Apple TV keeps telling me to Authorize my computer.

I am also having this problem, and I have been having the problem off and on for longer than just Friday. Before today rebooting the Apple tv would take care of the problem and I could watch my purchased tv shows. Now I can not play any purchased tv shows or videos no matter what I do. I have a call scheduled with Apple support for the morning, we will see if I get anywhere with them. Otherwise, that Amazon Kindle Fire that is coming out is going into my Amazon shopping cart, and Apple kiss my THOUSANDS of dollars in future iTunes purchases buh-bye! And I really hope someone at Apple is paying attention to the Feedback emails and Forums, because Cuppertino- these are your PAYING customers, and we have options now that we didn't have 10 versions of iTunes ago.

Having the same problem, can't play any of my TV Shows purchased via iTunes, getting the same authorization message no matter what I try.

Sort of a bummer as weekends are pretty much the only time I have to spend time with the family watching a bunch of shows and/or movies together. I don't want to go overboard and say our family movie nights this weekend have been ruined... but it was very disappointing paying for a season pass earlier this week for the weekend and not being able to watch it.

More disappointed with the lack of response and information from Apple. It's not like they don't have my email address to give me a heads up.

iSRS wrote:

Out of curiosity, for those of us having this issue, are your Apple ID's also a Mobile Me ID? Meaning the email associated with Mobile Me? And if so, is you Apple ID actually a .Mac address, so @mac.com as opposed to the @me.com?

That's actually a good question. I have both a .mac account and a .me account. I authorized my iTunes account using my xx@mac.com back in the days before MobileMe. So I also authorized my ATV2 with my xx@mac.com account. But with the upcoming iCloud, will I need to change my account to xx@me.com, and could that be a source of the conflict?

iSRS wrote:

Out of curiosity, for those of us having this issue, are your Apple ID's also a Mobile Me ID? Meaning the email associated with Mobile Me? And if so, is you Apple ID actually a .Mac address, so @mac.com as opposed to the @me.com?

My apple ID is the same email I've used for years, and it's non apple email

iTunes 10.5 beta 9 with iTunes Match was put up for testing on Friday. Common Knowledge. It sort of seems a bit odd that when that beta test went out, the ATV2s started doing this.

Sounds like Apple has been mucking with icloud and borked something up

I'm having identical issues. Started some time last night. Purchased music will stream over home sharing. Purchased movies and TV shows will not. This is only a problem with the 2G AppleTV. Home sharing streaming works fine between my host mac and and another.

It's not the ID issue, as mine has never changed. I'm thinking it's a system wide issue.

Yes, Apple is clearly having an issue with their authorization servers. I wouldn't be surprised if this is related to their updating server software related to their iCloud rollout in the near future. Until they fix it, you CAN play your purchased iTunes movies directly from iTunes, then AirPlay to the AppleTV 2 by clicking on the AirPlay icon in the bottom control area of the window.

I have had the same problem for a couple of days, same error message.

The following did not solve the problem:

Authorizing and De-Authorizing my computer

Toggling Home Sharing off and on.

Signing in and out of my iTunes account on my gen 2 Apple TV

What worked: my iTunes media folders are organized, for example each movie has a separate folder. I opened the folders and found that some were missing media files (probably due to interrupted Apple TV gen 1 sync ages ago). When I double clicked such a movie in iTunes, iTunes identified it as a listing with a missing media file and marked it with an exclamation mark. It asked me if I wanted it to check for other missing files in my media folder. It found more and identified them with exclamation marks. I then unckecked all items in my iTunes list with exclamation marks. I can now stream all content from iTunes to Apple TV gen 2, no more authorization errors.

I hope this works for you too.

It would have been helpful if the error has said "Streaming via Home Sharing will not work until you uncheck items listed in iTunes that have missing media files" rather than a red herring about authorization and DRM.

Same problem here. Went to Play my digital copy of Fast & Furious, and it kept telling my to authorize my computer. Eventhough the ATV2 & desktop were already authorized and had been watching over DRM'd things that day.

I could stream to my ipad/iphone withouth issue.

Found this thread via TUAW

beverlyfromnew rochelle wrote:

I have had the same problem for a couple of days, same error message.

The following did not solve the problem:

Authorizing and De-Authorizing my computer

Toggling Home Sharing off and on.

Signing in and out of my iTunes account on my gen 2 Apple TV

What worked: my iTunes media folders are organized, for example each movie has a separate folder. I opened the folders and found that some were missing media files (probably due to interrupted Apple TV gen 1 sync ages ago). When I double clicked such a movie in iTunes, iTunes identified it as a listing with a missing media file and marked it with an exclamation mark. It asked me if I wanted it to check for other missing files in my media folder. It found more and identified them with exclamation marks. I then unckecked all items in my iTunes list with exclamation marks. I can now stream all content from iTunes to Apple TV gen 2, no more authorization errors.

I hope this works for you too.

It would have been helpful if the error has said "Streaming via Home Sharing will not work until you uncheck items listed in iTunes that have missing media files" rather than a red herring about authorization and DRM.

None of the above worked for me. Plus I have no missing media files.

Ok I just noticed something "odd"

I keep my iTunes media in D:\iTunes as my D drive is a 6TB raid array (I have over 4TB in iTunes media).

iTunes has always kept things organized and in D:\iTunes I see the typical folders: movies, music, tv shows, downloads, automatically add to itunes, podcats, etc

However, a bit ago I noticed a few music folders in the d:\iTunes folder which was odd. I went into iTunes, found those songs, and they were located in that odd place.

I then unchecked and RE checked the organize library option. Now iTunes is really doing something WEIRD.

It's MOVING all my music... OUT of all of the music subfolder and placing them ALL into d:\iTunes. So now I'm see all my music subfolders on the same level as TV shows, movies, etc...

As soon as it's finished, I'll see if my ATV2 can stream. Why iTunes suddenly wants my music in a new place is beyond me... 1) It's annoying as it should be under the MUSIC folder 2) This must be something to do with iTunes Match that's coming up

Well Like most here in this thread I had the same issue with authorization all weekend and tried many of the same "solutions" with no positive results. As of this morning though the problem seemed to be resolved. As indicated by a few it was a problem on Apples backend and they seemed to of fixed it. My only concern is the fact that Apples support seemed oblivious to the whole problem and gave inappropriate resolutions to the problem. All's well that ends well I guess. Thanks for all the insights to the problem everyone, originally I thought it was just me!

Not fixed for everyone! For me, the problem is now worse. Not only can I not see purchased content via AppleTV, I can't share my library at all, not even over AirPlay.

I was so excited to buy the AppleTV, but now I can't think of a hardware purchase I regret more than this. Total chaos, complete disappointment.

As of 7AM Pacific this morning, I was back to normal. Scanning the thread, I think there could be several issues at play here, but it seems that most of us were caught in a failure of the serverside HDCP authentication. Maybe someone kicked out the plug on the way out the door Friday afternoon.

to CHad Highes 1, you obviously have home sharing turned off, or something like that. make sure that in your itunes, home sharing is turned on. make sure that in your apple tv settings, that home sharing is also turned on. make sure that youre itunes libary and atv are signed into the same itunes store account