Home Sharing drop out with Apple TV2

Cormanus

I initially turned both off. Once the connection was stable, I turned the routers firewall back on. It remained stable. The computer firewall is still off. (iMac)

spma3 - the router firewall is to protect the local network (LAN) from the internet (WAN) network switching it off/on should not resolve anything in regards to devices communicating with each other internally on the LAN so this will not be the issue with home sharing on apple TV as that is all internal LAN communication in most instances... I suggest that the router firewall should be left on/enabled at all times

Hope that helps.

KGriff-

The common misconception is that the ATV and homesharing is solely an internal network communication. Both the computer with iTunes and the ATV are signed into iTunes to function. Turning off the firewall was a test to see if it was blocking communication from the WAN to my LAN devices. In some cases for certain firewalls, this was the case. In my case, it wasn't. I ported the appropriate communication ports used by Apple and that make it work.

Thanks though.

After dealing w/ these kinds of issues off and on since the first iteration, I have finally found the fix. Unplug that piece of crap and go buy a Roku box. The official Roku Plex channel was released yesterday and it's fantastic. Plays all of my handbrake encoded (ATV, ATV2 and High Profile) movies and tv shows beautifully without transcoding and the UI is actually pretty good. I just had to cut my losses on the handful of iTunes purchased movies I bought.

Look, Apple TV is an awesome device and has the best interface (in my opinion) but it's just not reliable for netflix or homesharing.

spma3

I should have made my question clearer, I guess. Does forwarding port 80 (or any other port) to the ATV (or anywhere else) mean that everything coming in to that port will be forwarded there? Does that then mean there may then be trouble for it getting to some other application if that's where it's meant to go?

In relation to the problem about drop outs, I turned home sharing off in iTunes and tried just sending music to the ATV via Airplay. I had exactly the same problem: regular drop outs. I haven't yet--but will try turning home sharing off at both ends.

Regards

Just to add to my previous post, I switched off home sharing in iTunes and the ATV2. Airplay worked fine for less than an hour before either the connection dropped out or iTunes just stopped playing. I'm not sure which. Curiously, I did not have to restart my wireless connection to restart the stream.

Hurry up Apple.

leave feedback for Apple!!!!

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

Just picked up my ATV today. Same problem. Even playing music through Home Sharing, it drops out after about 4 or 5 minutes. I have to restart iTunes to reconnect. Using Windows 7 pro, Itunes 10.6.1.7

Here's a packet capture from about the time it drops out. If anyone wants to see the whole file let me know.

By the way, I was listening to John Denver, if it matters.

I have been experiencing the same problem for a few weeks now (itunes 10.6.1, win 7 64bit)... my home sharing would stop working after 3 or so minutes on my apple tv gen2 and the only way I could get it to work again was to disable then re-enable home sharing in itunes, only to have it fail 5 minutes later... I have tried reconfiguring my router, factory resetting my apple tv, everything that I could find on any of these threads but to no avail. until I did the "nuclear option"

Yes, I uninstalled EVERY apple product from my computer, Itunes, Icloud, safari, bonjure, QuickTime... every apple product, cleaned up my registry of any remaining keys relating to apple products. Then after restarting my computer I reinstalled itunes and all associated programs... PROBLEM SOLVED, my itunes and home sharing have been working fine for 6 hours now. I assume that one of the updates relating to itunes didn't go well and that is what has been causing all the fuss... I really hope this works for everybody else

go to your network adapter, either wifi on computer which hosts Itunes, and disable IPV6.

This solved it for me, and been working for hours now this morning, streaming out the favourite shows to my kids.

I read this in another thread and tried it, and now its been working for as long as I even has had since I got my new ATV3.

Okay I have an update, this was weird.

Now note when I last posted a couple of weeks ago this was absolutely reliably failing every time. I'd restarted my computer, restarted itunes, restarted my cable router and restarted my wireless router, and I'd done those restarts in various orders. There was nothing I could do to make Homesharing work for more than 4-5 minutes.

Just the other day, and I had not updated ANY software/firmware or anything, I thought I'd just try it out. I'd noticed there was an iTunes update available and I thought I should re-test it before updating. So I watched Avatar homeshared from iTunes on my windows 7 box to my aTV. Without ANY problems - nearly 3 hours long and not one homesharing dropout.

And I have not changed ANYTHING in my setup since it was failing so badly a couple of weeks back.

This leads me to believe this whole debacle is down to something on the Apple servers that iTunes communicates with.

Sadly I have since downloaded the new iTunes and tried to watch something and it took me about 1/2 hour of faffing about restarting everything before I could get anything to stream at all, and that was only using the remote play on iTunes and airplay to ATV. So back to where I was before, except now I'm doubtful it was the iTunes update itself, I'm fairly convinced the problem is at the Apple server farm.

And I must say I'm getting pretty annoyed now. Basically the ATV is not doing what it was sold to do, easy home sharing. And if it doesn't start working soon I'm going to be going down a non apple route for this facility and that makes it more likely I'll shift right out of the Apple ecosystem.

And yes I have sent feedback to Apple about this issue, more than once, and I've pointed them to this thread.

I think the problem is Apple TV is a, what did they say 'hobby' to them, so they obviously don't give a flying fig about us. It was only £100...

I really shouldn't be expected to muck about with router settings, I might need IPv6 for something (sooner or later we all will). Especially considering sometimes it works...

Try check your INBOUND FIREWALL SETTINGS. (Windows)

Go to Control Panel -> Firewall -> Advanced Settings -> Inbound Rules -> Bonjour Service.

You will see 4 entries for Bonjour Service. Make sure they are all set to PRIVATE. I had two that were set to 'public'. As soon as I made this change, I have been golden ever since.

I hope this helps.

Adam

Like I said before, I believe there are mutiple different problems going on in this thread. I have never had a problem streaming to ATV once streaming has started... only after hours of home sharing inactivity can I not connect to iTunes home sharing. Also it happens with my iPad and iPhone so it isn't only ATV in my case.

I'm focused on something on the iTunes machine. I have all private inbound settings for Bonjour so that isn't a problem. I even had the firewall off for a while for testing and the problem still occured so this isn't my problem.

Someone else says to disable ipv6 so I'm trying that now and will report back.

Very very annoying problem. I don't want to teach my kods how to bring up a remote desktop on the iPad to stop and start iTunes.

I have a possible solution for some of you...

Many of you in this (and other) threads report you are using Airport Extreme base stations, so this post can't be of any help to you.

However, Airport Extreme did solve my issues. I had the same problem that I've seen reported here hundreds of times - everything going fine until Home Sharing cuts out, in 20 minutes, or three minutes, it varied day to day, but in general it was of no use to me at all. I decided to shift focus from a problem with Apple TV to a possible issue with WiFi generally, even though my iPad and MacBook worked fine in WiFi. I loaded down iStumbler from the Web, a program that detects and measures the strength of WiFi networks close to you, as well as their channel and operating frequency. I won't post a link here because Apple is opposed to these stumbler programs, perhaps because of privacy issues - but easy to find it via Google.

iStumbler consistently detected at least 10, and as many as 15 WiFi networks blasting away in close proximity, occupying so many of the available channels and frequencies that there was no way to pick one that was well separated from the others; some of them had a strength greater than the signal from my own little AirPort emitter. So I think my problem was interference from the other networks. Once I installed the Airport Extreme, which broadcasts at channels in the 150 range and at 5 GHz, well away from anybody else nearby (all of whom were at channels 1-11 and 2.4 GHz), all problems ceased. I can literally put a program on pause over night, and it never drops Home Sharing, and my base station broadcasts from the third floor of my house straight through to an AppleTV box in the basement, at 5 glowing bars.

No idea why my iPad and MacBook were unaffected if interference was the issue, but channel 157 and 5GHz were my salvation.

I was once one of the frustrated Apple tv users. I battled the black box and its connection dropping demons for a years. All of my problems went away as soon as bought the: Netgear N900 WNDR4500 Wireless Dual Band Gigabit Router

It cost me $180.00 to fix the issue I was having on my $99 apple tv.

I did nothing special to the router. I set it up using the Setup Wizard. Left both networks running. Didn't change one setting. I have not had a connection drop in 2 months. It is amazing.

I would like to add that the wifi coverage from my router is solid standing outside 2 houses down. This router is worth every penny just for the strong wifi signal. Apple tv works well. Solid coverage in both bathrooms and garage (a must have).

If buying a $180 router isn't in the budget the Roku 2 is an awesome choice. Plex is awesome and streaming to multiple platforms is useful.