Home sharing on but not linking up.....

I have 2 atv2's and could not get the second to recognize that home sharing was on. Finally I thought that the one working was on wireless and the non working unit was on Ethernet. Pulled the cord on the second and it immediately recognized home sharing.

For anyone having issues getting iTunes content onto their Apple TV, the above solution worked for me too. I had my Apple TV wired, and tried my computers wired and using AirPort. When I set up the Apple TV wirelessly, it suddenly saw the iTunes library.

Thanx mate, that fixed it up and stopped me swearing, :-)

Listen its simple, Mybook world dont make apple any money !!! so why not block all sharing devices and then sell iCloud ... Not really any more to it than this, My book works perfect on my mac which has not been update and on my home computer that has been updated it dont. In the wise word of the MiaCats Simples........

Thanks! That did the trick for me as well. Disabling IP flood detection on the AP's firewall solved the problem.

Let me summarize the potential solutions:

• Make sure iTunes is running.
• Make sure Home Sharing is enabled: Advanced -> Home Sharing.
• Make sure iTunes and your Apple TV are logged in with the same Apple ID.
• Make sure the Apple TV and computer are on the same network.

  The first three numbers of the IP address should be identical. Only the last one should differ.

• Make sure the computer is not blocking incoming connections through a firewall/antivirus.
  • Easy test: Disable the computer's firewall completely.
  • Try whitelisting the iTunes application.
  • Try allowing TCP 3689 and UDP 5353.
• On Windows: Make sure that Bonjour is enabled:
  1. Windows Control Panel > Administration Tools > Services
  2. Right click on "Service Bonjour"
  3. Start the service
  4. Close then re-open iTunes
• On the Mac: Make sure multicast DNS is not disabled.
  • Check in your Terminal:
    • ps aux | grep mDNSResponder
    • If it has the option -NoMulticastAdvertisements then it's disabled and Home Sharing will not work.
    • Enabling it can be a security risk.
  • http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3789?viewlocale=en_US
• Try turning off QoS in your router.
• Try rebooting your router.
• Try connecting one of the devices (or both) using an ethernet cable instead of WiFi.
• Try a different router or network.

In my case it was multicast DNS.

Another note on Bonjour/mDNS:

If you have another Mac/PC/iPhone/iPad/iPod on your nework you can check from that device that Home Sharing is properly accessible on the computer where you run iTunes, using a Bonjour browser:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_(software)#Browsers

You should see a service called "_home-sharing.tcp".

After struggling with this for hours, I finally (and stupidly) realized that the reason Apple TV was not recognizing my computer is that the laptop was connected to VPN. If you're connected to VPN, you aren't on your home network..... Dropped the VPN connection and everything is fine.

For those of you thinking about buying a router from Apple in hopes it will fix the problem, I have a Time Capsule by Apple and I do have the same problem with Apple TV 2 not recognizing my iTunes Library. Very very frustrating.

Why has it been two years since this original post and no solution has been found? Absolutely disappointed in apple engineers, even as a long-time customer

I found out what my problem was. I have a time capsule that was running two wireless networks, a regular one and the guest one. Apple TV would randomly choose any of these networks and if it did not match the one my computer with iTunes was connected, the sharing features would not work. So I just had to make shure everything was connected to the same network and now it works.

Hi All - I have been having the same issue. I've gone back and forth between this page and the Firewall company's FAQ's/Help, etc. However, the thing that finally (FINALLY) worked for me is that I plugged in either the Apple TV or my computer to the cable box using a cable (i.e. either the Apple TV OR my computer that had ITunes on it had to be physically connected to the cable box and NOT running on wireless). I don't know why this seemed to have fixed it, because I have been adjusting the firewall and virus settings like crazy with no result. Anyway, wanted to throw out what seems to have finally fixed it for me (oh, and by the way, the ITunes library has to be open - if it isn't open on the computer, Apple TV suddenly forgets that I had a library - once I open ITunes, however, bam, it remembers/finds it again).

I read through most of these only to find that I was using the wrong apple id on the apple tv. Using my email adress for one and my apple id for the other which are the same except for the @ extension. It will not tell you it doesnt recognize an incorrect user id on the apple tv or that they arent matching exactly.

I have read thru all of the posts here to try and figure out why my iTunes library was not working with ATV2. After trying all of the suggestions and a few others I finally figured out the problem. I got a new Actiontec DSL router and went thru and disabled QOS, that didn't work. Tried disabling Firewall, no go there. Finally started looking at the wireless settings and found the Wireless Multimedia (WMM) setting was enabled. Disabled it and ATV2 started working.