Q: Home Sharing drop out with Apple TV2

I have not updated ATV2 to the most recent, but I do have OS X Lion installed, and the Home Sharing has been dropping out regularly. Actually, even Airport Express looses the "Apple TV" name on its IP address, it just leaves it blank. That has also affected my UPnP and WebDAV networks for streaming AV content....

Hi Simon,

Could you try increasing the dhcp lease time on your dhcp server/router? It worked for me, and afaik no one else has tried that as a workaround to the issue. Given that the atv2 is losing its IP in a periodic fashion it is a likely candidate.

Cheers Ed.

I increased it from 4 hours to 4 days. I have a manual address set for my iMac, but the ATV2 is dynamic, yet it always keeps the same IP. We'll see how that works out tomorrow! 

Jeez, when will this thread end!

Dear Apple - When a customer has an iMac, Time Capsule, ATV2 connected (all hard wired) HOMESHARE DROPS OUT and gives most of all symptoms reported on this thread i.e. what ever media was playing now stops and user has to reboot all systems intemittently, every few minutes or hourly either way NOT GOOD.

My final request to Apple is please, please figure out in your lab why HOMESHARE stops and please advise us all non-techies and geeks alike in simple plain language the following;

1. what the work-around is (if any)

2. when are you updating firmware/app software that is the culprit when you find the bug(s).

As for future development of 'hobby' ATV onto large Apple TV sets next year....writing of £61.52 is one thing when it does not work but no way am I risking a 46" Apple TV display being totally reliant on a fickle streaming service.

As a footnote Apple assume the following - all software is latest, all equipment in the chain is Apple and everything is hard wired for the purpose of benchmarking the fault scenario.

Really look forward to hearing from the Apple Team as we can not all be lvinig with a hardware fault and/or incorrectly configured set up.

Kind regards,

Big Dag

OK, I lost the connection again. So increasing the lease time didn't change anything....

OK, my problem is gone. Yay Apple! I was having lots of drop outs when streaming music or video from my Macbook Pro to my ATV2. But after the ATV2 firmware update from a couple days ago, AND after running Software Update on my Macbook Pro (duh, hadn't done that in a while) which installed several updates, all problems completely vanished. I've been streaming for a couple of days now, both music and tv shows, and zero problems. Dunno why, but also don't care. Just happy to have the complete experience back. Thanks Steve!

Adding my .02, everything was working fine until the 4.3 update. Now Home Sharing cuts out about every 5min. Using hard wired Ethernet and iTunes 10.5. Downgraded to 10.4 and the issue remains. Hoping to see something soon.

I've been following this thread for a while now in the hopes of fixing what has been an increasingly frustrating problem.

After updating to 4.3, the problem got even worse - cut outs every 5 to 15 mins.  In frustration, I decided to do a restore on my ATV2 (the one where you connect the box to your computer by USB and restore in iTunes).

It's been 2 days now and not had a single dropout.  Has anyone else tried this?

yep.. it's been faultless for me also too..

not one dropout (where it was every hour or so before).

I updated by plugging the ATV2 directly into my mac and forcing the upgrade / restore from there.

I've never trusted over-the-air updates (and I never will !)

Well, it seems lime that is not the solution, as I have upgraded my OS to Lion, and upgraded to 4.2.2 over iTunes, and I still get dropped Home Sharing.

Same problems her3, before and after the latest update.

If I quit iTunes on my iMac and then restart it, the ATV2 will then see the library, and if I play something it gets marked played. Or I should really say, gets unmarked.

But the next show I play, right after, does not. And the next day after the ATV2 was sleeping I have to start all over.

Sure would love a clue. IMac i7, Airport Ex 5GHz, and all up to date and strong fast connection.

Has everyone checked to see if they have their Mac sleep settings set to "Never"? This solved my problem of my content disappearing.

iMac I7, Lion, Airport Extreme, approx. 3 Mbps connection.

And btw folks, you probably already know this, but you should restart everything to get a good idea of what is happening with your system. Unplug your wireless router and broadband modem for at least 30 seconds. Restart modem, let it finish, then plug in wire,ess router. Let it finish, restart Mac and ATV.

Yes, quitting iTunes on the iMac will restore Home Sharing, and this will work well. But it keeps doing it again and again! And the funny thing is, since my ATV2 is also hacked with XBMC, I know that if Home Sharing has dropped, going into XBMC will mean that my WebDAV or UPnP networks will also not work. If Home Sharing works, then my XBMX AV networks also work properly.

And like I mentioned previously, if Home Sharing is dropped, I notice that on Airport Utility, the ATV2 IP is there, but the name of the ATV2 disappears/ left blank. Anyone else notice this?

I have unplugged modem, router and ATV2 and restartet my Mac. As before, ATV worked for about 15 minutes then lost the connection. However, I could still use Airplay. When I close and restart iTunes, Airplay would not work anymore.

As my Remote apps on both iPhone and iPad cannot find my Mediathek anymore, I suppose iTunes' Home Sharing could be the source of problems.

Yes my sleep settings are set to Computer: Never, and Screen 15 Min. I've tried different settings, same results.