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

Just another frustrated ****** off owner of 3 apple tvs that don't work. Why hasn't Apple addressed this is the real question. I am sure they are aware of the situation, yet here we are. Fancy looking paperweights.

Three days with no connection issues with my iTunes library! I have paired my iphone/ipad to my itunes library with the passcode feature and not home shareing. Haven't tested this with my AppleTV but will try today. I almost made to switch to Sonos but found out they have a database/library size limit. I may switch to a Windows tablet when released if they have a good streaming media solution with Windows 8.

Just got the newATV update this morning and it it now worse than ever! Before I could force ATV to connect to my iTunes library by rebooting everything but now that does not work. Homeshare is completely inoperative no matter what I do to reboot or restore ATV, router and/or computer. I'm really PO'd for everything I have invested in movies and TV shows as it now seems wasted. Anyone interested in watching movies at home should definitely stay with the Blu-ray Disc. Wish I had...

My homesharing was working. However, after updating to the latest itunes and Apple TV firmware, now it consistently only play one song, and then homesharing will stall. I have no idea why as I had not changed anything else and I do not know why this is happening. There are instances that if I don't do anything when it stalls and wait for a long time suddenly the next song will start playing on its own and then it will stall again.

So for my situation, it certainly got worse.

Two short term solutions that have worked for me ...

#1 ... Go to Settings > General > Network > Wifi > choose your network > forget network

Then re connect to it and it should connect to home share again

#2 ... Simply AirPlay content on computer to the appleTV

Hope it helps

::dan::

I have tried your #1fix and it does not work. ATV will find my network but still not connect to my iTunes through Homeshare. Since I have purchased a fairly extensive library of video HD movies through iTunes they are too large to play on my computer so Option #2 will not work for me either. The only thing that I have found that will work it to download the movie to my iPad and connect to ATV through AirPlay, but this is a pain. The hardware should work as billed! I think the problem must by in iTunes since the ATV will not sense that Homeshare is turned on.

The only way I can get it to work is to turn everything off, then reboot the computer, reboot the router, then restart the ATV. It then works perfectly for one movie or TV show. After that ends, it loses the library with the error message "ATV could not locate Mike's library in iTunes". After that the ATV tells me to turn on Homeshare on my computer even though Homeshare IS TURNED ON!

I don't know whether it is an iTunes or ATV fault, causing the disconnection not allowing ATV to find my computer library with Homeshare turned on. But wish Apple could figure it out and release an update fix. Oh, also tried turning Homeshare off then back on for both units. This did not work either.

Does your iPad read your computers iTunes homeshare? That may help you narrow down the issue. Hopefully the next update will fix it.

Aubie1983: This thread is very long and clearly shows the extent to which this problem exists. There are a number of hypotheses put forward as to the source of the problem, whether it be ATV or iTunes, but no-one truly knows. I've had my ATV2 since Christams 2011, that 10 months now, and although Apple have released around four updates, none of these have fixed the issue.

Don't bother trying to fix it yourself, there's no solution. Apple have seriously let customers down with this product, and the distinct lack of feedback from them regarding this on here very clearly indicates their disinterest in customer satisfaction. Apple have grown too big. If the iPhone works - they're happy. Nothing else seems to matter.

P.S. I have an iPhone too and the latest iOS upgrade to 6 has been a disaster for me. The iPhone was the one remaining Apple product I was pleased with, and now that's no longer pleasing to use.

I have worked with IBM mainframes, DOS, and then Windows. At work, our board members use iPads for taking notes, so, we all had to take an iPad and use it for a week so that we could support any questions about it - I drank the Kool-aid and I got hooked! One year later... 3 iPad2, an iPad3, 4 iPods, a nano, an iPhone 4, 2 iPhone 4S, and an Apple TV 2 exist in my household. The thing that impressed me the most was that they all connected and everything worked as soon as you started up and logged in. I had set up an XP box as an iTunes server - every CD and DVD was converted and loaded in it. The iPods and iPads could be used for remotes to the Apple TV. No problems. Life was good. And then the 5.0.2 update came. Connectivity was intermittent. Then the 5.1 update came. Now, nothing connects to iTunes, at all. I've gone through every one of these posts and other sites with similar issues, looking for a solution. I've reinstalled the server, reconfigured the router, rolled back to iTunes 10.5, reinstalled iTunes 10.7, wired the network, unwired the network - nothing works. I filled out a bug report - haven't even gotten an acknowledgement. Unfortunately, if I was into jail breaking, I would be able to go back to the version before 5.0.2 was installed. One thing about this perfect world, there is no way that you can go back once it's updated. At least if Apple would let you go back to 5.0.1, it would be ok. One thing I've learned with this experience, when I have a problem with a PC, I can always go back and reinstall Windows and it takes me back to day 1, installing or refusing updates that can cause a problem with the system. If the box becomes outdated, I can install Linux on it and get some new use out of it. When an apple product goes bad, however, all you have is a lifeless brick. I'm not that impressed with iOS 6 on the iPhone, either. I agree with ThoricCLA just before me, Apple is no different than any other company that gets too big. Just like a drug addict coming down from a high, I'm now just sitting here in my misery... looking at a blank tv while my media library sits in a box upstairs.

I was one of the early folks on this thread with a suddenly useless brick the ATV had become. As such I still get the periodic emails from legions of frustrated people. For some reason mine has straightened out. What I think may be the difference is that I am using Windows 7 home premium on my iTunes server. I am running iTunes 10.7 on this server and I can control both my atv2 with the latest software wired ethernet as well as my old atv1 wirelessly (by way of airport express) from my iPhone 4s running iOS 5. I am taking the tact I used to take with windows back in the days of windows ME and waiting for service pack 1 for iOS 6.

Is apple eating its own? Certainly there are more windows iTunes libraries out there than Mac based libraries and the boys in Cupertino - as you say - are too big. They won't take the time to figure it out for the smaller market. This is definitely baffling.

Thank you for your reply. I figured I'd give it one more shot and try Windows 7 and see what happens. I backed-up my library last night and then earlier this evening, installed Windows 7 Pro on the server and iTunes 10.7. I placed a few files in iTunes, authorized the computer, checked to share my library over the network and turned on home sharing. Then I went downstairs, turned on the Apple TV, turned off home sharing, restarted it, turned on home sharing and nothing. Restarted the apple tv, nothing. I went to my iPad to see if it showed up on the remote - nothing... Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

During the past couple of days, I've been looking for an alternative to this whole setup. It seems that Plex on the server, combined with a Roku is the next best alternative. The Roku has a Plex app on it it. The good thing is that the Roku uses the same video format of mp4s and mkvs as the ATV - so that saves having to reconvert everything. Plex is not as polished as iTunes, but hey, if it gets the job done, then it's a lot better than just watching a blank screen.

Interesting that the last post to this thread is now inaccessible. I wonder why it was removed??

I'm completely disillusioned by the Apple ecosystem, my Applt TV is worse than ever following the updates, so I've completely given up.

Sony do a much better DLNA-based streaming solution for sharing your media. I'm outta here, and investing in Sony instead. Can't be any worse than the quality of products from Apple!

This may not help everyone but I'll just state again what completely solved this problem for me.

Disable all network drivers on your machine which you are not using.

For me, once I disabled the VirtualBox Virtual Network Driver, the AppleTV has not lost a connection in the last 6 months. Until I did that I had to constantly close and restart iTunes in order to get the connection back.

I hope this helps someone else.

I have tried several things to make streaming on Home Sharing work. The only thing that has worked for me is to reserve an ip address on my router and save it for Apple Tv. I then manually configure the IP address on the Apple Tv regardless if DHCP is being used. Once I did that my streaming issues went away. As soon as I enable DHCP on the Apple TV the problem comes back.

I am using a Linksys router which allows me to reserve DHCP addresses under the DHCP Server Settings. Once again it does not matter if your router is using DHCP or even if you can reserve IP addresses. Simply select an IP address not being used and manually provision on the Apple-TV.

I've got an ATV3 that has had this issue. I scheduled an Automator action every day in the wee hours of the morning to restart iTunes in order to get around this.

I upgraded to iTunes 11 and iOS 5.1.1 last week, and the problem has been non-existent for me since. Can anyone else confirm that this new combo has fixed the problem?