Home Sharing drop out with Apple TV2

With this many views and response maybe some of you should send Apple feedback directly

www.apple.com/feedback/appletv.html

Thanks billtils. I've been resiting upgrading as it caused problems with audio out of the ATV, but I'll give this new one a shot.

Damian, you are correct, and I posted on that way back in the thread. But at the end of the day the cure for me came by taking it to the nearest genius bar and getting a replacement.

Since the most recent updates released by Apple for Apple TV/iTunes 10.6 and iOS 5.1 everything was working perfectly. I have two computers (separate iTunes account) homesharing to an Apple TV. Now when I stream TV shows to my Apple TV the computer will randomly disappear from Apple TV and the streaming stops. When I go to my computer there are no errors and restarting iTunes will resolve the issue... until the next time it happens. As I said, it is random and can happen at any time.

However, if I pick up my iPad when this happens I can stream the show to my iPad without problem. The issue appears to be only affecting my ATV2.

Last evening I was trying to watch a TV show I had downloaded from iTunes and was streaming to my ATV2. When the computer eventually disappeared from ATV I picked up my iPad and continued watching the show there. So, Homesharing is "working"... my iTunes library is still working but the Apple TV no longer sees my computer until I go restart iTunes.

Ofcourse I have tried rebooting/resetting everything and re-installing iTunes etc.

Thanks billtils, but no.

I've been using the newest aTV update since the day it came out. Made things a whole lot worse. Dropouts are consistent now, when at least they were sporadic before. I haven't managed to get more than about 15 mins of video content streamed from my library without losing the connection.

Particularly annoying as the Mac with the iTunes library is in a garden outbuilding. So frustrating to have to keep going out there and turning sharing off and on again when I want to watch my considerable (legally downloaded and paid for) media on my telly! This is what the Apple TV was designed to do, and why I bought it. And it has stopped doing it in any remotely useable way.

And no, it is not out of range... within 20 feet of the router. All other wifi connections are strong and work fine.

(ps I didn't know that an atv 3 was on the way. If I was more cynically minded I might be silly enough to speculate that the new update deliberately cripples the perfectly fine slightly older technology, so that we get pressured into upgrading the hardware. Like what Lion has done with perfectly speedy and adequate Macbooks for example...)

Hi beatmunga - sorry to hear that not only thar didn't work but made things worse. In that case I'd go to my original suggestion - take it back. It worked then didn't, in circumstances where you did nothing untoward.

I was looking for help on here a few months ago after experiencing some frequent, very annoying, dropouts midway through streaming content (only video). Our 2010 27inch iMAC library would suddenly dissapear while we were all enjoying a film from itunes. I went out and purchassed the Apple wireless router....the best one they had....and upgraded my cable modem, but continued to experience the same annoying issues....I have updated the apple TV everytime there was a softare update, and now for the last couple of months, we havent had any of those issues at all. Now, if the iMAC goes to sleep, the link to iTunes Home Sharing goes away. But this doesnt happen during streaming. It only becomes an issue if we go to watch something, and the Computer happens to be hibernating. We have to go wake it up and make sure iTunes is on before getting a sync. Once the sync is there, and the streaming starts, we can get through an enire feature without any drops. I have to think that one of the software updates did, in fact, fix the problem.

As for the ATV3, I'd love to be able to stream 1080p. But seeing as how our 2nd gen one is working gangbusters now, i cant really justify the $100 replacement.

Did I mention I love my Apple TV? 😉

I thought I would add that if I stream the show from my computer to Apple TV I have no problem. It is only when using the Apple TV to play content from the computer.

That's probably because what you are trying is to mirror, and only iPhone4S and iPad2 can mirror to the TV2 (i.e. display what is on the host screen on the TV). You can stream content from iTunes on any other i-device or a Mac running Lion. See http://www.apple.com/appletv/airplay/ A Mac running Lion will also stream, but mirroring will have to wait for Mountain Lion - http://www.apple.com/macosx/mountain-lion/features.html

Apple TV2 now useless since last iTunes/aTV updates.

Windows 7 Pro 64 bit. Start watching a film on the TV via aTV (after restarting iTunes and aTV to make it work in first place) and 5 minutes into film it drops out, home sharing gone it says. Restart everything, start again, resume play, FFWD a bit, watch another 2 minutes and it drops out again. Rinse, repeat.

Come on Apple this is completely unacceptable, my aTV is now fundamentally not doing what it's sold as doing. If you can't sort this out soon I'm likely to be moving away from the whole Apple ecosystem, I'd be much better off with a cheap low power pc sitting under the TV right now...

Exactly the same issue Laurieknight.

However, I can go to iTunes and select the output as Apple TV and it stream just fine that way.

I have noticed dropouts since upgrading OS to IOS5.1. Also iTunes has crashed since upgrading that to latest.

I prefer the old OS on ATV as that didn't drop or freeze and the previous version of iTunes was solid for me.

Weeblet, cool that seemed to work, thanks!

It's a good work around but it's a bit of a pain to remote desktop onto the computer to control iTunes to play onto the aTV. It would be good if Apple could fix this, it's obviously a problem with either iTunes or Apple TV software.

I resolved this issue by enabling multicast routing in the LAN routing featues of my home router/WiFi access point.

I had the same issue, the answer of RWTahoe (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2665082?answerId=17781073022#17781073022) worked for me: uninstall both bonjour and iTunes, then download and re-install the latest iTunes 10 (64-bit). After that all problems were gone.