Q: Home Sharing drop out with Apple TV2

I tried to install the latest ATV2 update.

I went through the installation process successfully.

I then wanted to watch a movie.

No can do.

I had to re-enter all my settings from square one; passwords etc.

Ugh.

It then asked me if I wanted to install the new update.

What?!

Forget it, I'm not going to keep resetting it up from scratch every time.

Now every time I turn it on it asks me if I want to update.

I say NO! 

Brandyysnapp, I had this happen once before, and it sounds like what happened was the update, for whatever reason, failed, so the box reset itself to factory settings.  For me, the update worked fine the next time around, but your mileage may vary (and I don't know why it sometimes fails in the first place).

The way updates are behaving lately (from various sources), I'm very hesitant to now update anything.

I'm just plain tired of glitches and workarounds et al.

(that includes the one for adding a reply here; it seems every time I click on the "Add Reply" button I get the message: "An error occurred while trying to submit your post. Please try again." So I have to click on the  "Use advance editor" in order to post. Every time.)

Glitches.

I do not understand all of this network configaeration talk. It is simply a bug in the latest software updates. I have followed this problem in other forums. IT HAS GOT TO BE THE SOFTWARE COME ON APPLE DO SOMETHING!

It appears that I have solved my home sharing issues.

I was having home sharing drop outs, sometimes it took a few days but it was never reliable.

The steps I took were:

-Wipe my iMac and re-install (NOT using migration assistant, that was just allowing me to carry along crap I'd downloaded 10 years ago). This took my drop outs from daily to weekly.

-ditch the wireless and run wires between the modem, router, host computer and apple tv. This involved drilling holes in my house, but wireless networks these days are so congested, wires are always more robust.

-factory reset on my appletv and airport extreme, I'd mucked about with so many settings trying to solve this that a factory reset was easiest.

Now my home sharing works all the time ( so far, after at least a month) and I also don't have buffering during Netflix shows. And I have all the latest updates ( but still on snow leopard).

I think the technology involved with something like home sharing is far more complex than we may think, and it's just a bit fragile.

I agree with Sandancer, this is NOT a network config issue, so please drop that line.

I've an ATV2 which has the same dropout after problem after 1 movie/TV show, or a couple of songs. However, it works fine and NEVER drops connection IF I use a 3rd party app (AirVideo), using an i-device as a remote, or if I use airplay from iTunes & select the ATV2 (AirVideo even allows me to play divx avi's which is always a bonus)

It appears linked to the Win7 PC I have iTunes on, but there are no errors reported on it (surprise!). If I restart iTunes, it all works fine for a while. I've re-installed to 3 different PCs in 2 seperate networks/locations and I get the same issue. I've even created a shortcut button on my iPhone so that I can remotely kill & restart iTunes.

The fact that my iPhone/iPad can stream video from my PC, play it and then airplay out to my ATV without a problem points to the iTunes setup as being the culprit. However, like everyone else this all worked fine until recent updates.

I am using 64-bit iTunes (10.5.1), I will dig out a 32-bit laptop and try it there & report back (app is the same, but using 32-bit drivers)

I guess this would work, but seems a little extreme, I'd like to actually find the issue 

Duncan Keith wrote:

 

It appears that I have solved my home sharing issues.

 

I was having home sharing drop outs, sometimes it took a few days but it was never reliable.

 

The steps I took were:

-Wipe my iMac and re-install (NOT using migration assistant, that was just allowing me to carry along crap I'd downloaded 10 years ago). This took my drop outs from daily to weekly.

-ditch the wireless and run wires between the modem, router, host computer and apple tv. This involved drilling holes in my house, but wireless networks these days are so congested, wires are always more robust.

-factory reset on my appletv and airport extreme, I'd mucked about with so many settings trying to solve this that a factory reset was easiest.

 

Now my home sharing works all the time ( so far, after at least a month) and I also don't have buffering during Netflix shows. And I have all the latest updates ( but still on snow leopard).

 

I think the technology involved with something like home sharing is far more complex than we may think, and it's just a bit fragile.

The actual piece that is causing the issues could be any of a million little bits of whatever, different on the systems of anybody that has a problem. I wasn't going to take months trying to isolate it, and felt that it was time to have a clean system anyway... wiping didn't actually take very long, I was back up and running in two evenings (mostly time spent while files were transferring back).

I think it is in part a network issue, but also software and conflicting communication needs; overall the system is fragile so it doesn't take much to throw it off, be it flaky wireless or a long--forgotten setting change or the tide schedule or....

Looks like there are updates available for Apple TV 2 and iTunes. We'll see if that does the trick.

Edit: Apple TV was updated to 4.4.3 (3323).

The updates appear to have solved nothing. Playing from Apple TV or via AirPlay eventually results in an inexplicable drop out. I can get the Apple TV to connect to the computer again only if I reset the thing.

Back to the ethernet connection which continues to work fine.

The wait for a solution from Apple continues.

Same here. If anything, it's worse. Took about 10 minutes to lose drop the home share.

Great job Apple.

This worked for mehttp://discussions.apple.com/thread/2586385?start=75&tstart=0

rAVG firewall had a problem with the updates by opening the ports as described my home sharing problems are

over,   pity I wanted it to be an Apple problem. FRANK L hope this works mine was a firewall poblem

read the post by songsongsong.

GOOD LUCK & GOOD BYE 4 NOW

I've had (and continue to have) this problem intermittently.  My "solution" has been the same to reboot the Apple TV device, and I reboot my computer.  Not sure what end the problem is at.  I find that it happens most often when streaming music with Home Sharing.

I think I finally fixed my Homesharing drop out issues using Windows. Over the past few weeks, I have literally tried everything to get it to stop and nothing worked for more than a few hours at most.  I haven't posted in this discussion in a while, but basically I would experience random Homesharing drop outs. I would start watching a movie and about 2-3 times during the movie it would just kick me back to the main screen of the ATV2. Often times, I would have to even restart iTunes to get everything to work.

I took this idea from another thread about two weeks ago, but I had to modify it a little bit to get it to work for me.  I didn't realize the modifications until yesterday.  First of all, I'm running Windows 7-64bit with the latest version of iTunes and ATV2 software connecting via WiFi (I had these issues on Vista as well though so it might work for that too). 

Step by step procedure:

1) Click the Start menu and type "Firewall" in the search box, press enter

2) Click "Inbound Rules" on the left

3) Right click and Disable all the "Bonjour Service" rules... I have four of them

4) On the right side, click "New Rule"

5) Choose "Port" and click next

6) Choose "TCP" and Specific Local Port put in 3869, click next

7) Choose allow the connection click next

8) UNCHECK "Domain" and "Private", click next

9) Give it a name (I used BonjourTCP) and click finish

Now you need to do the same thing but for the UDP:

10) On the right side, click "New Rule"

11) Choose "Port" and click next

12) Choose "UDP" and Specific Local Port put in 5353, click next

13) Choose allow the connection click next

14) UNCHECK "Domain" and "Private", click next

15) Give it a name (I used BonjourUDP) and click finish

So now you should have two new Bonjour rules with the others disabled. Restart / start iTunes and hopefully all will be working.

I have been up and running with no issues for over 24 hours. My WiFi sync in iTunes is also working fine! I know soon as I post this something is going to get messed up (hopefully not).  But, I was actually monitoring the firewall activity (I didn't even know this could be done before yesterday) and when I had the original setup, I could actually see the "drops" taking place on the Public profile.  Once I enabled the new rules, the drops were gone! Also, for whatever reason, this only works for me when I uncheck the "Domain" and "Private" profiles as detailed above.

Hopefully this works for someone and I'm very interested to see how this works for others so please post back either way! Good Luck!!

Just stumbled across this - interesting to see others are having similar problems.

I only use my ATV intermittently, but in the last month or two I've noticed that:

• It intermittently drops off home sharing, but remains connected to the network (can access internet, etc., but cannot connect to my iTunes library on my iMac)
• Sometimes this happens weekly, sometimes every couple of days
• I can fix it by doing a hard-reset of my wireless router (all my devices connect via Wifi).  I tried a hard reset of the ATV and restarting iTunes but that didn't seem to work, I haven't tried resetting the iMac.
• I'm convinced the problem is the ATV, because I have an iPhone and and iPad that have no issues connecting to the library on my iMac, but can no longer 'see' the ATV for the purposes of either the Remote app, or streaming photos to the ATV.  Essentially everything works normally for every other device, but the ATV is only good for accessing internet content when it drops off home sharing.

I haven't tried using a wired connection to see if that fixes the problem but that will be my next step.