Apple TV Photos Home Sharing Problems

[Deadeyeshark]

My set up is five ATV3, Time Capsule and Three Airport Extremes.

I have come across an issue where Photos not longer updates automatically when you add new photos to the library (as it did with Aperture). The simple work around with this was to turn home sharing off, quit iTunes, go back into iTunes and enable Home Sharing again.

This stopped working after I installed El Capitain, in fact I was unable to access Photos at all once I'd quit home sharing. If anyone else is having this issue, the work around I found was before turning off Home Sharing, untick Photos from photo's to share and click on apply. Then turn off home sharing and quit iTunes. Go back in restart home sharing and tick the Photos box again and hey presto your photos should update and all is well in the world. Would be ideal if somewhere down the line Photos could update automatically on the ATV as it did with Aperture.

I would be interested to know if anyone else has had this issue.

 

[Apple TV gen 1 fan]

Hi Deadeye,

Not sure if this info helps but this might give you some insight into whats going on with photos in the newer Apple TV's screensaver feature.

I am totally let down by my new Apple TV 4th gen. Turns out that Apple TV 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation only cache about 100 photos from your iTunes photo home sharing library and then only randomizes those few photos for screensaver and slideshow...duplicates constantly. This problem bug is super annoyingly oblivious in Floating screensaver mode. 1st generation Apple TV is the only unit that truly randomizes all your iTunes home sharing photos because it synced all photo's from your iTunes file to its hard drive for use with screensaver.

This is particularly insanely stupid given the new 4th gen Apple TV has a solid state drive with 32gb or 64gb of space. An easy software modification could allow the entire home sharing iTunes photo library file to be loaded onto the 4th gen's hard drive and the screensaver program could then truly utilize and randomize all your home photos...just like the 1st gen Apple TV (which has the world's all time best screensaver)...but alas, per Apple Customer Care, home sharing of my photos for the screensaver is limited to about 100 photo's total per screensaver session as this is all the unit pulls into its cache from my iTunes home computer library photo file.

I hope some engineer at Apple will see how stupid the new screensaver operates with home sharing iTunes photo's. I only have about 2000 photos but I know some people have tens of thousands. This is the modern digital age where we all have tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of photos...how is Apple not allowing us to display them in the same awesome manner as the 1st gen Apple TV...I am truly baffled by this one.

Guess I'm returning my Apple TV 4th gen tomorrow (after I was told by Apple Customer Care before purchasing it that it would randomize and display all my home sharing photos in screensaver...wrong! Only about 100-150 per screensaver session).

Side Note: Apparently utilizing iCloud to access your photos for the Apple TV screensaver is having the same problem of highly limited number of photos being stored in cache and repeated constantly per another user although I have not tested this myself. The problem I am noting is specifically in regards to home network sharing of photos from a home computer with iTunes for use with the Apple TV 4th gen screensaver feature.

Any help or suggestions with work arounds and/or third party screensaver apps, etc would be greatly appreciated.

 

[JustSomeInfo]

I know I'm late but I wanted to post this in case anyone searches for info the way I did. Using a 4th gen ATV and whatever the current non-beta software release is, I did a test.

I created 200 images each with a number from 1 to 200.
I made these images the source for the screensaver.
I used the Classic effect (using dissolve) at 2 seconds.
I charted each number as it came up.

Results: It went through all 200 photos in a random order. No images were duplicated until it had first gone through all 200 photos.

Obviously I have no idea what is the highest number of photos it'll use, but I do know that it is at least 200. Which is a lot nicer than the previous high of 100.

Conclusion: I should probably find a better use of my time.

EDIT: Fixed a mistake.

 

[LiveM]

I've finally set up a Lightroom collection for my best family photos, which syncs to mobile including Apple TV. My next step will be to copy them over to Photos and I think its actually going to be fine even if it does limit itself to 100 photos at a time - I don't think the screen saver is actually intended as a proper slide show like Lightroom, rather a true screensaver with some customisation.

 

[JustSomeInfo]

I decided to do the test again (see two posts above) but with 400 images.

Sure enough, the screensaver cycled through all 400 images before it started to duplicate them. So we now know that the screensaver will use at least 400 images.