apple tv keeps dropping home sharing connection.

I'm with you. I think it's iTunes. I can see it dissappear from the remote app on my iphone.

And like you I have had ATVs for years and never had the dropouts from home sharing.

I had hoped that the most recent iTunes update would fix this.. but no 😠

I've said this a lot of times already...but heck I'll say it again.....i haven't updated my iTunes. I'm still using 5.2.3. Both my ATVs were working just fine with Homesharing on that same version of iTunes....until that big ATV update that was released the same day as the iPad 3 and all that. So....the issue appears to be with the ATV software and how it communicates with iTunes.

I agree with this too. Both ATV and iTunes interaction.

If they are thinking of making a TV in the future, they got to get this right.

Charmiepoo, do you have any ATV1's? I am not doubting your issues, but the ATV1 has not received a softwrae update in over 18 months and now they are also needing iTunes to be rebooted to get them to work. I have 5 ATV's and all of them lose connections at the same time pointint to an iTunes issue. Therotically the Itunes upgrade could be effecting ATV' 1st gen and the ATV upgrade (with the release of the iPad 3) could be causing them to lose connections. This is very hard to diagnose. Couple of other threads have pointed to the library running on the main mac library with all media being on shared NAS on the network. I am going to try an find a previous version of itunes via time machine and see if that helps with the ATV 1 problem...if that does, then i may factory reset the atv 2 and 3 and see if that fixes them.

No neither is an ATV 1. They are both ATV 2s. I have not updated my iTunes since 5.3.2 because of all the problems people have experienced with the last two updates. Didn't want to risk losing anything. I won't update iTunes until I know for sure there is a stable update. On the day the iPad 3 was released there were updates for everything. I updated my iPad, both my iPods and later that same evening both my ATVs. After that ATV update is when the Homesharing issue began for me. It was working beautifully all along. There are a few other little issues with that ATV update, for instance the shuffle doesn't work properly when using iTunes Match anymore, every few songs will only play halfway through and then it suddenly advances to the next song. There have been a couple of smaller ATV updates since then, but neither of them have addressed the Homesharing issue (or the shuffle issue either).

I have also had bad problems with WiFi connections, downloading rented movies, purchased TV shows etc. Updated Apple TV 3 software/firmware - still no help. Finally I updated my two Airport Express units, and that seems to have solved the problems. Keeping fingers crossed.

Scan the Support Community sites. Apple TV losing connection is prevalent. The many postings point out the problem occurs with Apple TV1,2and 3; with different brands of router including Airport Extreme; from current and past versions of iTunes; after varying periods of working well.....minutes, hours, days; losing connection with Home Sharing and loosing Airplay; whether the router and Apple TV are in same room or separated by distance; after trying innumerable posted 'fixes'; after exchanging for a new Apple TV.

Readers, please don't post a fix until you check it works for atleast a week.

Probably good advice. I actually haven't had many issues the past couple of weeks but have not used it often. Of course we had a down evening so had movie night and couldn't make it through without Homesharing dropping. It dropped 6 times with the first few times re-connecting after I put the ATV to sleep, then had to restart iTunes, then had to do both. I'm not a tech expert and don't know what is causing the issue but I hear that Apple may employ a few... it's unbelieveable they can't remedy this.

I've encountered zero problems with the AIrport Extreme, BT Infinity and Apple TV2 set-up I ended up going with. Myriad problems to begin with and then this setup sorted it.

I think others have reported problems who own Airport Extreme and it's intermidtent so keep an eye on it. I have a time capusule and would assume this to be comparable to an Extreme? I tried another movie last night and it dropped home sharing 4 times... I didn't bother trying to finish the movie.

I've had loads of problems with this on Windows 7. Typically I can get Home Sharing / Apple TV connection to last about a day. Eventually my iTunes becomes unresponsive (either does not respond to being closed and needs to be forced to close or iTunes fails to let a sync complete).

So far my best bodging has found the following helps: close iTunes and restart the Bonjour service, relaunch iTunes and the option sometimes returns.

Failing that I uninstall iTunes and Bonjour, reboot, reinstall, restart home sharing, relaunch iTunes and it sometimes comes back that way.

My thoughts are that it is iTunes/Bonjour at fault. Any time my pc fails to display Home Sharing I can run a laptop/other pc/vmachine and they work fine so my Apple TV seems unlikely to be at fault.

For me, my solution turned out to be setting the AppleTV (1080p) to WiFi.

Background... (and longer story)

Before all this happened, back before March when it all worked perfectly my set up was:

Mac Mini with OS X Lion Server (DNS & DHCP) and running iTunes 24/7

Three 27" iMacs

AppleTV (160 GB)

AppleTV 2

Buffalo Router (DD-WRT installed)

(And for the 3 years before that it was two AppleTV 40 GB and two AppleTV 160 GB. Once the AppleTV 2 came out my original ones started dropping like flies) Everything was wired with Gigabit ethernet (Cat 5e). Never any issues.

Then the patch hit AND I bought an AppleTV (1080p) This put me back up to three AppleTVs in the house again. I kept reading the forums but it really seemed like an iTunes issue since all my Macs and AppleTV were affected.

Anyway, I used the terminal commands to count connections and watch. It was the new AppleTV that kept flooding the MacMini. I eventually took all the AppleTVs offline and then only let one on the network at a time. For me the issue happened when ever the AppleTV (1080p) was connected by ethernet. I moved it (and nothing else) to WiFi and I stopped having to restart iTunes 2 to 3 times a day.

I still notice over the course of a few weeks scrolling on the AppleTV (1080p) starts to get slugish and restarting it or iTunes will fix that and bring back it's responsiveness.

All this testing was done throughout the end of June, July and Aug (about 6 weeks total). It has been working fine for the las 4 weeks.

It seems like there are a lot of factors at play here and everyones solution is different. However the timing of this is same for everyone and I'd think Apple could have tracked it down by now.

The two things that helped me were the connection count and the suggestions of changing the AppleTVs connection type. Mine is now on the opposite of everything else.

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.

The latest AppleTV update (5.1 - build 10A406e) has fixed this issue for me. I've had my AppleTV back on my wired network and no disconnects. Scrolling is fast and responsive again too.

I just installed latest update yesterday and now I can't get HomeSharing to recognize that it is running. AppleTV is working but it keeps asking me to turn on Homesharing and it's on. Frustrated.