Does iTunes and/or Apple TV phone home during home sharing?

Home Sharing protected content does initiate a brief internet phone home to authorise but once started AFAIK that's it - try playing a protected movie when your internet is down - it won't start and say it can't authorise.

I used to get the problem you mention with AppleTV1, it was cured by a restart.

For past 8-10 weeks I've had continual problems with AppleTV 2 and 3 failing to reconnect to home shared libraries that used to work flawlessly - this tends to happen after changing to another AV input on TVand back or after a perikod of inactivity.

It is also affecting Mac to Mac Home Sharing and I often find my Mac Mini iTunes hangs trying to communicate with the Mac Pro.

AC

In one way, I wish I had encountered this problem, then I might have had an opportunity to look into it, since it does seem that more than a handful of users suffer from it.

On the basis that there have been a fair proportion of those who are afflicted by this who have multiple Apple TV's and suffer it with all of them. And that of the 3 components to homesharing (Apple TV/network/computer) the Apple TV is essentially the same for everyone. And that other users have also reported homesharing issues where no Apple TV is involved. I believe the problem is unlikely to lie with the Apple TV itself. That isn't to say that the Apple TV doesn't contribute to the problem in some way.

From what I have surmised from others posts, the issue seems to be that the broadcast from the host computer either stops or becomes blocked.

I haven't seen too many posts that involve multiple computers and therefore am not really able to point the finger at either the network or the computer. My own set up involves multiple computers running various OS's (and possibly different versions of iTunes), they all work, so from my own experience I'd be inclined to tend towards the network as the root of the problem, but my sample really isn't large enough to say one way or another.

John Child wrote:

Thanks Cat. I see also that home sharing connections aren't persistent, even when the devices are set to never sleep. That feels like a mild version of the "won't stay connected during playback" problem.

In reality I suspect there is more than one problem, but I don't think mine is related to this - if a session starts ok it continues fine until I perhaps switch TV channels/or set TV to standby or off - when I go back to AppleTV after a period of time, 99% of the time now I get the 2 iTunes libraries listed but just a spinning wheel when accessing. I've seen this with Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion and Lion. An AppleTV reboot usually does not cure it whereas with similar issues years ago with AppleTV 1 it would.

My Mac Pro and Mac Mini are always on, drives not set to sleep and iTunes libraries are on the same drives they were before the problem started.

The AppleTV 2 and 3 really are infuriating now unless the family want to watch Netflix or cloud based material. So when AppleTV plays up, unless I'm around they'll watch terrestrial. Mac Pro is upstairs so a chore to go up and down just to restart iTunes, and the Mini is controlled from the Pro using Apple's Remote Desktop.

Home Sharing definitely phones home when starting up: ax.init.itunes.apple.com and [xxx-]buy.itunes.apple.com. After that, maybe not.

Yes.

But if not, what causes connections to fail, either after 10 minutes (during playback) or after 10 hours, e.g., overnight?

I think your 8-to-10-weeks is reasonable, but I see threads back to April. Maybe 12 to 20 weeks? What could give scores of people problems starting then?

This is why I think it's multifactorial or some factor related to software/s installed at different times by different people. I've reverted itunes back to earlier 'good' versions, but no joy unless some newer components do not get reverted just teh main app.

There is a thread over on Home Sharing where they state iTunes seems to hang with Home Sharing after a 100 or so connections are made to it. Restarting iTunes and all these connections are stopped and the restart works. Seems to be the case for me too - iTunes bug? iTunes accepting multiple connections from same device when it shouldn't ? No idea.

Some have even written scripts to monitor itunes connections and restart it to minimise the issue though probably bad if you are viewing at the time!

It almost needs a new thread here.

AC

Winston Churchill wrote:

In one way, I wish I had encountered this problem, then I might have had an opportunity to look into it, since it does seem that more than a handful of users suffer from it.

On the basis that there have been a fair proportion of those who are afflicted by this who have multiple Apple TV's and suffer it with all of them. And that of the 3 components to homesharing (Apple TV/network/computer) the Apple TV is essentially the same for everyone. And that other users have also reported homesharing issues where no Apple TV is involved. I believe the problem is unlikely to lie with the Apple TV itself. That isn't to say that the Apple TV doesn't contribute to the problem in some way.

From what I have surmised from others posts, the issue seems to be that the broadcast from the host computer either stops or becomes blocked.

I think the hang up is with iTunes, the question is why?

Does it have communication issues to AppleTV or another Home Sharing library and keeps retrying opening new connections until it reaches a maximum, then hangs?

Is AppleTV not retaining its IP address when TV AV input changed and creating new connections with a new IP when it is teh selected AV input again?

There's no real pattern.

I've tried disabling any sleep/power saving features on all devices. It happens with wifi and wired.

I wonder if anyone else use Apple Remote Desktop as an update a few months ago seemed to cause a performance hit with screen update rates for me.

One thing I have done in past few months is add some newer mains powerline adapters into the system - might try removing these for now. They are supposed to be backwards compatible with the older slower ones, and internet access is unaffected on teh AppleTVs even if Home Sharing is.

AC

I think the hang up is with iTunes, the question is why?

Not saying it isn't but the pattern of multiple library set ups either all working or all failing, tends to suggest otherwise.

Does it have communication issues to AppleTV or another Home Sharing library and keeps retrying opening new connections until it reaches a maximum, then hangs?

Is AppleTV not retaining its IP address when TV AV input changed and creating new connections with a new IP when it is teh selected AV input again?

If that was the case, wouldn't all Apple TV's do the same, they all have the same software and no settings that relate to homesharing or network settings that would make anyone's Apple TV configured any different to anyone elses.

I've tried disabling any sleep/power saving features on all devices. It happens with wifi and wired.

All my 2's & 3's are wifi, computers are both wired and wifi, all but one computer is set to sleep after X minutes/hours.

I wonder if anyone else use Apple Remote Desktop as an update a few months ago seemed to cause a performance hit with screen update rates for me.

Don't have it.

Winston Churchill wrote:

I think the hang up is with iTunes, the question is why?

Not saying it isn't but the pattern of multiple library set ups either all working or all failing, tends to suggest otherwise.

Does it have communication issues to AppleTV or another Home Sharing library and keeps retrying opening new connections until it reaches a maximum, then hangs?

If I understand this correctly, then wouldn't this just affect the instance of iTunes that has the issue.

I'm wondering if there's a kind of domino effect - iTunes A hangs.

AppleTV can't connect to iTunes A (this may or may not hang tha AppleTV which then fails to contact iTunes B).

iTunes B is also Home Sharing to iTunes A so when iTunes A hangs this causes communication from B to be ignored and for B to hang too after it repeatedly fail to achieve housekeeping comms with A.

AC

Winston Churchill wrote:

Is AppleTV not retaining its IP address when TV AV input changed and creating new connections with a new IP when it is teh selected AV input again?

If that was the case, wouldn't all Apple TV's do the same, they all have the same software and no settings that relate to homesharing or network settings that would make anyone's Apple TV configured any different to anyone elses.

It seems to affect both the AppleTV 2 and 3 equally.

AC

I wasn't referring to just your Apple TV's when I said 'all'.

If the problem was anything to do with the Apple TV, then I surely would have the problem too, since My Apple TV's are identical to yours (same software, no configuration to make them different)

Winston Churchill wrote:

I wasn't referring to just your Apple TV's when I said 'all'.

If the problem was anything to do with the Apple TV, then I surely would have the problem too, since My Apple TV's are identical to yours (same software, no configuration to make them different)

I follow....yes, I think it's not the AppleTV specifically UNLESS it is some weird HDMI issue when I change sources or turn TV off - as we know some TVs behave a little differently over HDMI, and my TVs could potentially be doing something differently wit the HDMI connection but I think it's doubtful.

AC

That's true, HDMI can do some funny things. How did you say you resolved the problem in these cases. If HDMI had corrupted the Apple TV, I couldn't see restarting homesharing on iTunes being any help.

Winston Churchill wrote:

That's true, HDMI can do some funny things. How did you say you resolved the problem in these cases. If HDMI had corrupted the Apple TV, I couldn't see restarting homesharing on iTunes being any help.

Yes, itunes restart fixes it 100% of the time.

Have you seen the thread in Home Sharing about the '100 connection' limit?

With respect to HDMI I was just wondering if even though AppleTV was not set to sleep whether a change in HDMI signals might be able to render AppleTV unresponsive or even force it into a sleep like state which then caused issues with iTunes. This is bottom of the barrel stuff really.

I must check the powerline adapters as that idea only occurred to me yesterday.

AC

Yes, I tend to read most of the posts, I don't get involved in them, there are too many people confusing homesharing with other technologies and often it isn't clear exactly what they are talking about, thereby confusing the whole discussion.

The 100 connection thing, seems to be how things should work to me, I'm not sure of the point that's being made there.