Apple TV 2 will not play purchased videos from an authorized computer

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.

It's really important to remember that these forums are User-to-User forums. Apple makes no claim to monitor them, and the volunteers who provide support here, without compensation, often stress that Apple in fact does not monitor these discussions. The path for presenting a problem to Apple is their link on the support page for sending feedback.

These forums don't get used for communication from Apple and do not function as communication to Apple. They are for users to share with other users, and there are some unpaid volunteer folk who generously offer their time and advice here.

I'm not saying that is a great policy, I'm just saying that's what the situation is. Use the feedback link from the support page to communicate with Apple.

Using Airplay does not work for me. I get the same "authorisation error"...!!!

The only thing that works is playing the movie on my computer....this is not what I want.

I am in contact with Apple support as we speak (by mail). They respond but do not seem to know what's going on. Just refered them to this thread..:). Just go my money back from the two movies I bought, though this does not solve the problem. Most woringly, it is for me a clear sign to stay away from all this Cloud stuff for now.

If you are still receiving an authorization error, then it is not the same as everyone elses. Basically AirPlay is taking what is displayed on your computer and displaying it on the AppleTV.

Can you play your movies on your computer?

If it's asking you for an AppleID and password, then your computer is not authorized for that content. Put in your password and it will become authorized. If the AppleID is authorized on 5 computers already, you can not add a sixth one. You can deauthorize all computers, then authorize yours if you have accedently authorized your computer too many time because of Windows OS issues.

or, and I just thought of this, you don't have AirPlay turned on your AppleTV in the Settings tab.

Sorry for the confusion. When playing the movie with Airplay, I get the "HDCP" error which has nothing to do with the authorisation issue. I dont' get the authorisation error.

Lawsonstone,

A good point, well made. I will chat to those guys direct from now on. Thanks for the advice. I guess i had assumed that Apple might "pop" their heads in every now and then.

Andrew.

It is of course quite sensible to think that they would, but then you can also imagine how many complaints on this forum could result from user error and Apple would spend a lot of time chasing down fantom problems. It might be useful for them to have some level of activity that would flag a thread or topic for them to check up on. This problem had a discrete beginning, Thursday night, and everyone's description sounds exactly the same. I'd hope they have some automated monitor that could pick up on trends like that.

I love these forums because often I can get a solution a lot faster than I would the official route. Some of the "Level 5's" on here are extremely helpful and knowledgable.

Same problem here. Just started happening within the last few days.

Here's a clue: I discovered that my AppleTV 2 wasn't listed with my registered products, so I tried to add it and it was rejected on the grounds that it was already registered on a different account.

Something has gone wrong with the AppleTV 2 account database would be my guess.

Now I know that it's not something at my end, I guess I'll just try again every few hours.

Dave

That error is caused by your HDMI cables or TV. There are a few discussions in this forum about that. I thought that was my problem so I researched it and found out both my cables and tv are compliant.

Just talked to tech support. They are stating it could be a few days to get the servers back online. I would suspect tuesday after iphone release. Was told there are lots of updates being performed. Also was told not to restore or reset apple tv. Since the servers are not working correctly the told be it could brick the system. Which they had a update status bar on this thing.

Thanks, I know this is a TV and/or HDMI cable problem. I am sorting this out. My TV seems to be HDCP compliant. Changed HDMI cables already, but no solution. Tomorrow I will try another TV.....keeps me bussy....nothing to watch on TV anyway....:)))

While I can appreciate technology can bite us, data corruption/system availability is something that can be fixed/prevented.

all it does is prevent us honest people from watching what we've paid for. Had I just torrented it for free I wouldn't have this issue. Ironic huh?

Perhaps a local permission file on each authorized machine would prevent this outage from hurting honest users???? Permission file gets updated weekly or something? Then we could take an outage for a few days and not care.

Food for thought.

I am very grateful to have found this thread as I have spent ages de-authorising, reauthorising, rebuilding library, resetting server etc. I dont wish to sound ungrateful to Apple for giving me the opportunity to spend so much time interacting with their software but surely they must have known about this issue? Why didnt they make any attempt to telll us?