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ATV 4K ios13 won’t setup Home Sharing Photos

IPadNParadise

IPadNParadise

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 12, 2013
517
165
I have the most current updates on all my devices. I have set my photos up as an ATV screensaver for years, know the steps, i,e. Using iTunes, etc. I have a 4th gen ATV and it sets up fine and my photos begin to display at the appropriate time. I go thru the same steps with my ATV 4K, it lets me go thru all the steps and yet reverts back to aerial both in the settings and the display. Any ideas how to fix?
 
Same thing here (4K as well), worked great before new Apple TV OS so unsure to what degree it is Catalina. I was also wondering if it was a modem firmware update because one was recently applied. I am unsure if something is blocking the ports that home sharing uses or if there going on with an actual sharing setting on the Mac.
 
Thank you for your reply. I have not updated my MBP to Catalina yet, what with reading all the issues with it. And the thing is, homesharing the photos works perfectly as my Screensaver on my second TV connected to the same internet as the tv setup that keeps reverting to Aerial as a screensaver. Was sure hoping for a suggested fix!
 
I have the exact same issue with an iCloud Photos album that I use as a screensaver on my ATV 4K. Before tvOS 13 it worked fine, now it reverts back to the aerial videos all the time... it’s clearly a bug that I hope will be fixed in the next tvOS software update.
 
I called Apple Support and they put the blame squarely on our router saying it is blocking the ports. I asked them how they could be sure as they know nothing about the router or if I am blocking any ports etc. Typically I have pretty good luck with AppleCare, but this time I felt the person just didn't know what they were talking about. I am with Sperious and think its Apple software. I am going to wait for updates to Catalina and Apple TVOS. It's annoying but hardly the end of the world.
 
They claimed a firmware update by the cable company was most likely the culprit. ;-) I stopped listening at that point.
 
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And again, same setup, same router with second tv that setting my photos as my screensaver works fine. Newer 4K tv setup reverts to Aerial. The only difference between the 2 (both Sony’s) Is the setup that doesn’t allow homesharing with my photos as screensaver has a 4k ATV. The setup that works fine is an ATV 4.
 
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I was not able to get the 4K AppleTV to work with Home Sharing. I ordered two Amazon FireStick 4Ks for $24.99 each and I am moving along on this one. Our son is streaming photos using a 4K FireStick and it works great. I prefer the user interface on the AppleTV. But it's not worth messing with it any longer. I did make one more last ditch effort and called to Apple but got nowhere. It's not on their end. Hope those that are waiting can get it working for them.
 
I am just choosing to live with it! It’s a small task the ATV (4K) performs in the whole scheme of how much I like it. Not switching devices at this point. I came here thinking I was doing something wrong but if others are experiencing it, yeah I’ll just deal with it, thanks to all who responded!
 
IPadNParadise said:
I am just choosing to live with it! It’s a small task the ATV (4K) performs in the whole scheme of how much I like it. Not switching devices at this point. I came here thinking I was doing something wrong but if others are experiencing it, yeah I’ll just deal with it, thanks to all who responded!
Click to expand...

I hear you. I liked staying within the Ecosystem but we have a new and first grandchild and really liked the photostream screen saver option. We got the FireSticks today and its up and running. We're back in business.

I was also under the impression it had to be something that I did or a setting I missed. Hope my chiming in was helpful.

Best
 
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My 4k ATV refuses to connect to my library through home share. I have 4 other ATV3's in the house that never have an issue. When I first bought the 4k, it worked fine then it began to lose connection. I would eventually restart it and then it would connect to the library. The last few weeks it won't connect at all even with a reboot. Only thing left to try is to reset it and start over I guess.

Homesharing performance seems to get worse and worse. With all of the devices in our household, home sharing has been a huge selling point for us. However, it seems the larger my music and movie library gets, the more issues we have. I'm sure Apple could care less because they'd rather have people pay for Apple Music and Apple TV instead of ripping their own media.

Beginning to think about moving on from the Apple ecosystem.
 
Ugh, I just noticed that the recent aTV update broken my Photo screensaver, which uses Home Sharing. Yet another feature Apple is breaking without much care, starting to get very frustrated with Apple. I have the most recent non-4k aTV.

Home Sharing in iTunes (still using Mojave) shows my photos library but every album says it has zero images. It appears they have removed the ability for Home Sharing to work with referenced libraries, the few managed photos I have show up. For me, the only successful workaround was to put the screensaver photos I want in a folder, and point home sharing at that one folder, which wastes disk space on duplicates.

UPDATE: So I restarted my aTV to see what would happen, and just like everyone else it reverted to Aerial, however it isn't affected by going to sleep. So I guess every time it restarts I have to setup the screensaver again. This is very annoying.
 
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It's really is a small feature but for all of us it was something we really really liked. I sold our AppleTV's so I am not sure if auto updates can be turned off, something I would do in the future if we still had ours. (I'm not sure how much of the issue was Catalina and how much was the TVOS update, but other apps I used to access my Mac are now also broken)

I have always grabbed the latest OS updates for all platforms. I have been using Macs since 1984 and I know just how buggy things can get. By 10.2 things were very good, I always enjoyed the new features much more than the occasional things that were broken by the update. I have to say this round of OS updates was pretty rough. I am having a lot of issues and not thrilled with some of the changes. For the first time in a decade I have turned off auto-updates across all of our devices.

We are using FireStick 4K's now and they aren't perfect either. But at a fraction the price and with features that are working it was the right call for us. I sold the Apple TV's for $96 each and the FireSticks were $24.99 each... we went out to a really nice dinner last night and we are streaming our photos again.

I really loved the AppleTV interface but love to see the screensaver slide show of our grandson far more.

I think Apple as a whole cares, more of their employees on average care and try to do a really good job. On average my interactions with them are really great, especially in comparison to others. I'm disappointed for sure, but I I still like it here. :)
 
I’ve been trying to resolve this for weeks. The family pics on our TV were very much part of our home and reasoning for staying with the Apple ecosystem. Now that I see it’s not just us, that it’s broken, it opens that box (Pandora’s!) as to why we do t finally break free from paying the Apple tax and accept the alternatives are close enough if not better these days. Where Apple once excelled, they now barely make it to a sub par standard. Impressive and must have, to unimpressive and can live without. For me, thus is another nail in the coffin .... a very bruised apple indeed 😔
 
Scampi1965 said:
I’ve been trying to resolve this for weeks. The family pics on our TV were very much part of our home and reasoning for staying with the Apple ecosystem. Now that I see it’s not just us, that it’s broken, it opens that box (Pandora’s!) as to why we do t finally break free from paying the Apple tax and accept the alternatives are close enough if not better these days. Where Apple once excelled, they now barely make it to a sub par standard. Impressive and must have, to unimpressive and can live without. For me, thus is another nail in the coffin .... a very bruised apple indeed 😔
Click to expand...

Hey Scampi1965.

We actually just had a terrible experience with Apple Music. Specifically getting it to work with our existing library. We were getting error messages and were bounced around various Apple support departments. After three days of trying we threw in the towel and cancelled moving to Prime Music. It's works without a single issue. We also could not get Safari to remember passwords since the Catalina upgrade. We changed browsers and have no issues with the new browser (edge). Most recently our HomePod started losing its connection to our Music library and after hours of work I listed it on eBay and sold it just as we did the Apple TV's. I try to stay on topic and this thread was specifically about Apple TV's inability to play slideshows using home sharing. But I think what a some are saying is we can now go elsewhere for far less money and find things that work much better. Not always the case, but it more likely than it has been in the past. I go where I can to get things that work and cost a reasonable amount of money. I do like the MacOS but Catalina has been really awful. I also prefer iOS but iOS 13 was also awful. I am not going to move to Windows 10 or Android any time soon, but as for Apple assorcies or other hardware products... we're done with those, tried them and gave up on them. Services, I will continue to use iCloud but everything else is gone. Sadly I can tell you we don't miss any of them. Since I help a lot of friends and family with their Apple products I know our issues are not isolated. Candid support people and store employees (genius staff) have told us it was a rough roll out and there are lingering issues. You are not imagining things. Hope this came off as constructive.
L.
 
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