's iTunes, whereas with our original aTV, it would show up as a shared library without issue. So in order for his account to show up under Computers, he needs to log into Home Sharing with my log-in information on his computer, and then it will appear on aTV? Will it show up as two different libraries, instead of all mixed together?

I started regretting my purchase last night, and abandoned the project until I can get some information on how this thing works.

But this is so easy! (We've been told.) We're just not getting it.

I've re-read this thread a number of times. Half of the explanations are confusing or badly written, and the other half tell me to give someone else the password to my iTunes/MobileMe account. No way.

So how do we use multiple libraries at once? I know! I'll read the manual that came with the AppleTV.

Hm, nope. No mention of it there.

OK, I'll link here to the Apple knowledge base article with the directi... Oh. It doesn't exist. Never mind.

Apple's done an awesome job here. They took something simple and made it a pain. And my money says it'll never be changed because this is the way they want it, and too bad for you. As usual, they've developed a product behind their super secure closed doors and haven't bothered to ask anyone in the real world, where people have privacy expectations and more than one person living in a house, what their new device should be capable of.

So we're stuck with it. But it's the better solution! Really! (So we've been told.)

newagemac wrote:

My wife has her own iTunes account under her own email address. I have my own iTunes account under my own email address. We used my iTunes account to enable Home Sharing between our computers and our new Apple TV. We both still use our own iTunes account on our computers. Just to clarify for those not paying attention, *she still uses her OWN iTunes account on her computer as if we never turned on Home Sharing.* Both of our iTunes libraries show up under "Computers" on the Apple TV. No signing in or out needs to be done at all. It all works exactly as you would think it should work.

This is my exact situation as well. However, I can not seem to achieve the same result as you have gained here. I have read this post a number of times. I have tried Jolly's sign in sign out suggestions. I have sharing turned on with all computers.

Message was edited by: Dutts26

refer to my earlier post

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2623239&tstart=0

I have it working with 2 macs and 1 Win7 computers now.

I am most curious if this is a AppleTV on WiFi issue.

More specifically is it on 5Ghz spectrum? Most routers treat these as separate networks iDs

Jolly Giant wrote:
i give up 😉

_*iTunes feedback*_

best of luck !

Haha. Love it! I feel your pain. The very name +"Home Sharing"+ should be explanation enough.

Aaron Adams wrote:
My iTunes account is my Apple ID, which is my MobileMe information.

Well, that problem is easily solved. Go into your iTunes account and supply a different e-mail address and password.

Home Sharing asks me to authenticate to my iTunes account. When I enter that username and
password into someone else's machine, that information is saved somewhere, or else they would
need to re-authenticate to Home Sharing every time they started iTunes.

Did you inspect your KeyChain contents before making that statement? Considering Apple's fondness for Kerberos authentication, iTunes may be just storing an +authorization token+ rather than your literal name and password.

And should you have a fight with your roommate and "lose the trust", you can always deauthorize the computers you've signed into via Apple Support or your iTunes account controls.

Jason Hendriks wrote:
Well, that problem is easily solved. Go into your iTunes account and supply a different e-mail address and password.

I shouldn't need to do that when the iTunes account I have works perfectly fine.

Did you inspect your KeyChain contents before making that statement? Considering Apple's fondness for Kerberos authentication, iTunes may be just storing an +authorization token+ rather than your literal name and password.

I made an educated guess. Where is this documented? How do we know what authentication method is being used for Home Sharing?

Here is a new twist to the same problem:

2 itunes libraries on the same computer, each on a different windows profile.

My wife and I have our own music collections on different profiles. We want to easily play our media on the ATV2. From what I have read and experienced with home sharing what we want cannot be done?

From what I gather, itunes needs to be running on a computer for the ATV2 to play. I am guessing that I would only get access to one of the two libraries because itunes will not run multiple times with multiple users.

My question, can the ATV2 access both our libraries so we don't have to switch users when I want to listen to my wifes music.

Max Stanley wrote:
negative, itunes must be running to access the library so if youre not signed into the USER ACCOUNT (in WINDOWS) running itunes you will not be able to access it.

Won't iTunes keep running (and offer to stream to devices) if you switch user accounts? As far as I recall from my Windows days, you can remain 'signed into' your account, in the same manner as you can on Mac OS X, even if another user is signed in under their account and using the computer.

I am as lost as everyone else.

Here is my scenario.

I enter MY itunes user/pass on my homeshare, then I do it on everyone else's, correct?

Here is the deal, when I do that, it "authorizes" the other computers to play all my content. I don't have enough authorizations. We have 7 computers in the house, and you can only do 5, and I had old computers that I got rid of but I never deauthorized them. So how do I add all the computers on my home network? It won't let me add extra computers without authorizing them. Any ideas?

5's the limit, which is a pain if you have 7 computers.

You can deauthorise all of your computers and re-authorise them one by one - you won't get round the 'five' limitation, but you'll at least be able to deauthorise those old computers you've since got rid of.

"To deauthorize all computers associated with your account"

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1420