Apple TV Can't "Access iTunes Store" after UPDATE. The SOLUTION.
It has been a while since I updated my ATV2. The past update was the one which added the new "movies/TV Shows/Music/etc" icons to the bottom half of the welcome screen.
Tonight I purchased a movie from the iTunes store, then decided to update the ATV while i was cooking dinner... I came back to an updated ATV (updated to v5.2) and when I tried to accesss Movies, the ATV would start "Accessing iTunes Store" then do a soft reset... I thought this was odd, so then I tried to access the TV Shows and the exact same issue occured... I then tried to access Netflix and YouTube too see if there was a network issue, however there was no problem with those applications.... Finally I tried to access PodCasts, boom, soft reset yet again. *Interesting enough when I "mouse over" the Movies and TV Show icons, the ATV is able to pull the "Top Movies" from the store and display them.* - I found this rather strange, if it can access this... why not access the store???
I came to the conclusion that there was an issue with my ATV connecting to the iTunes store... for some reason everytime it attempts to access the store, it seems to bug out and cause a soft reset (the screen goes black, the light flashes, then I'm returned to the home screen).
IF YOU ARE HAVING THIS ISSUE OR A SIMILIAR ONE THERE IS A SIMPLE SOLUTION THAT I JUST FIGURED OUT. GO TO SETTINGS>ITUNES STORE>ACCOUNTS>SIGN OUT.... THEN SIGN OUT OF YOUR ITUNES ACCOUNT, THEN SIGN BACK IT... BOOOOOOM PROBLEM FIXED!!! WISH I TRIED THIS EARLIER..... ONLY TOOK ME 2 HOURS TO FIGURE OUT.
Apple TV (2nd generation), Windows 7