Q: Apple TV homesharing keeps dropping out ...

I have the same problem with my apple tv and itunes. Home sharing is on but it keeps dropping out every couple of minutes - really annoying! I noticed tonight that it drops out when i select the shows and music in my library on the TV with the remote that comes with apple tv, but when i play tv shows or my music by selecting clicking play from itunes on my laptop it works. There's definitely a bug but try this work around and see if you have any luck.

My two cents:

I recently got my aTV and set it up using a Netgear MBRN3000 3G wireless router. I'm running iTunes in Windows 7 64bit, and when everything was up and running I had the same issues as above. You tube etc worked fine but home sharing was dropping.

I did the static IP trick (changing the IP in the aTV settings to manual) and it has stabilised the homesharing and everything is working as I wanted it. Like a lot of people here the home sharing was the only reason I got an aTV.

I know there are other issues at play here but this was the fix for me. Hope it helps someone!

I use Apple TV 2 since its release, never had problem with home sharing until iOS update about 2 months ago (my apple TV got update same day). SInce that day my ATV drops home sharing roughly every 20 min when watching movie. Switching off and then on home sharing in my mac itunes helps, but doing it every 20 min is very annoying. Turning off ATV also helps - same annoying. I started using third party app AIR Video, which works fine. I'm 100% sure its a firmware issue, because my network and computer configuration remains uchanged since mid 2011.

I hope somebody at Apple reads this. I've chosen Apple ecosystem for its reliability, superiority and integration. At the moment it dissappoints me and what is the most important for me my 4 years old daughter as well, which has to call me every 20 min watching Toy Story 3 or any other movie.

Complaints about this issue are all over the internet and still Apple failed to address it for 2 months so far.

WAKE UP APPLE !!!

Hello everyone!  They say Apple does not montitor the forums so please please please file a bug report with Apple at  http://www.apple.com/feedback/    If they get thousands of feedback reports they will have to listen!!

We should not have to change anything - turn off firewalls, set static IP's, etc. - when everything worked fine until the update.

ignore this dont know how to delete it.

Delete

pstrickland is right. Apple don't pay any attention to these fora. We need to use the  http://www.apple.com/feedback/

facility to let them know about this.

Below is the post that I have formally made on their feedback site. It is generic to most of our problems, so please feel free to copy and pate it to the link above. Perhaps then they might take notice and sort this out!

___________________________________________

Home sharing has stopped working in recent weeks for myself, and judging by your own forums, a great number of Apple TV owners worldwide.

All other wireless functions of Apple TV (Rentals, Netflix, YouTube etc) work perfectly. As do all other iTunes connectivity functions (store, rentals on Mac etc). It is purely that Home Sharing drops out every few minutes between iTunes and the Apple TV. This started after recent updates to iTunes and Apple TV.

Obviously, if my system worked flawlessly until recently, and it still works for all other features as outlined above, then something must have gone wrong with Apple's Home Sharing since the recent updates.

I notice that all mention of Home Sharing has been dropped from the Apple TV section of the online Store. I can only conclude that Apple have quietly stooped support for Home Sharing. Given that this was the main reason for my original purchase of this device, and that I have paid for a great deal of content at Apple's iTunes store in order to make use of this functionality, it stands to reason that Apple have a responsibility to swiftly resolve this issue and restore Home Sharing to its previous functionality.

Out of curiousity, has anyone taken their aTV to the Genius Bar at an Apple Store to see what they say? i'm curious if that avenue might also be of any help.

Also, i submitted a feedback bug report, and included a link to this thread.  Here's hoping it does *something*

Well, I finally figured mine out, sort of, by trial and error.  I had a corrupt gaming file.  When I finished the game and uninstalled it, my ATV2 stopped crashing.  I stil don't know how that happened exactly, but I'm good for now.  Good luck, everybody. 

New Apple Update 5.0.1: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4448?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

Home Sharing - Improves the reliability of Home Sharing connections.

FYI this update has fixed all the ATV's - mine, my Dad's and my brothers.  All in different households and cities.

This update unfortunates is not the end all of fixes. As this latest update to my ATV2 has made no change in the way I can access my itunes library. Home sharing still disappears after about one to two minutes with the massage to turn home sharing on in itunes. Once home sharing is turned off then on again in itunes it can still only be viewed for about one minute on my ATV2 before disappearing. This same problem exits with my iphone 4 with OS version 5.1.1 so this is not just an ATV problem it's still an itunes problem.

Make sure it still works this morning... last night my aTV was working again and i was very happy.  i still couldn't push from iTunes to the aTV, but i'm willing to take baby steps.  This morning, once again the aTV had lost iTunes.  i once again had to restart the aTV, iTunes, and turn home sharing off/on again for the aTV to be able to pull from the computer. (which i had to do after yesterday's update to get everything to work again, too.)

So they've updated iOS, they've updated aTV... can we hope an iTunes update is on the horizon that maybe, MAYBE, will fix this once and for all?

Red Herring I'm afraid folks. This ATV software update is NOT a fix at all. Same problems as ever.

I don't know how many times this needs to be said but THE PROBLEM IS OBVIOUSLY WITH iTUNES

Why is thia an itunes problem? We've found thatvthere are different 'fixes' for this problem which work on different situations.

I don't use itunes sharing and anly airplay. Airplay stopped working with me after the 5.0 update and my fix was to move atv from ethernet to wifi. In my situation itunes didn't play any role.

I guess there's something wrong in the network stack of atv, all fixes cause the network stack to behave different and it probably resets itself than and starts working.

Cheers

Emiel