phoenix316

Q: AppleTV losing sync with home sharing

First my set up: I have an AppleTV 2nd gen and AppleTV 3rd gen (both up to date), Windows 10 computer, iTunes 12.3.2.35 (the latest version), Airport Express (also up to date) router hooked up to my cable company's modem (purchased Airport because the wifi on the cable modem was crap and I was having to restart the modem on a daily basis). I have set both the Windows Firewall and the Firewall on the cable modem to accept UDP Port 5353 for Bonjour (in fact Bonjour on the Windows Firewall is set up to accept any port).

 

The problem: For the first 8 months I've had the Airport Express it was great. I was finally able to reliably use the AppleTV without having to restart anything. A couple of weeks ago, I started having problems where I would turn on the AppleTV and it would tell me it couldn't access homesharing and that I should make sure the computer is on the same network, iTunes up to date and such. All of which is up to date and I only have one network that all the devices are signed into. Generally restarting iTunes resolves the problem, but that's not really an option when one of the AppleTVs is connected to and playing something from iTunes. At this point you can still stream from iTunes purchases, YouTube and the other apps, it just doesn't recognize the computer itunes library. Going under the General tab and restarting the AppleTV doesn't work, nor does disconnecting and reconnecting it to the network. On rare occasions I have had to just reboot everything (not sure if the router and modem require restart, but since I was waiting for the computer I figured it didn't hurt).

 

I'm just wondering if anyone can offer insight/advice as to why the AppleTV intermittently does not recognize the computer for homesharing, especially when the other AppleTV is happily streaming something from the iTunes library on my PC. I want to say that it was initially working fine on the last version (12.3.0.44), but it was definitely having the connection issue before 12.3.2.35 was released and it hasn't gotten better with the update. Googling around the internet, I have seen comments about turning off IPv6, but I'd rather not do that because that is likely to cause other problems down the road.

Apple TV (3rd generation)

Posted on Dec 22, 2015 8:30 AM

Close

Q: AppleTV losing sync with home sharing

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

Previous Page 2
  • by phoenix316,

    phoenix316 phoenix316 Jul 10, 2016 5:07 PM in response to phoenix316
    Level 1 (34 points)
    Apple TV
    Jul 10, 2016 5:07 PM in response to phoenix316

    After much heartburn trying to get this to work, I think I have found the culprit:

     

    My Netgear modem uses DHCP that renewed once every 24 hours (which happened to be about 5-10 minutes after I would move upstairs). After much searching around between the Airport Express and Netgear settings, I maxed out the lease renew time on the Netgear and have not had a problem with any of the AppleTVs losing sync and being unable to find homesharing. Clearly what was happening is the modem was shuffling up the local IP addresses when it renewed the leases (though this apparently does not bother the ATV 4 which would run straight through the lease renew). When I get time I'll try to figure out how to set static IPs, but I have until December until the leases renew so I may just leave it be and accept that about once every 5 months I might have to restart iTunes at an inconvenient time.

Previous Page 2