apple tv does not access iTunes - 4/17/2014

Minor Update: While my ATV1 remains borked, my season passes for two TV series actually did auto-download onto my ATV1. Both Mad Men and Bletchley Circle new episodes turned up on my ATV1 this morning ready to play. That must use a different connection than the front-end menus do.

I used the Parental Controls workaround to get the menus working reliably for local content. (Set the Purchase & Rental option to Hide.) It's okay for now.

Same issue as others have reported. No solution with factory reset etc. ATV1 software is up to date.

Suggest if Apple is dropping support that we (users) request fair trade-in program to upgrade to current model. Without ATV1 users it is not likely ATV would have been as successful attracting more users/buyers. Fair trade-in = Credit of 50% off new unit.

Any takers for this proposal?

Nope, get the old devices working again :-)

Thought I was going mad until I found this thread!

I had reset everything...and it just would not work.

I can't remove the default gateway as my Mac is on a different subnet, so I blocked the ATV from reaching the internet on my (hardware) firewall....now I can at least play all the local contect on my Mac.

Hope Apple get this sorted.

Doh!! Wish I'd checked here before I wasted the last 2 hours factory-resetting my ATV1 and isolating various bits of my network in an attempt to fix the problem.

It never occurred to me that apple might've accidentally bricked everybodies hardware, _without_ it becoming front page news somewhere -- I guess us ATV1 owners must be a pretty small and exclusive club now 😟

(Still, it was fun to see the old-style ATV menu appear after the factory reset, and reminisce about how ATV used to look before it had its big makeover...)

I have been having the same issues with AppleTV (Gen1) screwed up, very unresponsive, unable to play content properly, sub menus missing.

It seems to me a system update has been done overnight?? this would explain when disconnected from the internet ATV is still problematic.

So i have done a Factory Reset, and gone back to basic gen 1 system, and it is working properly!, ie it's responsive, i can playback files from (streaming) Imac.

I have not have lost anything as i always stream from my iMac.

I have not done updated the AVT software as it is telling me there is a update. This may not be the current update that seemed to bork my device, so for now im not doing it, im going to watch some of my programmes, music etc, and then try a software update, and also check back here to see if indeed it was a ATV OS update that screwed everything up. Maybe they tried to install a Gen 2 or 3 update to my Gen 1, i don't know.

But for now a factory reset has fixed my issue with playback problems that we making the hardware unusable and not showing all the sub menus on ATV.

Setting Rent/Buy to Hide was just what I needed to work around this problem. thanks Robert

Yep - like everyone else no longer able to access iTunes Store and playback on media from device or streamed is choppy. Really disappointed as I wasted a holiday weekend trying to troubleshoot a problem apple should of had the decency to communicate to its users.

The problem is definitely NOT the ATV1 system software, on my three ATV1s update is blocked, one not powered on anyway, all of them show the same behaviour.

Problem lies with Apple server config, they simply ignored ATV1 specifics... maybe inadvertently... Let's see if Apple cares about fixing this... or is ATV1 out of service?

mculmore, Which other versions are impacted? I now have fear that my AppleTV2 will eventually stop working spontaneously. Also what is the point of upgrading from AppleTv2 to AppleTv3? All of the info I Googled says they are basically the same except for 1080p support in the 3rd gen models. I saw one matrix which iindicated Bluetooth support is available in the 3rd generation but I'm not sure if it's also there in the 2nd gen. I ask primarily about bluetooth because I've been plagued with problems streaming content via Airplay from my iPhone 4s and iPad2 devices. The performance is laggy and the connection drops very often. Could this be addressed by upgrading to the 3rd gen or am I just under Apple's "buy our newer device" spell?

johntynes wrote:

The workaround Bansche describes does work. It's a little annoying but I just back out to the menu about five seconds into the movie when the studio logos are playing and then resume playing. That fixes it no problem.

Try doing that about 10 times while watching a movie and let me know how that enhances the experience. I call that a "problem." You are saying there is a "one-time" fix for this? I have not seen that.

Ok thanks.

But the current issue was making it impossible to stream off-line content from my Imac, and the playback kept stopping and stuttering. The menus were very slow and unresponsive, and most sub-menus were also missing on the home screen.

Therefore the Factory Reset (OS 2.3) has fixed this issue of playback and i can now watch/stream content without issues. OK the OS menu is quite basic, but it's responsive as it should be.

When Apple fix the current problem i will update the OS back to 3.0.2. At the moment i don't need to access anything online at iTunes for rental, etc. I do have access to iTunes Movie Trailers (SD) and they work fine with ATV1 OS 2.3 online.

I did update to 3.0.2 again, and had the same issues, so back on 2.3 and for now im happy, at least i can watch content.

--phantom-- wrote:

johntynes wrote:

The workaround Bansche describes does work. It's a little annoying but I just back out to the menu about five seconds into the movie when the studio logos are playing and then resume playing. That fixes it no problem.

Try doing that about 10 times while watching a movie and let me know how that enhances the experience. I call that a "problem." You are saying there is a "one-time" fix for this? I have not seen that.

Exactly! We put up with it for a couple of movies where some random foreigner says an isolated line in French for comic relief - you laugh, stop the movie, clear the subtitle and move on. We had to call for a refund on Olympus Has Fallen though because someone is talking in Korean every five to ten minutes! After the ninth or tenth time we had to stop the film, my wife and I got upset and I picked up the phone to Apple to demand our money back for that and the last five films.

Today if we plan on renting a movie that might have subtitles in it, we rent it on the ATV2 attached to the tiny 42" TV in our bedroom, not the gorgeous, 70" with Dolby 7.1 Digital Optical Surround in the living room. The downside is that the screen in the bedroom is too small for my wife to read the subtitles so I have to read them all to her, but at least they go away.

Anyway, all this business is now minor compared to the ATV1 not being able to rent movies anymore. My wife and I are about to BUY The Hobbit, 12 Years a Slave, and Mandela on DVD because we're not interested in waiting for Apple to get it's act together to see these films. This is definitely not an ATV1 software issue because Apple support admits that they stopped doing updates for the ATV1 years ago and have no intention of beginning them again...ever.

These little issues are piling and leaving many of us with a bad taste in our mouths. The famous Apple 'halo effect' is wearing off quickly. My wife refuses to let me buy another Apple product and won't even update the OS on her iPhone for fear Apple will insert some new, random bug.

The big question is: ...IS APPLE LISTENING OR NOT?

Phantom.

I had the same subtitle issues and it was driving me crazy. Found a solution that worked for me on another site.

If you haven't already, make sure your subtitles are set to "english" from the ATV settings menu.

Hope it helps.

BTW...Same issues as everyone else.

Any chance the issue is related to this?

http://www.macrumors.com/2014/04/21/apple-tv-ae-history-channel-lifetime/

It seems new channels were added to the ATV3 (not sure if ATV2 has the same access) and that must have some effect on the iTunes Store servers. Someone had mentioned a few days ago that Apple Tech Supported stated the content providers are blocking the access to the iTunes Store. I cannot see how that is even possible.