Apple TV Drops from Home Sharing

Oscar,

I have been using ATV Gen1 for years without any issues. I use it mainly for streaming TV Shows and Podcasts from my iTunes library to our TV screen; its brilliant as importantly it doesn't work-off Home Share.

I recently bought a ATV Gen3 and within 5 minutes it lost connection with my iTunes library. Following a fair bit of research on the Apple Forums I see that MANY people have been complaining about the same issue i.e. Home Share drops after a few minutes causing a lost connection between ATV and your iTunes library.

The issue affects both ATV2 & ATV3. I have returned my ATV3 unit back to Apple and got my money back. I am now considering looking for a Gen 1 ATV on ebay!!

Surely Apple knows about the issue (?) but seem uncaring.

Possible work arounds I've seen on the bulletin boards refer to turning off the sleep options on your computer and ATV and changing channels on your modem. I tried the later but Home Share still dropped. It was at this point that I returned my ATV to Apple so I now dont have a ATV to test whether the turning-off the sleep option works or not.

Try it and let me know and I will then buy another ATV3. Please let me know......

Cheers

KevBate

I gave up on using ATV3 with wifi and plugged into ethernet in my study instead of using it in the living room as intended. It still has networking issues and there is always fiddling around to get anything to stream from Mac but it is better than it was previously when it wouldn't work at all.

This really isn't a product for use as a media player anymore - it is a glorified movie rental device.

I like my 2 x ATV1s a lot better. They should go back to a product with a drive.

I'll add another piece to the mystery.

I had this issue (home sharing to the MacMini dropping every 5 minutes) a while back on an ATV2 and Airport Extreme. I created two distinct networks (2.4 and 5Ghz), set my ATV2 to join on the 5Ghz network, set sleep time out to 1 hour - problem went away for the past 6 months.

I then upgraded to an ATV3 - worked fine the last 2 months. No new issues. I leave iTunes running 24x7.

Last week I upgraded the MacMini to 10.8, Mountain Lion, AND added the new model Airport Express to extend my network (on 5Ghz) - problem has returned.

Now I need to troubleshoot if the problem was re-introduced by Mountain Lion or the Airport Express.

I found out that I had an old iTunes password stuck in home sharing. Once I updated my iTunes password to the most current one, it seemed to work.

Nope, never mind. That doesn't work. Turning off home sharing and then turning it back on again does the trick.

Internet sites are rife with reports of Apple TVs (1,2 and 3) loosing wifi connection. Multiple tips to correct the problem have been posted and most (all?) fail after an interval of hours or days. My plea to posters: please wait a few days before posting your 'successful' tip.

This really doesn't seem to be a problem with the ATV. I have an ATV2, an ATV3 and an Airport Express wired into my network and feeding off a recent Mac Mini originally running Lion, now Moutain Lion. The Mini has no other purpose in life other than to be a media server. I can be streaming different music to the ATV2 (pull) and the Airport Express (push) while a movie is streaming to the ATV3 (pull) and screen sharing the mini with no network bottleneck. The problem seems to be in iTunes. Many posts have said the solution is to restart iTunes which I also found to work every time.

• I find that often there is no home sharing available when I first light up the either ATV if the Mini has been idle for some time. Relaunching iTunes on the Mini fixes this.

• If I pull music to the ATV 2 (initiate from the ATV menu system) it will eventually stop after anywhere from 10 minutes to several hours.

• If I push music (initiate from iTunes via Airplay) to either the ATV 2 or the Airport Express conected to the house music system it seems to be stable for longer

The fix is always the same: restart iTunes. For my money, there is something evil lurking in iTunes home sharing support.

-Rob

What am I missing? It seems like AirPlay works pretty well, so I'm wondering why all the fuss about Home Sharing not working. Can't you just click play in iTunes and listen or watch on your Apple TV through AirPlay?

I have been scratching my head on this one and knew in the back of my head that it had to be something simple. Started going through my router settings and noticed that it was set to auto channel. I unselected it and chose channel 5 (no specific reason) and bingo....it worked. I now have home sharing working.

This is after nearly 3 months of it not working (and me not really trying to fix it).

I hope this helps some of you out.

Yes, over all pushing the music to an airplay device (Airport Express, Apple TV) from iTunes is pretty stable. The problem occurs when you log onto a device and it can no longer see iTunes on the host computer. So far the only way I've found to revive the connection in that direction is to restart iTunes on the host.

I noticed another piece last night: When iTunes drops a device it also loses the restart position. iTunes still recognizes that the video is partially played but the dropped ATV doesn't offer to start from where you left off.

I have set all my devices except the Airport Express to static addresses on my network. Everything that doesn't move around the house is on a wire.

We'll get to the bottom of this,

-Rob

Scan the Support Community sites and you will find: Apple TV losing connection is prevalent. The many postings point out the problem occurs with:-

1 Apple TV1,2and 3;

2 with different brands of router including Airport Extreme;

3 with current and past versions of iTunes;

4 after varying periods of working well.....minutes, hours, days;

5 losing connection with Home Sharing and losing Airplay;

6 whether the router and Apple TV are in same room or separated by distance;

7 after trying innumerable posted 'fixes';

8 after exchanging for a new Apple TV;

9 with all the recent operating systems -Mountain Lion, Lion, Snow Leopard, Leopard and Lion.

10 when it loses wifi, the ATV will work immediately if you plug in the ethernet cable.....Steve Jobs called the ATV a hobby, but Apple products are supposed to be better than this.

I suspect frustrated readers just give up trying, rather than find a fix, which is why I invite readers to please don't post a fix until you check it works for at least a week.

I almost gave up on the whole thing altogether, but I decided to buy an airport extreme and try it one more time. To my anazenent, it's worked so far for two whole months. But now, I'm having a probolem with my ipad 2 which I suspect is the same problem with my apple tv - it's letting me see my shared library on the ipad, but when I go to play the movie it says I don't have permission to play the requested source. I know it's some computer thing I'm not doing right. Any help on that issue would be awesome. (And sorry if this question is in the wrong spot...)

In case I need to tell you this - I have an apple tv 3rd gen, an Ipad 2, an HP Pavillion Notebook, Seagate external hard drives (three of them), and I think that's it...any more info you need, let me know...

Apple TV loses Home Sharing connection for everyone. It never loses AirPlay connection so why not just use AirPlay?

Sometimes my wife wants to listen to her playlist in one room while I'm watching a movie in another. You can airplay one of these but not both unless both are the same. Most of the tiime it works good.

I'll give you that, several scenarios and several proposed fixes. My ATV3 dropped home sharing first, then WiFi quit working altogether.

My solution; swapped it for a new unit and 5 days now, no issues. The one thing I noticed is they gave me a refurb unit that is still running 5.0 (4099) - shows an update is available but hesitant to do it. The only thing I am missing now is the Hulu app.