Homesharing, suddenly disconnects all the time

[duncyboy]

Well it looks like I spoke way too soon! Sorry to whine but the ATV's been by far the worst Apple product I've owned. I've had several iPods, an iPhone for about a year and a half now and an iMac for four years and they've been- odd niggles notwithstanding- very reliable. But the ATV has been nothing but trouble unfortunately.

I'm convinced the problem is with iTunes Home Sharing though. It basically seems to go to 'sleep' when idle and doesn't wake. I have to restart iTunes to use it.

I've submitted a bug-report to Apple and judging from their forums this is a known issue but I think iTunes is now long overdue a serious overhaul. It's the lynchpin of Apple's business- iPads, phones, the iTunes store, the App store- these are some of Apple's biggest breadwinners. Surely a re-write is in the works?

[blueroom]

I've had absolutely no problems with my ATV 1,2 or 3

I did jam a 320GB HDD in the ATV1 but never bothered with jail breaking.

[CylonGlitch]

Try telling your computer to not sleep. I had this problem when running iTunes in Windows 7. For some reason when the PC goes to sleep, iTunes gets disconnected (that makes sense) but it doesn't know when the PC is woken up and automatically reconnects. So I went into the power settings and made sure the PC never went to sleep. It worked. . . mostly.

I had to do this when my ATV1 iTunes server hard drive failed. I have since repaired it and I'm back running the iTunes server in OSX and it has no problems at all. It is obviously an issue with the Windows version and it definitely has something to do with power management.

[duncyboy]

Thanks for the reply but unfortunately my Mac never sleeps, it's on 24/7.

Thanks anyway though

[danielbrowning]

I have this problem, and here is my setup.

When I try to access the library with either of my 2 Apple TVs, or the 2 iPhones in the house, or or iPad, it can see the computer but cannot access the library (Apple TVs just have the spinner). if I restart iTunes or turn Home Sharing off then on again, it works fine for everything. If the library is not accessed again for a while (not sure how long) then problem reoccurs.

My iTunes library is running on a Mac Mini which has no power management turned on; it never sleeps nor do the hard disks. All hardware is wired, no wireless involved. This problem has only been occurring in the last month or so, with no change in hardware.

[AlexJaye]

I had the same disconnect problem with my ATV 3 up until Apple released the newest software update. After I updated the issue went away.

Restore, maybe?

[richpjr]

Originally Posted by duncyboy

Thanks for the reply but unfortunately my Mac never sleeps, it's on 24/7.

Thanks anyway though

Same here. And probably once a day I have to restart iTunes to get my ATV2 and ATV3 to recognize it. Once connected, it works flawlessly. Something in iTunes is not right.

[duncyboy]

Originally Posted by danielbrowning

I have this problem, and here is my setup.

When I try to access the library with either of my 2 Apple TVs, or the 2 iPhones in the house, or or iPad, it can see the computer but cannot access the library (Apple TVs just have the spinner). if I restart iTunes or turn Home Sharing off then on again, it works fine for everything. If the library is not accessed again for a while (not sure how long) then problem reoccurs.

My iTunes library is running on a Mac Mini which has no power management turned on; it never sleeps nor do the hard disks. All hardware is wired, no wireless involved. This problem has only been occurring in the last month or so, with no change in hardware.

Apart from the hardware (one iMac, one iPhone, one ATV3) that is IDENTICAL to the problems I have.

I've submitted a bug request since the last update. All I can do is recommend people do the same.

When it's working I love my Apple TV. It's fantastic. But the iTunes bug has made it the most problematic Apple product I've ever had, sadly. Touch wood a fix is on its way.

[mercutio76]

I use to have reset my network all the time to fix the problems mentioned, plus a bunch of other problems on my PC devices. Then I spent the extra money for an Apple Airport and all the problems went away.

I hate spending more than what I have to, but the Airport fixes so many networking glitches and saves so much frustration I would argue it to be a great deal even though it's over double the price of most wireless networks. Eg. In the last 5 months I've had to reset my router once.

[Skalle06]

Same problem. Pulled the wired ethernet connection to my ATV3 yesterday. Now the Home Sharing connects everytime on ATV3 and on the Remote app on my iPhone and iPad.

[rlu929s]

Mine used to do this all the time, but I finally got it fixed. I had to remove all other Home Sharing devices off my network except the ATV's and iTunes.

I had my iPhones and iPads using the Remote App. I removed them and have not had a problem since.

That was my solution for what it's worth.

[murdoc158]

Is everyone talking about an actual connection DROP or unable to connect all together? I haven't had a single drop while streaming from my server to my Apple TV3. I HAVE had issues connection to the iTunes shared library though. Disconnecting power on the Apple TV3 and restarting iTunes seems to fix that issue for me. Once connected to the library, it's 100% solid.

How are most of you connecting? I've got my Apple TV3 hookup up via Ethernet to my gigabit LAN with Cat6 throughout the house. The server has dual gigabit Ethernet ports (but only using 1 ATM). If connected via wifi it could be any number of factors. If feasible, head to monoprice.com and pick up a run of Cat6 cable for cheap and test a wired connection. Copying a 4GB movie over my hardwired network to my Macbook Pro will take less than a minute. If I'm using wireless N, it takes almost 5 minutes.

[davids8477]

Originally Posted by murdoc158

Is everyone talking about an actual connection DROP or unable to connect all together? I haven't had a single drop while streaming from my server to my Apple TV3. I HAVE had issues connection to the iTunes shared library though. Disconnecting power on the Apple TV3 and restarting iTunes seems to fix that issue for me. Once connected to the library, it's 100% solid.

How are most of you connecting? I've got my Apple TV3 hookup up via Ethernet to my gigabit LAN with Cat6 throughout the house. The server has dual gigabit Ethernet ports (but only using 1 ATM). If connected via wifi it could be any number of factors. If feasible, head to monoprice.com and pick up a run of Cat6 cable for cheap and test a wired connection. Copying a 4GB movie over my hardwired network to my Macbook Pro will take less than a minute. If I'm using wireless N, it takes almost 5 minutes.

Certainly from my experience the connect does not drop once a stream has started. The issue is that after some dormant time the shared library can be seen in the "shared" button in the left column, but will not connect - just sits there "loading XXXX library".
It's not fixed my changing the connection (cat 6/5e/wifi etc) not messing with the IPV6 or whatever nor the router settings. The only fix I've found - after lots of trial and error (mostly error) is either to restart homesharing on the shared iTunes or restart iTunes on the shared machine. It will then refuse to connect after some dormant time - usually several hours - but I haven't measured that.
Once either of the restarts has happened then the library is loaded in a few seconds.
There are so many posts on this both here and the Apple support site - plus bug reports submitted - its surprising that Apple has not even acknowledged the issue let a alone provided a fix.

[GarrettL1979]

Originally Posted by davids8477

Certainly from my experience the connect does not drop once a stream has started. The issue is that after some dormant time the shared library can be seen in the "shared" button in the left column, but will not connect - just sits there "loading XXXX library".
It's not fixed my changing the connection (cat 6/5e/wifi etc) not messing with the IPV6 or whatever nor the router settings. The only fix I've found - after lots of trial and error (mostly error) is either to restart homesharing on the shared iTunes or restart iTunes on the shared machine. It will then refuse to connect after some dormant time - usually several hours - but I haven't measured that.
Once either of the restarts has happened then the library is loaded in a few seconds.
There are so many posts on this both here and the Apple support site - plus bug reports submitted - its surprising that Apple has not even acknowledged the issue let a alone provided a fix.

I thought I read somewhere on here that apple has acknowledged that this is a known issue and said they're working in it.

[murdoc158]

Originally Posted by davids8477

Certainly from my experience the connect does not drop once a stream has started. The issue is that after some dormant time the shared library can be seen in the "shared" button in the left column, but will not connect - just sits there "loading XXXX library".
It's not fixed my changing the connection (cat 6/5e/wifi etc) not messing with the IPV6 or whatever nor the router settings. The only fix I've found - after lots of trial and error (mostly error) is either to restart homesharing on the shared iTunes or restart iTunes on the shared machine. It will then refuse to connect after some dormant time - usually several hours - but I haven't measured that.
Once either of the restarts has happened then the library is loaded in a few seconds.
There are so many posts on this both here and the Apple support site - plus bug reports submitted - its surprising that Apple has not even acknowledged the issue let a alone provided a fix.

Gotcha. The thread title is a bit misleading. I am experiencing the same problems. An iTunes restart or rebooting the Apple TV seem to take care of the issue for me as well. Hopefully Apple will get this sorted out quickly.

[xs6615]

Originally Posted by sers

I think I may have fixed my Homesharing problem. I have a wall mounted plasma tv and my Apple tv was mounted on the wall right behind it. After trying almost very suggested solution on this site and the Apple forums, I thought that maybe something was interfering with the wifi signal. I read in the apple tv owners manual that nothing should be placed on top of the apple tv as it might interfere with the wifi signal. The top of my apple tv was velcroed to the wall and faced the back of my tv. Suspecting that the back of my tv was interfering with my apple tv receiving a consistent wifi signal, I decided to velcroe my apple tv to the back of my tv, but with the top facing outwards away from the tv. To my amazement, homesharing now works without cutting out. I watched a whole movie without it cutting out to the home screen.

I'm still not 100% sure that this solved the problem as I never had any problems with iTunes, YouTube or Netflix movies before. I'll do more testing this week, but I've never been able to stream a whole movie without it cutting out.

I just thought I'd share my experience with you all. Check to see if anything might be interfering with your apple TV receiving a consistent wifi signal. This might be a problem for some people.

I have the same issue aTV2 and aTV3, but via direct Ethernet. Home Sharing reset on aTV does not help either only an iTunes restart.

Sorry, but separate question about the above statement. If you velcro the aTV to your TV, presumably behind the TV, how does the line of sight remote work?

[whooleytoo]

Originally Posted by murdoc158

Is everyone talking about an actual connection DROP or unable to connect all together? I haven't had a single drop while streaming from my server to my Apple TV3. I HAVE had issues connection to the iTunes shared library though. Disconnecting power on the Apple TV3 and restarting iTunes seems to fix that issue for me. Once connected to the library, it's 100% solid.

How are most of you connecting? I've got my Apple TV3 hookup up via Ethernet to my gigabit LAN with Cat6 throughout the house. The server has dual gigabit Ethernet ports (but only using 1 ATM). If connected via wifi it could be any number of factors. If feasible, head to monoprice.com and pick up a run of Cat6 cable for cheap and test a wired connection. Copying a 4GB movie over my hardwired network to my Macbook Pro will take less than a minute. If I'm using wireless N, it takes almost 5 minutes.

I think part of the confusion is, there are multiple problems (or at least, multiple symptoms).

With my ATV2, I'd be home-streaming (usually a movie, sometimes music) and playback would stop, and the ATV2 would have dropped off the network. This occurred on Ethernet & Wifi, and only resetting the ATV2 would get it connecting again. Replacing it (under warranty) was the only option.

I haven't seen disconnects like that with the new ATV2, but I'm starting to see occasional "Error occurred loading this content" in the middle of playing songs. Annoying, but at least I don't have to reset iTunes or the ATV2.

So it seems like there are several different issues, and several different solutions. It is a little disappointing, given the ATV is such a limited functionality device, you'd hope it should be pretty easy to test, and reliable.

[rayward]

Originally Posted by xs6615

Sorry, but separate question about the above statement. If you velcro the aTV to your TV, presumably behind the TV, how does the line of sight remote work?

I have done this and it works surprisingly well. As long as the remote is pointed roughly at the TV, the ATV picks up the signal.

FWIW, the TV is question is wall mounted in a corner.

[jnurthen]

I was having an issue with my AppleTV2 losing home sharing and resolved my issue. This may help others who are in the same scenario

I discovered that simply having the VirtualBox host-only network adapter enabled on my windows PC caused home sharing to disconnect frequently and require me to restart iTunes in order to restore home sharing to my appleTV.

Disabling the VirtualBox network adapter resolved this issue (of course I can no longer use virtualBox without restoring this).

If you have any virtualization software on your iTunes machine then it is probably worth disabling the networking portion of it to see if that resolves your AppleTV issue.

[grivera]

Same problem here.

I have a 2011 iMac sharing our iTunes library to all our Apple TVs, iPads, and iPhones. I always keep my MacOSX Lion and iTunes software up-to-date. But unfortunately it seems that after a recent iTunes/MacOSX software update (not sure which) a new problem/bug was introduced.

After an idle period of several hours, the iTunes library will no longer service sharing requests from our other idevices. When trying to connect all we see is the spinning busy circle on all devices. I have to then manually restart iTunes on our iMac in order to restore normal sharing functionality, and then everything works great without any problems; no sudden disconnects, etc. But after several hours go by without any iMac or sharing activity, the same problem appears again.

Very frustrating.

FYI. Our iMac is configured to never sleep. No screensaver either. Only the display is configured to sleep after 15 minutes. Never had this problem until very recently.

*** I can't imagine any external firewall, network, router, or other factors that would contribute to a problem that resolves itself by simply restarting iTunes. Seems like a new bug in recent updates of MacOSX or iTunes.

Thoughts?

[Obioban]

Any word on if the latest version of iTunes, that came out right after WWDC, addressed this?

[larry k.]

Originally Posted by Obioban

Any word on if the latest version of iTunes, that came out right after WWDC, addressed this?

I still have this problem after updating to iTunes 10.6.3. It happens when sharing from my 2011 mini server on Lion and Mountain Lion and when sharing from my Windows 7 computer.

Grivera perfectly described what I'm going through as well.

[duncyboy]

Originally Posted by larry k.

I still have this problem after updating to iTunes 10.6.3. Grivera perfectly described what I'm going through as well.

Seconded. I'm doing a full clean install of Lion this weekend (for reasons other than this) so it'll be interesting to see if it clears this up as well.

[CylonGlitch]

Sadly I'm now in the same boat as everyone else. After updating my server and AppleTV's now I get disconnected from home sharing after inactivity for a while. Not sure what's going on or how to fix it. I think it has something to do with configuration of the server but I can't be sure of that.

Anyone have any ideas? I tried setting every device on the network to fixed IP addresses with DHCP renewing every 365 days. Still no luck.

[duncyboy]

Originally Posted by CylonGlitch

Sadly I'm now in the same boat as everyone else. After updating my server and AppleTV's now I get disconnected from home sharing after inactivity for a while.

No the problems still exists for me. Did a completely clean install of Lion and iTunes over the weekend and I still need to restart Home Sharing to get it working. It's DEFINITELY a problem with iTunes, though.

All I can do is urge everyone with this problem to send a bug report to Apple.