apple tv keeps dropping home sharing connection.

I see the problem from the Music App on iPad as well - no iTunes involved.

I have had a similar problem to you though. When this first started I was firing up the remote app and hitting play. The previous day it had been playing through the Apple TV so I expected it to wake up and start playing because it always used to. It didn't however and it caused iTunes to lock up requiring a kill and restart.

This happened a few times before I noticed the Apple TV was missing fom the airplay list and since then I have been restarting the ATV before playing anything. Since then I have had no iTunes lock ups.

seems that i found a "workaround/solution" for me.

my ATVs played my iTunes content fine.

after the ATV goes in sleepmode it lost my iTunes Share on ATV - as soon as i restart the box it went back and worked fine.

If i send the ATV via menue to sleep and instantly wake it -> lost connection to iTunes........

yesterday i restored the iOS again.

I entered all needed options - but i left one option untouched : DHCP

in my network ALL devices have a static IP (in past my ATVs too).

Then it works fine -> go to sleep -> wake up -> all there 🙂

put manually to sleep and wake up = fine 🙂

entered my Static IP :

works :-)

send to sleep and wake up -> Share to iTunes broken! 😐

it seems that the static IP in ATV iOS is buggy 😮

hope that helps some people here

Works for me too - nicely done :-)

Ok I believe that I solve the problem it looks like the most craziest thing I was reading the Home sharing or how to setup home sharing from the apple web site i cant remember which one it was.it says that the time ZONE is very important and if you don't set the time zone to the correct location you can encounter disconnects it was the last thing I tried but it seems like it actually worked.

Had the same problem happen to me. After finishing a Win7 reformat, and installing iTunes, i experienced the same problem with Home Sharing dropping out on my ATV, even on my iPod and Ipad Devices. I would be able to play a title, but then when playing the next title, would just hang there and not pay, then would randomly drop connection to the library. I'd have to kill iTunes, and and restart the program. Airplay still worked on both my ATV2 and 3, and the router was maintaing connection to all devices. So I realized it was a iTunes problem. I had moved my default User Folder locations. Something during this must have screwed up the iTunes library files and screwed up the Bonjour service.

Simply uninstalling iTunes, AND ALL ITUNES RELATED PROGRAMS, then reinstalling iTunes fixed the problem, for now. I'll repost if this fix doesn't stick

Correct! Disable windows internal firewall because it throttles back connection speed and disconnects homeshare.

I have the firewall enabled with standard settings (Home/Private network) and have absolutely no problems at all with Home Sharing or AirPlay since I switched my Apple TV and Airport Expresses and iTunes PCs from static to DHCP.

Unless there's a very good reason the firewall should be left enabled - it's protecting you - and it will have minimal impact on speed unless you have a very old and slow computer. The firewall is especially important if you ever connect to a public (including mobile) network.

Im going to try your suggestion in a little while and see what happens, Ive let airport express handle the firewall duties for the last couple of weeks on my windows machine and Ive had no more drop out on homeshare.

Ok I have tryed everything on my router tryed every setting I was blaming the Apple TV but in the end it wasn't the apple TVA fault I got a better router and all my problems were fixed. I would recommend something with an athelleos chip set because that is what worked for me new router solved all my issues.

Well, I've had enough. Apple TV is a science project, not a product. I sent it back, found a 2.5" PATA hard drive and resurrected my 1st generation Apple TV, which actually worked!

The new Apple TV was by far the WORST out of box experience I've ever had. I had to leave an extra computer on to watch my home videos and photos, experiment with restarting various components when the connection would mysteriously drop, bur extra equipment from a 3rd party to connect it to my component-only video distribution system, and the slideshow screen saver kept displaying the same few pictures out of more than 15,000 photos over and over again.

With a new hard drive my old Apple TV just works, carefree, and effortlessly, like an apple product should.

I have the same problem. My Apple TV 3s (two of them) basically launch a denial of service attack on my itunes server. I can watch them do this from the iTunes machine via netstat. I see ~8 additional connections every hour from each ATV3. This occurs whether the ATV3s are wired, or are wireless on the 5ghz network. This problem does not occur if I use the ATV3s on my 2.4ghz network (same network actually, I just have different SSIDs for 2.4ghz and 5ghz... 5ghz was supposed to be exclusively for ATVs, but alas, it doesn't work). I personally think this is broke in both iTunes, which should abandon the zombie connections after some amount of time, and the ATVs, which obviosuly aren't properly managing their persistent connections. All other aspects of the Apple TVs work great, regardless of how they're connected.

Just for additional info, I don't know exactly what the breaking point is, but iTunes appears to stop accepting connections at around 150 connections, or about 10 hours of two apple TVs connecting. Restarting iTunes resets the clock. For now I put the ATVs on the 2.4ghz, which is not ideal for me, but it is functional. I verified all of this against iTunes 10 and 11.

I have the same issue, as I have been reading on the site, any ideas

Apple fixed it today. Had the same issues surrounding Home Sharing, logging on etc. Spent about 10 hour messing with it and finally took it down to the Apple Store. They listened to my attempts and said, "sorry but your unit is more than a year out of warrenty and it sounds like a hardware issue" What was I to do? They sold me a new unit for $59 and when I plugged it in it **** near signed itself in and everything works GREAT!

All those hours wasted almost made me hate Apple but I must say it works great.

After literally troubleshooting this for hours and messing with router firewall settings we finally realized it was the ANTIVIRUS settings which were causing the issue. We made the IP address static for the Apple TV then configured the network settings within the antivirus to ALLOW that specific IP address.

Hope this helps you also.

FYI - we called Apple support and finally came to this conclusion.

I've just checked my serial number and will bring my device to the next apple store:

http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/15/apple-says-small-number-of-apple-tvs-have-wifi-iss ues-opens-replacement-program/

The statement about third and fourth is wrong, it's fourth and fifth digits!

See

http://www.macrumors.com/2013/04/15/apple-initiates-replacement-program-for-3rd- generation-apple-tvs-with-wifi-connectivity-issues/

and

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4973747

My serial applies for a test as my serial corresponds here.

I've had problems with the device since the purchase.

Hope this is related to the dropping connections problem here.