Apple TV keeps telling me to Authorize my computer.

I have exactly the same issue here. I was surprised this morning when apple tv doesn't allow me to play my purchased tv shows anymore. it asked me to authorise my apple ID using my itunes. i have done that several times. even reinstalled my itunes. none of them works.

To watch my purchased tv shows, i would either play them using itunes and stream using airplay, or i'd have to go to 'Purchased Shows' on my apple tv. this is kinda frustrating and i hope they'll fix this soon.

Same problem here! ATV has been working flawless till last night when I did the software update to 4.3. No problem watching Rental but get auth msg when I go to watch any of my purchased movies or music videos! WTH is up with that. Tried all deauth and auth suggestions and nothing seems to work. Appriciate any help anyone has. Im out of ideas 😟 BTW Airplay works for now as a workaround on mine, Still would like to get the normal way working though!

Just finished getting off the phone with AppleCare, its a known issue that they have been working on since last night. There is no time frame on when it will be fixed.

The current work around is to play the episode on your computer in iTunes and then stream it via AirPlay to your Apple TV.

Hope this helps in the mean time.

Same problem here, shame there's not just an announcment to say there's a problem, and then just inform people of progress, bit of a shame I had to search and find out what's going on and not just get informed. They have my details and know I have an apple tv 2, they could just have sent an e-mail.

"Upgrade to iCloud" shouldn't inconvenience customers who can't use iCloud, such as OS X 10.6 users (like myself). Right now, my Apple TV is an electronic brick, because I can't use it. (No, AirPlay is _not_ a good enough solution.)

I just bought an ATV today (lucky me) and I could play music from my library, that was all. I got the "authorize your computer message" and tried all the old familiar steps... turned everything on, off, in different order, de-authorize, re-authorize... could not play any video at all from my library (movies, tv, music videos) I was able to switch the out-put after starting "idiocracy" on my computer (great movie, by the way) and it played fine on atv that way... after seeing all these posts, I just hope apple fixes this soon, or I'm returning this to best buy while I can.

I've had the same issue for the past two days. What bothers me isn't so much that it's happening, but rather that Apple hasn't come out and just explained it so that those of us experiencing it for the first time don't waste hours of our time going through all the troubleshooting steps, thinking it's an issue specific to our computer/account/AppleTV Box, and trying to google the issue. Hey Apple - it would cause a WHOLE lot less frustration for many of us if you'd simply do a press release or something to let us know you are aware of the issue and working to resolve it - that would go a LOT further in terms of customer service than just remaining silent on the issue while more and more Apple TV users go through what many of us have been for the past 2 days.

this all started the instant Itunes Beta 9 was put up for testing... so my guess is Apple borked something in the iTunes/iCloud services.

I can play anything on my Windows or Mac computers, but my 2 ATV2s are bricks because of this. I can still use netflix... but it's annoying that I have to sit at my computer to watch my TVs/movies vs a 75" DLP TV with a 7.1 surround sound system 🙂

The problem is the bonjour service and apples servers. Hopefully resolved soon, and they are working on it. I talked to a AppleCare Tech.

There is a easy work around. Use the AirPlay. Open the content that you want to play, down by the lower right hand corner there is a box with a triangle in it. Click on it and switch it from My Computer to Apple TV. Press play and you are done.

HauntedWebby wrote:

The problem is the bonjour service and apples servers. Hopefully resolved soon, and they are working on it. I talked to a AppleCare Tech.

There is a easy work around. Use the AirPlay. Open the content that you want to play, down by the lower right hand corner there is a box with a triangle in it. Click on it and switch it from My Computer to Apple TV. Press play and you are done.

Does not work. My Windows and my Mac Libraries can't even see my ATV2s. It's like they don't even exist.

My ATV2s can see my itunes libraries, but I get the auth error when I try to play anything

Now this work around is working for me. I had to reset both ATV2s to factory defaults, re install the OS, and set them up again.

Now I can airplay a show, etc to my ATV2s. Then once I start it, I can use the ATV and its remote to control it.

Make sue that Home Sharing is turned on for all machines. When I started having this problem Friday night one of the first things I did was deauthorize my media machine and then reauthorize it. The Home Shoaring got shut off in the process. Once I turned it back on the ATV was once agai able to see mt computer.

The issue is not that the ATV is not seeing your iTunes Library the issue is that when you try to play your purchased content you get the Authroization Error. I currenlty have been getting this on Movies, Music, and TV shows played form my MacBook, however if I go to purchased TV Shows or Purchased Movies it will play, or I can play thorugh AirPlay.....hopefully Apple gets the issue fixed ASAP this is getting frustrating

What I don't understand is WHY the ATV2 even needs to talk to Apple to play our contect anyway.

Example:

Once you authorize iTunes, you NEVER need to connect to the internet to play any content as itunes compares the purchased content (which has your apple id in it) to what it's authorized to play

The ATV should do the SAME thing. Once it's authorized as long as the name and password match that stored on iTunes, it should NOT need to talk to Apple

They also need to fix the stupid need to set the date/time every time an atv2 boots. 75% of the time, I have to reboot my ATV2s because they can't get the time from apple's servers. OR They need to let the ATV2s get the time for MULTIPLE places like time.gov, etc so if apple's time servers are flakey, your ATV2 won't refuse to play because it's clock is off. Better yet, just have the ATV ask the iTunes libarary what time it is on the computer it's on and set the time from that.

TallBearNC wrote:

What I don't understand is WHY the ATV2 even needs to talk to Apple to play our contect anyway.

Example:

Once you authorize iTunes, you NEVER need to connect to the internet to play any content as itunes compares the purchased content (which has your apple id in it) to what it's authorized to play

The ATV should do the SAME thing. Once it's authorized as long as the name and password match that stored on iTunes, it should NOT need to talk to Apple

I agree entirely - this also stops you taking AppleTV2 on vacation with a laptop as streaming source if you have no internet connection where you intend to go. I've been in this very situation - no internet connection and AppleTV2 won't play content from iTunes as unable to authorise. Unable to play via Airplay from iPad for same reason. MacMini played content fine without internet connection over HDMI to lodge TV. Old AppleTV1 also worked fine without internet (except for rentals of course).

AC