Home sharing on iDevices not loading large library

coolspot wrote:

I just use Apple Remote and connect directly to iTunes on my Mac and play it from there. It is much faster and works rather than home sharing.

But you are not playing it on your iPhone. You are playing it in the Mac.

I am using a white macbook as iTunes server with OS X 10.7.5, iTunes 11.4, hard-wired to my Apple Extreme, and I cannot get an iPad Air with iOS 8 to load a shared library. I am also using Apple network I patched/restarted my iTunes server, and cleared all running apps and restarted my iPad. It is inconsistent - I have had it work, but now it is hanging 25% loaded. My Apple TV v2 loads the library fine. My iPhone 6 has the same problem.

I see things like this via Xcode device console:

<Warning>: Unhandled code in item response: aeSP (1 bytes long)

It works instantly on a Mac (with Mavericks and iTunes library of just about nothing).

I really like to be able to watch in the house on ipads/iphone without copying all media local to the device. I used to be able to do this. This functionality has been degrading slowly and is now completely broken and unusable.

I strongly desire that Apple will fix it. I would like to see the same interface on Apple TV able to be used in iPhone/iPad for MUCH better navigation - more like a netflix navigation style. But I would settle for "it works again".

Lee - I play my iTunes Library through Plex Media Player. It works flawlessly with your playlists, works both local and remote, and will play your movies as well. You can also authorize anyone else to access or share their media as well. I've been using the software for over 4 years now. Also, the price is right.......Free! The observations are correct here....... How can iTunes share so seamlessly with AppleTV, or other iMacs, yet fail when attempting to share to iPads or iPhones. It's bewildering that Apple won't fix the problem.

ISub doesn't work anymore. Developer walked away from it. i don't think people want to pay 20 or 30 dollars for the other app you recommend. I use PLEX also. Loads super fast, very stable, and awesome interface. Plays remotely also. Used it for over 4 years. Cant recommend it enough.

I'm in it for Plex too!

I recently updated one 4S to iOS8. Kept the other 4S on iOS7.

Consistently, the iOS8 iPhone successfully loaded the library (albeit as slowly as ever), and the iOS7 phone failed. So perhaps improvements have been made. I can't be bothered to do a longer term test or test connectivity consistency though.

Just use Plex.

There was another thread on this subject about a year or two ago. It had about 130,000 views last time i checked, still no fix.

Apple TV and the apple Remote app can handle the large libraries, WHY CAN'T APPLE FIX THE MUSIC AND VIDEO PLAYERS?

This problem is years old. shame on you Apple. Oh and while i'm at it... LET PEOPLE DOWNGRADE IOS LEVELS INSTEAD OF THROWING THEIR PHONES OUT BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SLOW.

So I had this issue and scoured the internet for an answer. I came across a post on the Macrumors forum that got me in the ballpark, and ultimately got everything working correctly. Right now I have two iPads and my AppleTV playing the same movie. They are playing through Home Sharing, coming from my iTunes library, on my 20TB Drobo, through my new iMac 5K. I don't know if the iMac is a factor but the playback is flawless and fast. Essentially, the issue for iPads is during the loading of the library, iPads tend to go to sleep. When that happens the transfer gets "corrupted" and will not work or will not work well. The very simple trick is (assuming you have Home Sharing set up correctly) reboot the iPad find the correct library you want to connect to (under the shared tab at the top ) once you have connected keep your iPad from going to sleep (keep tapping on the screen until it loads your library) It may take a short time but not several minutes as before ) once you are able to see your shared library it should work well. I only have 30 or so movies in my library so that may be a factor as well. Either way is is working Awesome for the first time in years. here is the post from Macrumors: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1746398

I hope this helps...

First I went back and read your original post to make sure I understood and addressed the issue. As far as the half circle thing (library not loading) this happened to me very often, it is still hit and miss. What I do to fix it is to get out of iTunes on the iPad and go back in, then get to the part of my house where the WiFi signal is the strongest. I go It seems to work consistently but there are times I have to do it a couple or more times. Below is how I fixed the library losing slow or not loading once you get a check mark by the shared library you want to use.

this part is reposted because I couldn't re-edit

So I had this issue and scoured the internet for an answer. I came across a post on the Macrumors forum that got me in the ballpark, and ultimately got everything working correctly. Right now I have two iPads and my AppleTV playing the same movie. They are playing through Home Sharing, coming from my iTunes library, on my 20TB Drobo, through my new iMac 5K. I don't know if the iMac is a factor but the playback is flawless and fast. Essentially, the issue for iPads is during the loading of the library, iPads tend to go to sleep. When that happens the transfer gets "corrupted" and will not work or will not work well. The very simple trick is (assuming you have Home Sharing set up correctly) reboot the iPad, find the correct library you want to connect to. (under the shared tab at the top ) Once you have connected keep your iPad from going to sleep (keep tapping on the screen until it loads your library) It may take a short time but not several minutes as before. Once you are able to see your shared library it should work well. I only have 30 or so movies in my library so that may be a factor as well. Either way is is working Awesome for the first time in years. here is the post from Macrumors: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1746398

With the Apple TV I restarted and then went to Computers, My Library showed up and it worked as well.

I hope this helps...

Your help is certainly appreciated, but the fact remains that we absolutely should not have to jump through all those hoops for something as trivial. As Groovecontrol and others have pointed out: Apple TV and the Remote app handle (very large!) libraries flawlessly and without any noticeable delay. I don't see any excuse why this cannot be adopted by the Music and Videos apps. Maybe there is one, but with Apple's approach to dealing with customer feedback, we'll probably never know. This is really frustrating!

I've updated everything across the board and I'm still having the issue. I finally caved and purchased Plex for my mobile device and it reads my iTunes library just fine. Why is it that within an Apple environment, Plex can do what iTunes can't?

J

phospholipid77 wrote:

Why is it that within an Apple environment, Plex can do what iTunes can't?

It’s not because it can’t do it.

It’s simply not programmed to do it.

Why is it that Plex cannot play iTunes purchased movies?

The Apple environment is not programmed to do it? Then what, exactly, is Home Sharing programmed to do? Share breakfast? Share its toys? No, it's programmed to share music from my iTunes library over to my mobile device. And yet, with a library over a certain size, it seems to be tanking for many of us here and more. Plex, however, seems to do the job. I will add, to be fair, that Plex does it poorly - the organization, among other features, is attrocious. But, for the love of St. Pete, at least my library shows up in Plex.

phospholipid77 wrote:

The Apple environment is not programmed to do it?

Sorry, got a bit confused with another thread...

It works fine for many people but some (this thread & others) are having issues.

If the answer was simple, likely it would have been sorted.

Fair enough. Thanks for tolerating me being droll.

I appreciate the complexity of media services in any bit of development. I do, however, see that this issue has been persistent for more than a year. I can also say that other bits of independent development have had better success with it. But, that doesn't address your point about the whys of it not working. I might add another suggestion that has nothing to do with complexity. Most users don't have large iTunes libraries. I don't know what most means, but more than 50% suits me. So, if most users don't have large iTunes libraries, AND Apple is interested in promoting cloud services, streaming content, radio, and downloads, there is no real economic incentive for them to focus on people who prefer to amass their own collections. Apple would rather push the majority of listeners to where they're already going, which is toward a way of interacting with media that is more demand-based and thus revenue-based. In the meanwhile, they're pushing us with them. It shouldn't be so hard to get our devices to read what is a relatively small XML file over LAN and prepare a GUI index from it. In my book, it seems like the initiative may be lacking.

Landed on this site while searching for a solution:

http://ios.wonderhowto.com/how-to/turn-any-ipad-iphone-ipod-touch-into-airplay-r eceiver-without-jailbreaking-0156869/

just tried it, works like a charm!! You first have to change the Airplay speakers in iTunes to AirFloat but as long as you don't change it, it'll remember the next time you start playback with Remote and open AirFloat!

So easy, yet Apple can't even do it right!