Home Sharing Stops Working After a Few Minutes

unfortunately not. The problem is with my mac pro andaple tv andthere is no new update for apple tv. It is extraordinary that htey wont fix the one thng that people buy apple tv for.

I'm glad your problem got fixed

Apologies for the lack of spell check above.

10.7.4 seems to have fixed the issue, although I did get a drop out when scrolling very quickly on the remote. Have updated to the latest apple tv software that came out yesterday, but have not tried it out yet. Ironically though, Apple seem to have hidden home sharing on 5.1.1 for iphone.

Hooray! Finally! The new update to ATV OS seems to have solved the Home Share disconnecting problem. Been running it for several hours after having problems all day long and now running perfectly.

Seems that the new update to ATV OS has solved the problem - was having Problems all day with Home Share dropping but after downloading and running the update for several hours seems to be working perfectly. About time!!!!!

I had this problem for days. I have apple care. So I contacted support & they advised me to try several things. They finally thought that my Zyxel modem may be the problem. But that was not so. What finally made it work is :

a) I made my computer where my itunes music/photos reside have a static IP on windows 7 using IPV4 properties.

b) Rebooted my router

c) Rebooted computer.

d) Checked that my static IP was OK

e) Rebooted computer

f) Turned Home Sharing off & on once again.

g) Made sure no screen server runs on the computer - I don't think anyway this causes any problem

Now my home sharing works seamlessly from my iphone & ipad. I see the library all the time & it does not vanish in the middle of a song as it was doing before. Hope this helps someone - Viji

Bah! Got Galway through a movie last night after updating to 10.7.4 and 5.0.1ATV and it dropped the connection again. I don't think it is a network issue for me as remote still works. This is really annoying though.

Same problem here.

I have a 2011 iMac sharing our iTunes library to all our Apple TVs, iPads, and iPhones. I always keep my MacOSX Lion and iTunes software up-to-date. But unfortunately it seems that after a recent iTunes/MacOSX software update (not sure which) a new problem/bug was introduced.

After an idle period of several hours, the iTunes library will no longer service sharing requests from our other idevices. When trying to connect all we see is the spinning busy circle on all devices. I have to then manually restart iTunes on our iMac in order to restore normal sharing functionality, and then everything works great without any problems; no sudden disconnects, etc. But after several hours go by without any iMac or sharing activity, the same problem appears again.

Very frustrating.

FYI. Our iMac is configured to never sleep. No screensaver either. Only the display is configured to sleep after 15 minutes. Never had this problem until very recently.

*** I can't imagine any external firewall, network, router, or other factors that would contribute to a problem that resolves itself by simply restarting iTunes. Seems like a new bug in recent updates of MacOSX or iTunes.

Thoughts?

Exactly the same issue is affecting me. Home sharing simply stops working on iTunes after a few hours. Turning home sharing off and then back on again results in it immediately working again. No other network problems - only Home Sharing. For me this is a relatively recent issue that appears to be linked to recent iTunes/OSX update.

I have the same problem... don't know what to do... I have a big library running on a mac mini server and I basically need to re-start iTunes in order to be able to watch the library again.

Same problem, bought two (one for each room). I access a NAS with MP4's via a Upnp apple app.

Once you designate the device you want to send the video to,

and then select the movie,

the TV will then start playing the movie.

The movies, each time, will consistently stop somewhere maybe 15 minutes, an 1 hr, or what ever, and the apple TV (3gen) screen appears.

The Apple TV3 is plugged (hard wired) to the network).

Note, if I access the movies directly using the wifi, and same media streamer, they play "forever" with no problem, even jumping to the next movie in the directlry on some streamers.

I've boxed up both the units, and will be returning them (I've had them less than a week) so I'm not going to wait till the full 15 day return period to test.

In my mind, this was test enough.

It was nice idea but too bad. I was using a dedicated Xbox 360 to access the NAS and stream the content, yet because of the Xbox 360 update last year around 11/2011, the mp4's stopped playing (see numerous complaints on forums).

So now, I'm hopping a smart TV will be able to access the NAS either via wifi or the network jack in the back of the TV. But I'll have to wait till I get a new TV for same.

So Apple TV3 x 2 are being returned because of the unreliable playback of movies streamed from NAS.

Do you suppose Apple (Mr. 100B in the bank) is trying to "force" you to use their media content (like Xbox Does) by disabling the alternate home grown content, and making you look (literally) at their home screens to select either Netflix, youtube, NBA, Baseball, what ever else they try to sell you from their box.

Poo, Hoo.

MikesMultiedia

Same problem. After an idle period of several hours, the iTunes library will no longer service sharing requests from our other idevices. When trying to connect all we see is the spinning busy circle on all devices. I have to then manually restart iTunes on our iMac in order to restore normal sharing functionality, and then everything works great without any problems. For what it's worth, home sharing never disconnects while media is streaming, only after a period of inactivity.

Having the same issue.

Home sharing just stops working on my Apple TV. Have to close and re-open iTunes to get it to work again. Thinking it's an issue with iTunes as I recently updated and then this issue started.

Very annoying, hoping for a fix soon!

Same problem that everyone else has described. No need to repeat. Must admit, I'm shocked at the lack of communication by Apple support. I'm actually pretty patient when it comes to bugs and fixes. All I need is for someone to say "we hear you and we're working on it" and I'm fine. But sheesh! Apple can't even do that!

I'll add one other thing to this already lengthy discussion. I've seen some other posts hinting that it might be the ATV V.3 that is the only thing impacted. I've noticed that my library drops for my iPad and iPhones also. This definitely appears to be related to the latest iTunes update as all of my home sharing devices are getting dropped. Come on Apple! As MMeraz mentioned above, even a "we're aware and are working on it" post would be nice!!

I tried the IPv6 solution described at this link and it seems to have worked for me:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3507281?start=135&tstart=0