New Apple TV loses connection to iTunes 10.0.1

Grumpy23 wrote:

I don't think this true at all, this is clearly a ATV2 and/or iTunes issues since so many people are having it.

A red nose is not the reason for a cold even since so many people are having it.😁

The obvious to see is in most cases not the reason for an issue of cut off stream or not connecting to home sharing and so on...

Lupunus

lupunus wrote:

A red nose is not the reason for a cold even since so many people are having it.😁

The obvious to see is in most cases not the reason for an issue of cut off stream or not connecting to home sharing and so on...

Lupunus

thank you for sharing your wisdom about causes for the common cold, whilst your analagy is quite entertaining, it doesn't really support your argument.

Myself and many others on this thread, have ALL apple equipment. Apple TV connected to Apple airport extreme connected to iMac.

It doesn't really matter which piece of hardware is at fault, we have apple equipment so we avoid exactly those sorts of issues. Do we care if it's the Airport, iMac or Apple TV that's causing the problem? NO, I certainly don't.

Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that when I buy a product I can expect it to work as advertised 100% of the time. It seems that M$ has accustomed us to accept products that work, sort of, most of the time.

If I buy a car and it only starts 48 out of 50 times I can take it back to the manufacturer and they are obliged to fix it under warranty.

We should we and why do we put up with products that have fundamental flaws just because they made by Apple or M$ or any other hardware/software vendor?

helioz2000 wrote:

thank you for sharing your wisdom about causes for the common cold, whilst your analagy is quite entertaining, it doesn't really support your argument.

It does, indeed.

helioz2000 wrote:

Myself and many others on this thread, have ALL apple equipment.

Me too. Three Mac's, one is really old but still in the network, 4 Express and a Extreme base.

But that will not prevent mismatching configuration or other reasons, aside of hardware faults, leading to unwanted behavior of the components.

Sure, it's not impossible that there may eventually a bug in the firmware of the ATV or elsewhere.But if there where a bug, all the millions of ATV users will be affected and not only a group, even when it count in thousands.

The point is, that people experiencing a fault at first see the obvious and blame that as the reason. That is very seldom the truth, though.

For instance, I remember the time firmware 7.5.2 for Extreme and Express where rolled out.

Immediately the waves rose sky high: "New firmware ruined my wireless, Can't use Airtunes since 7.5.2, 7.5.2 update ruined my Internet, Connection speed drowns since I've installed 7.5.2 and so on"

Belief me, in 99.99% of the issues 7.5.2 was definitively NOT the reason for the pain.

helioz2000 wrote:

Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that when I buy a product I can expect it to work as advertised 100% of the time. It seems that M$ has accustomed us to accept products that work, sort of, most of the time.

I expect too, that a new product work as it should acc. to its specifications and if used as designed.

The keyword is: "as advertised". Marketing and advertising speech promise always to "catch the stars for you if you buy me" and we both know for sure that this is as advertising is since once upon the time a King promise to all followers of the crusade richness, big booties and a prime place in paradise. As we all know the truth was dead, illness, suffer blood sweat and tears.

helioz2000 wrote:

If I buy a car and it only starts 48 out of 50 times I can take it back to the manufacturer and they are obliged to fix it under warranty.

Except it wont start cause you had not read the manual, it's -32°C and its a diesel, you had, as usual, not switched the driving lights off over night and and and and...

Networking, especially wireless, is a highly complicated feckin piece of technic.

It's only plug and play if the underlying infrastructure and the settings are well tuned and adjust according to the protocols and components.

Neither Apple nor Microsoft can foresee any possible users computer configuration, wifi infrastructure and network design. That's impossible!

For that a wireless capable network device can't be preset like a car radio to match all possible user environment.

Lupunus

Here's hoping that they announce iOS 5 very soon today. I'm hopeful that it will fix the issue.

I've done ALL the suggested tweaks I've read and still get this issue.

I'm really disappointed it's taken this long. This device is bascially unusable in this state.

It sounds to me like you think know networks. A level 3 badge also indicates you are active here.

So, instead of telling all of us we are wrong, what about sharing some of that wisdom and maybe give ideas of what could be wrong so we can investigate. In my case, turning off the Sleep option on the ATV solved it. In my limited understanding of networks, I fail to see how this relates to bad network configs. Not to mention that I reseted to default settings all my devices many time, as with many of us. That would be more useful than teaching us about diesel engines.

rlu929s wrote:

Here's hoping that they announce iOS 5 very soon today. I'm hopeful that it will fix the issue.

If there was a bug in the previous version it (hopefully) will fix it. If there was no bug in the previos version, the problem will persist or even get worse.

TheWall wrote:

So, instead of telling all of us we are wrong, what about sharing some of that wisdom and maybe give ideas of what could be wrong so we can investigate.

As there are many possible reasons that could lead to the same symptoms aka user experience, its useless to point to a single configuration to fix it.

One example from the exiting real world of wireless wonders:

The AP-Extreme pretends to provide three wireless networks and Ethernet, compatibility to any wireless protocol you may think on for the ultimate convenience of any user.

• 802.11n 5GHz with 150 MBit/s in every spatial stream which means your 3-antenna 2011 MBPro may connect up to 450MBit/s
• 802.11n 2.4GHz with 150MBit/s
• 802.11g 2.4GHz with 54MBit/s
• "Guest Network" providing either a 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless for your guests.

Unfortunately...

• The networks share all the same name (SSID) but there are two BSSID's for the wireless as the two radio bands must have different BSSID's.
• The "Guest Network" switches frequently between 2.4 and 5 too for "convenience".

This constelation cause that your wonderful brand new MacBook switches automatically between the radio band's due to its settings: "automatically join known networks".

Brilliant idea if you only want to surf the Internet or read your mail as you did not notice that switch and have a nice connection speed wherever in the house you are.

The trouble starts if you want to stream music from iTunes to a AP-Express connected to a stereo or a video to the ATV (or similar unit).
Such a "multicast" stream (1 sender to n receiver e.g. iTunes multiple speakers) is bound on a negotiated route between Sender and receiver using the same network. In the moment of negotiation both are connected to <your-wifi-name> technically represented by the router's BSSID (MAC-Address) for that network. If your Mac switch the radio band (2nd BSSID), what happens?

Receiver (ATV) or sender (Mac) disassociate by time out as the receiver waits for the stream from Mac@1stBSSID while the Mac is on the 2ndBSSID.

So what can one do if using a AP-Extreme and want a stream without drop's?

• Forget all the "automatic" crap.
• Give the 5GHz a dedicated name
• Choose a matching Radio Mode; e.g. "802.11n only (5GHz) - 802.11n only (2.4GHz)" or if iPhone's are used "802.11n only (5GHz) - 802.11b/g"
• Disable "Guest Network" (Cause it cases more trouble as it is worth)
• Force the clients to use only one of the networks (e.g. by deleting the obsolete wifi name(s) from the list of known networks and uncheck the "Ask to join new networks" option)

That was only one example out of possible reasons....

Even as one think his problem is the same that others have, because it sounds similar, in almost all cases it is definitively not the same.

Every situation is unique as every computer, installed software, network infrastructure, settings, routers and environment is clearly different.

Lupunus

Well, several of us (including me) are not on wireless. Both my Mac and my ATV2 are on wired connections and it worked fine until one day it stopped. No harware or sofware changes.

The big problem here is that Apple sells their products as products that "just work" and it very frustrating when they don't and it's made doubly frustrating because they don't give the user any diganostic information as to why it's not working because, well, Apple products just work so why give us that information.

I am very ticked off at Apple, I have been unable to watch content that exists on my Mac for days now because it won't connect via Home Sharing (Cloud stuff plays fine). I'm sure there is some error messges that would help me fix this but Apples arragance will prevent them from show it to me. I've been a Mac user non-stop since 1985 and I am loosing faith in this company and it's crap like this that is why.

So Lupnuus, please stop blaming us for this problem, it is Apple's problem, because worst case, they refese to let their devices give meaninful error messages.

I've about had it with Apple.

Grumpy23 wrote:

I am very ticked off at Apple, I have been unable to watch content that exists on my Mac for days now because it won't connect via Home Sharing (Cloud stuff plays fine).

Instead of rant here, give your feedback directly to Apple.

http://www.apple.com/contact/

http://www.apple.com/contact/feedback.html

Wireless users: Make sure your router is not on "mixed network mode". Set it to Wireless N. You may also want to change the channel your wireless broadcasts from.

I am also on a wired connection. I recently updated my ATV2 to the newest firmware to enable AirPlay mirroring, and that is when my problem started. I could connect to iTunes, watch a show but need to restart iTunes after it finished to do anything else with my iTunes library. I reinstalled the Bonjour service on my PC that hosts my iTunes library, and thus far it seems to have corrected my issue. Even if it is not a blanket solution for everyone in this thread it seems to at least be worth a shot. Hope this helps.

My friends Apple TV is having this problem too. This problem has been around in various guisses since the original Apple TV (having to restart iTunes to see the AppleTV). I've had the older prlblem at home with my CISCO switched gigabit network (I used to be a network engineer). It had nothing to do with networks, so I'm not going to poo poo these guys, especially when there are thousands of them.

So iupunus, unless your going to put a packet sniffer on some of these peoples networks and demonstrate the issue, put a sock in it.

It is a very annoying problem. Just like the photo gallery bug which will crash any ATV2 after 10 minutes (wonder if thats been fixed).

Daniel

Since 10.7.2, iTunes 10.5, and the latest AppleTV iOS, i have not had issues 🙂

Recently I had the same issue with my Apple TV loosing connection to Home Sharing after 5 mins or 2-3 songs. I thought that this was related to the latest OS firmware upgrade of the Apple TV and I was unable to get the device to work properly. I have Windows 7 and Apple TV was working fine before. The guys in the Apple Shop gave me a replacement device and I thought that would fix the issue... but it was excatly the same.

I read through the Apple Bonjour Software FAQs and it says "The Bonjour networking protocol sends and receives network packets on UDP port 5353. The Bonjour installer will configure the Windows firewall appropriately during installation on supported systems". The key here is Windows firewall.

I remembered that I had recently installed a new Version of AVG Internet Security. I tested the Apple TV without any firewall and then with the Windows firewall instead the AVG firewall. In both case it worked for me. Only with the AVG firewall active it did not work. I hope this will help some people out there to fix this issue.

Like many, I've suffered from this problem since I first got AppleTV2 several months ago. Firmware and iTunes updates have made no difference. However, tonight I found some pattern/evidence and perhaps others more savvy with such things can advise.

My symptoms:

- more often than not when sitting down to watch something, attempt to connect to PC running iTunes results in spinning wheel of nothingness

- a restart of iTunes (not AppleTV) solves the problem

PC is running Vista (yes, yes, I know)

Now, tonight I have observed that in the PC system logs (ie Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Event Viewer), EVERY TIME before I have a connection problem, I get the error message

Client application bug: DNSServiceResolve(90BDC2A0D39EB5B0._appletv-v2._tcp.local.) active for over two minutes. This places considerable burden on the network.

(or some slight variation thereof - the parameter to DNSServiceResolve varies but the error is the same)

After this appears, any attempt to get new content (ie anything not already cached), results in the spinning wheel and eventual loss of connectivity to the PC. An iTunes restart sorts it out

Now, I know enough to go snooping for things but I don't always know what they mean...

I've seen variations of this error mentioned on other threads, e.g. related to Brother printers, but not yet found anything that helps with this. I've tried hardcoding the AppleTV DNS settings to OpenDNS, but no good.

Anyone have any suggestions?

BTW, to clarify, my setup is

AppleTV -> ethernet -> ethernet hub ->powerline adapter->BT Home Hub v3->wireless to Vista PC.

Hope this helps , and grateful for any suggestions...

RP