Apple TV Won't play content

[dpriest]

I have a huge movie library on a NAS drive that I imported into iTunes on my Mac. When iTunes is open and I try to load the movie from the ATV, I get the message “An error occurred loading this content. Try again later” error?

When I go into iTunes, right click on the movie and select Movie Info, this corrects it. The problem is that when I close iTunes and the ATV, reopen everything, the same problem happens.

This ONLY HAPPENS WITH iTunes ON MY MAC. I had my movies in iTunes on my PC for years and never had this problem. I just manually added all the movies in iTunes on my Mac and this problem happens. When I close my Mac, open iTunes on my PC the Apple TV has no problem loading content with no error.

Any idea why this keeps happening?

 

[bruinsrme]

ive been getting this error with the Seinfeld series.

 

[dpriest]

ive been getting this error with the Seinfeld series.

Mac or PC. This never happened with my PC

 

[bruinsrme]

B

Mac or PC. This never happened with my PC

boot camp pc is fine, Mac side has been not right.
The same error pops up on the iPad.
I will say it seems to be a file issue.
The same episodes wouldn’t play on the ATV, Mac or iPad.
Windows they worked fine.
I’ve had more issues with the iPad playing episodes.

I currently have 73 movies in the iTunes library. The apple devices are not listing all of them.

 

[dpriest]

WTF Apple? Aren't Apple products suppose to work well together and better than mixed with a PC? I don't get it.

 

[priitv8]

WTF Apple? Aren't Apple products suppose to work well together and better than mixed with a PC? I don't get it.

Check your iTunes settings! Vital things are:

iTunes folder location shall point to your iTunes Media folder on your network mount point.
Pay attention, if your iTunes launches before network share gets mounted, it will fall back to it's default location in user's Music folder!
So timing is critical, if you want to script or automate the launch.
PS this is also one of the reasons why I switched back from NAS to DAS. Much less trouble and better performance!

 

[dpriest]

I don't like iTunes to organize my folder and put media in the media folder and have never had to on the PC side. Again, iTunes on my PC performs flawlessly. This is one of few benefits of a PC over a Mac but in the end I love my Mac so I'm looking to phase out my PC but now this... Are you saying the Mac behaves differently with iTunes and requires different settings?

 

[bruinsrme]

WTF Apple? Aren't Apple products suppose to work well together and better than mixed with a PC? I don't get it.

This started less that two weeks ago.

On my iPP, 11.2.x betas introduced this issue.
On my MBP, which I don’t update frequently, the last iTunes update introduced the feature.

The error message has occurred on the MBP, 12.9 iPP, 10.5 iPP and ATV 4K.

PC side of boot camp has no issues

 

[dpriest]

Another thing is that when the Apple TV displays the Error occurred message, it changes the file in iTunes where sometimes it is removed and many times the cover art doesn't display. Not sure if this helps in terms of what it's doing and a possible solution.

 

[priitv8]

Are you saying the Mac behaves differently with iTunes and requires different settings?

Not really. I never used a PC for iTunes library management and serving. I just know from my experience, that the library location needs to point to actual place the root of your media is.
You need to make sure your NAS share is mounted before you launch iTunes.
IMHO iTunes does a very good job of keeping media files organised and under the single tree.
I do not want to mess with the files, I let iTunes do it. Hence I have both checkmarks ticked.
PS it also allows me to take advantage of the folder Automatically Add to iTunes that iTunes monitors.
I just throw anything I want in there and iTunes, as a good librarian, takes care of all the rest.
This, indeed assumes your metadata has been set, before throwing files in there.
Works like a charm

 

[dpriest]

I figured out the solution to my problem. I hate to say it but nobody in this thread found the solution. Here is what I found: Although my Synology NAS was mapped on my Mac, I needed to have it automatically mount on startup of my Mac, so I located my network drive in finder and dragged & dropped my mounted network drive into the login items list. Problem solved and everything in my iTunes library works so does everything on the ATV.

 

[priitv8]

I hate to say it but nobody in this thread found the solution.

Didnt't I say just that?

You need to make sure your NAS share is mounted before you launch iTunes.

I created myself an Automator script for that, to make sure, that the NAS mounts before iTunes gets started.
Via Login Items I was not sure about the exact sequencing of the events. Actually, Automator even took care of terminating the iTunes app, should it find it already running.
I added my Automator script to login items.