Apple TV 2 has big problems homesharing - fixes? firmware update needed!

Do a full restore in iTunes with atv connected by usb.

After that, only connect the atv by wifi.

This at least solved it for me!

Observed that after I restarted iTunes yesterday morning it was fine (like always) and when I checked that night it was fine. This morning, no computers show up. Will try suggested restore this weekend. Annoying.

It isn't an AppleTV issue as I see the same disconnects everyone else is seeing from the Remote App on iPads and iPhone.

I posted some debug info in this post. Seems like some sort of connection queue on itunes might be filling up which is causing the inability for devices to connect. Just a guess, however, as I am seeing hundreds of outstanding TCP connections to iTunes when it is in a "hung" state.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3856446?answerId=18542421022#18542421022

You are right, the TCP connections are the problem, but it only occur if your connect by ethernet. Move to wifi and the tcp connections problem will go away... (After a restart of both itunes and atv of course)

I was actually having issues with wireless as it was just far enough away and through too many walls to get more than 1 bar on the ATV, until I switched to the 5GHz channel, now it runs great! The Mac is connected to the Airport Extreme via TrendNet Powerline Ethernet adapters.

I like so many others am experiecing Apple tv drop out after about 5 minutes. This has only happened since the last update. ATV ( 2 ) wants me to turn homesharing which is already on, switch it off and then on and it works again for another 5 minutes or so. its never the same length of time exactly but more or less 5 minutes. Its not my router ( have tried 3 different ones... same prob )

Come on Apple we need a fix please

After seeing suggestion here I unplugged the ethernet cable from the AppleTV and turned on wifi... work up this morning and for the first time in months the mac mini showed up! Not ready to declare cured but promising.

Ok Mine has also improved. I watched a whole movie and it only dropped out twice

I reset ATV and downloaded all updates. Then I set my time zone (London ) and set the sleep to never, finally I turned the " send info to Apple " off and lo and behold a great improvement

As Jeff Heusser says , its not fixed but its better

Hopefully apple is going to fix whatever bug they have with hardwired Ethernet. Unfortunately for me my wireless is not reliable in areas of my house where I have apple TVs. Hence the reason why I have hardwired Ethernet.

If folks can report back on their stability when changing from wired to hardwired, that would be great.

I really also wish Apple would respond to bugs submitted through their system. I have had submitted bugs without a response for months. They can at least confirm or deny the bugs.

Just bought latest ATV, updated firmware this morning, use wireless. Get dropouts after a few minutes. So, something generally wrong, not related perhaps to hardwire versus wireless connection.

So I have been experiementing and switching to wireless doesn't seem to resolve the problem. It does appear to take longer for the problem to appear where the ATV looses the conection to iTunes but it does eventually happen. Further, I have taken a completely new machine running OS X Lion Server and ran iTunes on it. The problem still occurs so can't be anything specific to the machine originally running iTunes.

I now have upgraded all of the ATV to release 5.0.2. Hopefully this will resolve the issue of the ATVs overrunning iTunes with TCP connections.

But either way iTunes shouldn't drop out even in the presense of many TCP connections. So IMHO there is a bug with iTunes as well.

Does anyone having these problems have a VM (VmWare, VirtualBox etc) installed on the machine where they are running iTunes.

I was running into intermittent issues with my AppleTV connecting to iTunes after installing VirtualBox on my iTunes server. These issues were resolved by disabling the "VirtualBox Host-Only Network) controller on the PC. I haven't worked out how to reolve the issue so I can use both VirtualBox and get the AppleTV to connect to iTunes.

If you're having connection issues try disabling any virtual network adapters on the PC to see if it helps.

Greetings

I would like to think that whilst I havent resolved the dropping out prob I have come up with a solution that works for me

Instead of using ATV to see the music in my Mac book I push the music from my mac to the ATV. Simply change the destination it goes to in itunes ( bottom right hand corner , a little upwards arrow. Turn that to ATV est voila

Not a fix but no dropping out

I find it amusing that people using this thread are now saying to switch from hardwired to wi-fi. Back near the beginning of the thread people were saying just the opposite. My ATVs have never been hardwired. The whole purpose for buying them was the wireless functionability.

Anyway......i was using my ATV in the living room last night to watch something on Netflix and got a message about a new update. I went ahead and loaded this newest update. Not sure what it addresses, but I'm hoping it addresses this Homesharing issue.

I have wifi and my AppleTV happens to be close enough to the Apple router to throw an ethernet cable at it, which one would think would be best and fastest connection. All my issues went away the second I switched to wifi.

The update (at least all the notes say) addresses - Parental Controls: Addresses an issue which caused content restrictions to be incorrectly applied for the iTunes Store in Australia.