Q: Home Sharing drop out with Apple TV2

Fellow frustrated atv2 owners:

I too was having drop off home sharing for the first few weeks of owning the apple tv 2.  The connection to "my computer" would drop off while streaming music and movies.  The homesharing computers would disappear and everytime I would turn on the atv2, I would have reboot to get them back.  I was able to "Airplay" music from the computer it had dropped using the iphone remote app (which seems strange if the homesharing connection was lost).  I also had a strange issue with the led light on the unit; it would turn off when the atv2 went into sleep mode, but minutes later would come back on and stay lit, even though the atv2 was still in sleep mode. 

My atv2 has been working flawlessly for several months and I use it everyday and night, in fact I have since bought a second one for the bedroom.  At one point I was going to return the atv2 and exchange it for another because I thought it was defective.

I wish I could tell you exactly what changed, because I am not sure myself. My problem was fixed when I did a couple of things.  I turned off the photos and screensaver.  The other thing I changed at that same time was getting rid of a wireless repeater that I had in the house.  My main wireless router is an linksys E1000 and I was using a ASUS repeater.  I think the atv2 was "connecting" to the repeater and the computers were connecting to the main router and this was causing issues with the components "seeing" each other.  The other change I made at this same time was disabling the ANYNET+ feature on my tv (this is a feature that allows you to control components that are plugged into your tv with an HDMI cable); I think this was causing problems with the atv2.  I also, of course have all the latest versions of iTunes and firmware for the atv2.  Since doing these things I haven't had one single dropout, and the led status light only turns on when atv2 is on and working.

I was very frustrated with the atv2 in the beginning, but now that it is working the way it supposed to, I love it!  I really hope that someone out there is able to diagnose the issue why so many people are having problems so that you all can enjoy your atv2.

Let me know if any of these suggestions help you out.

Well then thats not an option if can't stream music from my iTunes library.

Although my issue with ATV is slightly different from most of the posters here, it is similar. My ATV doesn't drop in the middle of playing something, but my home content disappears (playslists, movies, etc) from the My Computer list. Restarting iTunes always fixes it.

I've long suspected Sleep settings as being the problem, and since seing the post by hardytoothdr I've just changed my sleep setting to never.

I'll post back in a few days the results of this change.

so many posts here now. and i know well the frustration, but i'm just repeating a post i made way back, which may be satisfactory to some, although defeats purpose of wireless etc, i know.

cables... i plugged an ethernet cable from router to atv2. i also plugged ethernet cable from router to laptop (itunes library). so both are hard-cabled to router. and it has been 100% watertight since. zero dropouts for the last 6 weeks. robust.

once i knew the cabled approach worked, i drilled small holes in floor and actually ran the cables under my house. granted, we have a tiny house.

i noticed that even if i have airport set to 'on' on macbook and i pull out the ethernet cable, the homesharing drops. not necessarily straight away, but eventually. as soon as i plug ethernet cable back into laptop, homesharing comes back immediately. if i turn 'off' airport, but still have ethernet cable attached, atv2 and homesharing still fine.

i just presume that the wireless connection isn't constant and if it drops for just half a second, its enough to mess with homesharing.

cables were my answer. not for everyone though i know.

i havent messed with any router or network settings at all. firewall is on.

others have said this solution didnt work for them. and it defeats the purpose of wireless. i know all that. but worth a try for some.

good luck all.

gear: old d-link router from dicksmith, black macbook.

I have the same problem, 5 minutes in watching a movie from my itunes collection it drops off. The only way i have NO trouble is to upload  my movie to my ipad2 and use Airplay that way no problems as of yet. Seems that my router(Lynksis) has something to do with dropping out Cuz AP2 & imac loses wifi connection after the dropout.....

I have been having the same problem but recently upgraded to Lion and everything is working fine now. I also made a change in my Airport Utility and I'm not sure if this was the solution or the upgrade was.

If you don't want to upgrade to Lion yet, you could try adjusting the following Airport Utility > Manual Setup > Wireless > Wireless Network Options > adjust your Multicast Rate. Mine was at 2 Mbps, I changed it to 5.5 Mps and the Transmit Power is set to 100%. That seemed to help with things as I watched a movie yesterday and it didn't stop once.

Hope this helps.

When I go to the multicast setting in my Airport Utility, I don't have a choice of 2 Mbps, 5.5 Mbps, etc.  All I have the ability to do is to select high, medium, or low.  So what would be the equivalent to the 5.5 you cited?

In this case it would be medium. I used 5.5 Mbps, 11 Mbps being the highest, because my Internet connection is 10 Mbps and is shared by two computers, Apple TV and two mobile devices.

I must say that this is the first suggestion that has made a difference in my set up. I changed the multicast setting in Airport utility from LOW to MEDIUM and my ATV2 is now working 99% better. So far I have streamed 3 feature length movies and several hours of music without a glitch.

Still puzzling me is the fact that when this problem started, my setup was all hard wired. I didn't even own a wireless router. Thank you Macbatgirl.

Glad I could be of some help  

Was having the same issue and believe that I have it solved. it's the DHCP renegotiation.

The give away was that the same issue occurred for wired and wireless connections, so it wasn't the WPA rekeying, my first suspicion.

Now depending on your setup you may not have the ability to configure the DHCP lease times, my router didn't. So I installed lion server and used the dhcp server in that (I wanted the server anyway, I was fed up with doing it b myself using fink).

I changed my dhcp lease time to be 2 days. And haven't had a ATV2 drop since.

Cheers Ed.

It has been a few days now since I posted that I thought my Mac going into sleep mode was the problem with missing content. It was. Since setting my Mac to never sleep the hard drive (not the display) I've never had an issue with my home content being available.

In a related issue, specifically with Netflix streaming, I have from time to time had issues with movies pausing to reload. And since upgrading to Lion three days ago had multiple network issues relating to my dsl speed dropping to near dial up speeds. Having no desire to return to those days, I've contacted tech support of my ISP. We now suspect the broadband modem, as my speeds vary from 3300 Kbps to a new low list night of 230 Kbps. How this relates to this thread is this- I only became aware of the broadband speed issue because the Netflix movie I was watching began to pause and do that annoying reload about every minute. I checked my network speed and sure enough it was the culprit. Half an hour with tech support (fifth call in three days!), restart my modem, speed is restored and finished my movie without another pause.

So I guess my advice would be to also check your Internet speed if having problems with content streaming. Speedtest.net is a good site for that test, though there are probably many others and your ISP may offer one too.

Well my joy only lasted one day after resetting the multicast. My ATV2 still ***** just as bad as ever. It looks like switching to Lion is the only somewhat sure cure.

I'm on Lion for more than a week, but the Apple TV is still disconnecting from my Mac. It's very annoying. I never had such a bad Apple product like ATV2.

Upgrading to lion did not cure the problem for me. I believe that increasing the dhcp lease time has improved the issue. I think that every time the atv2 renegotiated the ip address via dhcp that it drops off of the network briefly. Therefore increasing the lease time (usual is one hour) to something like two days decreases the likelihood of this happening whilst watching a movie.