2011 MacBook Pros Experiencing Issues With Home Sharing in iTunes

[bbeagle]

Could someone explain to me what the point of home sharing is?

It depends what type of person you are.

Camp 1:
For someone always on the go, it doesn't make a lot of sense. You'd rather sync your devices together so that you can watch whatever you want wherever you want on whatever device you have at that time.

Camp 2:
For someone always at home, you don't want to waste the time syncing everything. Put everything on your main computer (where storage is not an issue), and watch it anywhere you want (upstairs TV, downstairs TV, outside on my iPad, or on my computer or TV in my den).

I'm in the 2nd camp, and this is exactly what I've been dreaming of - and the Apple world with AppleTVs and airplay is amazing!

Plus, it's now so much easier to watch something I find on the internet to my TV. I don't want the hassle of connecting my laptop to the TV.

 

[ladeer]

it didn't work initially when i was setting it up, but i fixed it by removing home sharing logged in account on both devices then reentered them. it has worked for me fine ever since.

 

[newdeal]

Questions as I don't quite get how Home Sharing is new/useful.

1. Is Home Sharing proving a way to transfer iTunes DRM files between computers/ipods/pads on the same iTunes account? Is this new?

2. How is this different from streaming shared playlists in iTunes?

3. Is Home Sharing a separate App or part of iTunes?

It's part of iTunes and allows you to wirelessly play any content in your in tunes library on your iOS device without having to transfer it over. Not sure if this works on 3G or if you have to be on the same network as I have a wifi iPad

 

[longofest]

This isn't limited to Mac Book Pros - I have an iMac at home - when i updated to the new iTunes and update for Apple TV (second generation) - NONE of my movies have sound. The night before they played perfectly.

Agreed. I have only a portion of my library working with my iPad, but all of my library works with my iPhone4. I think Apple has serious bugs with homesharing in iTunes 10.2.x, and that this isn't a hardware-related issue.

 

[supmango]

I had some issues with it a few months back between my iMac and AppleTV. I had to modify a few settings on my router and it works fine now.

 

[kycophpd]

Well now I feel a little bad for giving the wife crap telling her she was loosing her mind when she told me she was having problems with Apple TV2 home sharing from the 2011 Macbook Pro.

However, being the proud husband I am, I am thankful she does not know of Macrumors and will never find out it's not her fault like I have told her it is!!

The joys of marriage!

 

[bbeagle]

Questions as I don't quite get how Home Sharing is new/useful.

1. Is Home Sharing proving a way to transfer iTunes DRM files between computers/ipods/pads on the same iTunes account? Is this new?

No. Not transferring - STREAMING.
I can store hundreds of movies at home in my iTunes - but I can't store all those on my iPad at once. But, with AirPlay, I can now watch any movie in my collection at any time instantly (without choosing something else to delete to make room for the new movie, then plugging my iPad into my computer, and waiting for it to copy to my iPad).

2. How is this different from streaming shared playlists in iTunes?

Don't know - never done that before. Sounds like a similar idea.

3. Is Home Sharing a separate App or part of iTunes?

Home Sharing is a 'feature' that's included in iDevices, much like Cut-and-paste is a 'feature'. For your computer, iTunes includes this 'feature'.

 

[Ingot]

Well now I feel a little bad for giving the wife crap telling her she was loosing her mind when she told me she was having problems with Apple TV2 home sharing from the 2011 Macbook Pro.

However, being the proud husband I am, I am thankful she does not know of Macrumors and will never find out it's not her fault like I have told her it is!!

The joys of marriage!

You are evil (I do it too).

 

[SB27]

iTunes 10 and Apple TV

It is not limited to MacBook Pro's. Something happened when Apple released iTunes 10 that does not allow it to play nice with Apple TV. There are hundreds of threads across the net now discussing the angst that users have tried to go through to reconnect their Apple TV to stream or transfer content from iTunes 10 WITHOUT having to resort to a full factory reset on the Apple TV. In some cases, people have lost all their music, photos and movies. Not much fun.

Not sure what happened to Apple's QA Group, but they blew it on this one and need to revisit what they changed that cause so much disruption.

Some people have been able to just logout of their iTunes account and/or disconnect their Apple TV from its computer tether and then re-log and be back in....others have not been so lucky.

It will be interesting to see if there is one or both of a iTunes update and/or Apple TV software update that addresses these issues. Just do it, Apple.

My issues have been unrelenting on a 2010 MacMini in trying to connect to a Gen 1 Apple TV.

Good luck.

 

[bbeagle]

It's part of iTunes and allows you to wirelessly play any content in your in tunes library on your iOS device without having to transfer it over. Not sure if this works on 3G or if you have to be on the same network as I have a wifi iPad

You must be part of the same wifi network to use AirPlay.

It works on 3G iPads, just not over 3G, but through the wifi radios also built in to 3G iPads.

 

[celticshade]

Home Sharing is Fragile

I have a Mac Pro, same issue, seems it started after the 10.2.1 update.

If you restart iTunes on the machine sharing the library, then the AppleTV seems to refresh the list, and can stream again.

 

[Nermal]

It would frequently drop out on my 2006 MBP, but this 2011 model hasn't dropped once.

 

[erinsarah]

Questions as I don't quite get how Home Sharing is new/useful.

1. Is Home Sharing proving a way to transfer iTunes DRM files between computers/ipods/pads on the same iTunes account? Is this new?

2. How is this different from streaming shared playlists in iTunes?

3. Is Home Sharing a separate App or part of iTunes?

Answers:

1. Yes and sorta-yes. You can use it to transfer tunes and video files (and apps) from one computer to another, but also use it for streaming throughout the house. For example I have one computer with my library on it. I can play tunes on my other computer or on my apple TV streaming from the computer. that's old news. Slightly less old news is that I can user the iPhone "Remote" app to control said computer and select the tunes to play on my apple TV. And the newest news (as of last week) is I can now listen to tunes from my laptop on my iPhone or iPad without copying them to the mobile device. This last feature was sort of the final piece missing in the chain. One of my favorite things to do is browse youtube on my phone and, with one button, make the video play on the AppleTV via airplay.

2. the fact that you can do it with other devices besides macs.

3. Not an app, but tech built into various apps and desktop functions

So some of this tech existed before and has just been repackaged with a new name, and some of it is new. The only thing left that I can think of is for 3rd party apps to enable airplay so that the TV becomes the display and the iPhone/iPad becomes the remote. Widescreen angry birds anyone? Also note that Airplay is a standard, of sorts that 3rd party companies are building into their gadgets such as their receivers.

And to the dude with the PC network that has home sharing working perfectly...my cat's breath smells like cat food. This statement and yours have equal bearing on this conversation.

 

[NeverhadaPC]

No. Not transferring - STREAMING.
I can store hundreds of movies at home in my iTunes - but I can't store all those on my iPad at once. But, with AirPlay, I can now watch any movie in my collection at any time instantly (without choosing something else to delete to make room for the new movie, then plugging my iPad into my computer, and waiting for it to copy to my iPad).

Don't know - never done that before. Sounds like a similar idea.
.

I see. So Home Sharing is merely enabling the sharing of playlists/watchlists between computers and hand/arm-helds. The computer-to-computer sharing has been around for ages (iTunes Preferences --> Sharing)

 

[bluetick]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; ru-ru) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8F190)

Some fancy logic out here!

So, next time someone fails to log on Facebook on his 2011 MBP, no doubt we'll see a dozen of headlines about new Apple notebooks being incompatible with social networks. Statistics is for idiots, right?

 

[SB27]

re: Sharing and Playlists

On a Gen 1 Apple TV linked to a 2010 Mac Mini, I can only see a playlist entitled "Recently added" and it only has 6 of the ten items I "recently added". It is the only playlist I can see on the Apple TV. Why do other playlists like "My Top Rated" not show up (undisplayed) under File Sharing in the Apple TV?

Thanks.

SB27 (iTunes Sharing Noob Deluxe)

 

[franswa za]

boyz und girlz, keep your panties dry, it will be sorted, unlike iphoto in ilife'11

 

[mcmlxix]

I updated iTunes (2010 MBP) and iOS (iPhone 4) and the first thing I did was try out Home Sharing.

I guess I wasn’t impressed. It was slow to load a video from my Mac to my phone; there was stuttering; and there was pausing several times which required me to tap the play button again. And forget about jumping to halfway into the video.

I can only deduce that the issue is with Home Sharing, because watching any web based video content on either device is much smoother and seems to depend only on the speed of the site providing the content.

What was [mildly] embarrassing was that I was demoing it for a friend. But this doesn’t compare in the embarrassment when I was using my 1st generation Apple TV for a party, and repeatedly got the pink screen of death, which I’m guessing had more to do with the OS than the Home Sharing. And isn’t it great ATV requires unplugging to reboot.

 

[jt70]

Solution

I have a 2011 Macbook Pro 13", new AppleTV, iPhone 4, & iPad and all were having issues connecting to the new Macbook Pro. Some posted solutions on TUAW that worked for me.....turn off and on Home Sharing on everything and restart them all as well. All are working for me now....good luck.

 

[WiiDSmoker]

Works fine on my Windows machine. Maybe you should move to an OS that works?

 

[tray3]

Where's the quality control Apple?

Looks like Apple is dropping the ball more and more on the quality control...

 

[Rend It]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)

I have a 2011 13" i5 MBP. Can't speak for streaming FROM MBP, but I've been streaming TO it everyday for a week from my iMac without any problems. Of course, that's only music, haven't tried video.

 

[torbjoern]

I just don't understand why Home Sharing on my MBA doesn't let playcount be updated... and YES, I have checked in the iTunes prefs that so be done. But this is obviously a software related issue, and shouldn't be specific for MB/-P/-A.

 

[brianbauer04]

Works fine on my Windows machine. Maybe you should move to an OS that works?

My Home Sharing "base station" is a 7-year old Dell running XP SP3. I had to reboot it last night to get my movies back on my ATV2 - but I'm pretty sure that's because of an MS "critical" security update that autoinstalled without me knowing.

My 2011 Macbook Pro shows up on the ATV2 menu just fine - but I have no media on it so I don't know if I am affected or not. I can stream to the MBP from the Windows machine just fine.


So... I bet this is a small bug that is being triggered by a specific network setup. It doesn't appear to be affecting everyone.

 

[Eidorian]

Sharing works here but the copy on Windows 7 x64 is having a few redraw issues when coming back to the desktop from games.