5 Home Sharing Limit on Apple TV 3rd Gen

I have no first hand experience of this, but from googling it looks like there's a cap of five connected Apple TVs, which lines up with your experience. Are you serving media from a single Mac?

Deadeyeshark said:

My set up is Airport Extreme Timecapsule with three Airport Expresses acting as extenders throughout the house.

I had five Apple TV's working flawlessly with Home Sharing. After the recent price cut I thought I'd add another, not thinking there might be a limit on the number you can use in your own property. It seems there is, the sixth ATV will not connect in Home Sharing (get the cannot connect to iTunes message). If I reset iTunes or turn off/on Home Sharing it will only select five Apple TV's to share with.

I was aware there was a five device limit in Home Sharing with Macs, the first gen ATV, but as far as I was aware this did not apply to ATV3 (in the same way it doesn't apply to iphones/ipads etc)

Does anyone have home sharing working with more than five gen 3 ATV's?

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It appears (based on some basic googling) that anymore than 5 ATV's actually accessing the Home Share at any given point is not allowed. However, many report that it is only the amount actually accessing home sharing at any given moment. So for example if you have 6 ATV's And 1-5 are connected to the Home Share (itunes) then the 6 won't. But do you actually use all 6 at any given time? So if 1, 2, 3, 4 are connected then 6 will have no issues connecting. 5 could be used used for other functions (netflix, espn, hbo, etc. etc.) since it isn't trying to connect to Home Sharing.

Unfortunately I can not report on whether this works or not as I stopped buying at 4 and I've been buying Roku's and Fire Sticks as of late.

I have 5 ATVs, so I'm glad you mentioned this.
Sorry, i don't have an answer either way on the limit, but i won't be buying anymore.

Is it only "Home Sharing" that is the issue, or is it broader than that?

Will it attach to your network and allow you access to straming, if you turn "Home Sharing" off on the device?

brianlbaker said:

Is it only "Home Sharing" that is the issue, or is it broader than that?

Will it attach to your network and allow you access to straming, if you turn "Home Sharing" off on the device?

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Just homesharing... Rest of the functions work just fine (i.e. netflix, hulu, espn....)

According to Apple the limits only has to do with computers. It says nothing about iOS devices .

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203311

OP, are you sure you're not signed into iTunes on other computers? Like your work PC etc? I had this issue because I forgot I signed into iTunes on three computers at work.

Deadeyeshark said:

Yes, a single Mac with 12tb external storage. I may set up another Apple ID specifically for my daughter and see if it allows two different streams on the same network.

I have tried dropping one of the iPads from Home Sharing and this appears to make no difference.

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Yeah. It seems like it's five iOS devices and then five Apple TVs on top of that.

In terms of a workaround, I'd try setting up a separate user account on the Mac in question so you can try running a separate instance of iTunes with a different home sharing ID (deadeyeshark2@example.com) as an experiment to see if it works. I don't see why it wouldn't.

If it works fine then you'd just need a way to keep the two iTunes library files in sync. If you've got everything (both iTunes library and content) external then both users will have easy access — if like me you have the iTunes library on the internal drive and the content external, you can move it to Macintosh HD —> Users —> Shared (obviously do this with iTunes quit!).

Good luck! I'd be interested to hear if this works (or alternatively what you end up doing instead).

AFEPPL said:

I have 5 ATVs, so I'm glad you mentioned this.
Sorry, i don't have an answer either way on the limit, but i won't be buying anymore.

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Same!

I'm only getting ready to add my 3rd to the mix, but now will be capping out at 5 once my basement is finished. I had planned on 6 originally, but now that I know about this limit, I can scrap that 6th one, and just do a signal splitter from the movie theater to the bar. The one in the master bathroom will be better used.

I don't mean to sound judgy here, but isn't there a better streaming system available for setups that require more 6+ clients? I realize it would likely cost more, but is that cost that much of an issue to folks who want streaming capability in 6+ locations in a home?

oneMadRssn said:

I don't mean to sound judgy here, but isn't there a better streaming system available for setups that require more 6+ clients? I realize it would likely cost more, but is that cost that much of an issue to folks who want streaming capability in 6+ locations in a home?

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Honestly, there's plenty of options to create a 'better' streaming system, but since Apple is the 'drug' of choice in my family, it just makes sense to have one in every room. I also have Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast, Google TV, and Roku in various places.