Apple TV keeps telling me to Authorize my computer.

Current status of this problem, as I see it:

Songs purchased from iTunes WILL stream and play on ATV2

TV shows " " " WILL NOT " " "

Movies " " " WILL NOT " " "

This is all based on my current itunes store ID, the one associated right now with the itunes store, being the SAME as the one used when I purchased the content. I think that all this discussion about different itunes ID and mac.com etc. . is distracting from this current issue which began Friday night.

Thevanner, you're correct. My mistake. I went and checked that album and it wasn't bought thru iTunes. I bought it direct thru Paul McCartney website. So yes, anything I've bought from iTunes is not playing on AppleTV ...

ok, not the user ID thing, because I have had the same ID for years. Also, when I check the info for the movie/TV show it indicates the ID I am using.

to jbpdx - I must admit, when I re-read my post, I did feel bad that I might have taken my frusterations with Apple and this problem out on you I think! Sorry about that! I am frusterated with Apple, and didn't mean to "beat up" your post. After all, we are all trying to deal with the same problem. - regards

It all seemed to start Friday night. Even my AppleTV remote was screwed up. Thought the battery was weak. Had to use the iPad Remote app to do anything on the TV. But I reset the box today and at least the remote's working again. Now wondering how Apple will notify any of us when they fix this mess?

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?

jbpdx wrote:

See http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1389 for explanation.

For some reason in the past few days Apple has changed the way it authorizes playback of purchased songs. If your ID was different when you bought the song, and it doesn't match your current ID, you get the error. Under Get Info for the song, it will show the ID used when the song was purchased. And because the ID is usually your email address, it you change that, it's screwed up. (And we all change that...) Now how to fix it?

My Apple ID has never changed and I'm still borked.. so that's not the issue for me

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.

Same as above. Started a day ago - previously I was out of town.

Cheers to HDCP.

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.