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Homesharing, suddenly disconnects all the time

iphone1105

iphone1105

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Oct 8, 2009
2,106
317
The latest iTunes update has completely wrecked homesharing for me with Apple TV 2 and iTunes. It disconnects every 5 minutes into a movie. Is this happening to anyone else? Is there some troubleshooting anyone can point me too? Besides a reboot...thanks!
 
Mine does not disconnect all the time but with a AppleTV3 and a latest iTunes I now have to restart iTunes before using the AppleTV as the Home Sharing disconnects after a period of inactivity. During a movie it is OK.
 
I have the same problem with the new Apple TV.
It happens irregularly. Sometimes I can watch a TV Show without interruption and sometimes I have to restart iTunes 2 - 3 times during a TV Show.
It's so annoying to have to go to the mac in the other room just to restart iTunes.
 
Sorry, I can't help but I can back you up. Mine also drops off Home Sharing occasionally - intermittently and rarely but since applying the update to an Apple TV 2 I've have several TV episodes interrupted by losing connection to iTunes.

As above, the solution being to restart iTunes and resume watching where I left off.
 
Glad to see this new update has wrecked it for some. Up until the new updates everything was great. The lady and I were trying to watch "The Ides of March" and for the first 45min of the movie, homesharing disconnected 4 times, i wanted to throw the ATV out of the window!:p
 
Same for me too, I have the ATV3 and each time I go to use it it says please turn on home sharing in iTunes, but it is already turned on. So I have to click "turn off" and then click "turn on" again, then it works fine. I have not had any issues with it dropping connection during a movie though. Hurry up with an update Apple. Thanks.
 
Me too! This is so annoying! I have all but abandoned my ATV2 in favor of watching Netflix on Roku2 because of this issue. I hope they fix it soon.
 
Uninstall and reinstall iTunes. If you have Win7, make sure to completely uninstall Bonjour, and confirm you are installing the correct version of iTunes (32 or 64 bit).

Apple really needs to wipe the previous install instead of merely patching the code, because this Homesharing issue crops up every time they issue an "update."

Let me know if this fixed it for you. If not, it is probably time to upgrade your router or check the port settings.
 
I'm also experiencing the same issue. I've tried absolutely everything to fix this, but the problem keeps reappearing. The Apple support forums are full of people complaining about this. I hope Apple fixes this soon with an update because I really miss this feature.
 
Home sharing disconnects

Here is what should be your simple fix, especially if when you reboot the router it works again.

Either in your router settings assign the apple TV's a fixed ip address. If you are not familiar with that process then another fix is in the apple TV settings. In the net work settings, select manual set up. Change the digits after the last . in the ip address to a higher number. For example instead of .3 make it .35.

What is happening is this, as other mobil devises are connecting to your wifi as they enter your range the router assigns them an ip address automatically. Normally it uses the lowest available number. If the ATV is asleep the number it last used is available and can get assigned to your iPad or what ever. When you wake the ATV it either can't connect or connects for a short time as the router tries to fix the conflict.

I run two ATV's plus iPad,iPhone iTouch and none ever drop the connection once I assigned them the ip addresses. Noticed the problem when the two kids would come over and connect to our WiFi, that is when the home sharing would drop. Their mobils were grabbing the sleeping ATV ip's. Once assigned to the devise by the router it holds them for their devises for about 24 hours. That is why it seems so intermittent and is making you crazy!!
 
odd mine has been fine since the 10.6.1 update from dropping home sharing i had itunes just close itself and not give and error for it closing like a crash report and when it would crash it would reset the counter on my shows if i watched 5 shows and then it would crash either all five would show up watched or only 1 u did not know i once had a whole series reset when that happened that was all on the 10.6 update
 
Penquin79 said:
Here is what should be your simple fix, especially if when you reboot the router it works again.

Either in your router settings assign the apple TV's a fixed ip address. If you are not familiar with that process then another fix is in the apple TV settings. In the net work settings, select manual set up. Change the digits after the last . in the ip address to a higher number. For example instead of .3 make it .35.

What is happening is this, as other mobil devises are connecting to your wifi as they enter your range the router assigns them an ip address automatically. Normally it uses the lowest available number. If the ATV is asleep the number it last used is available and can get assigned to your iPad or what ever. When you wake the ATV it either can't connect or connects for a short time as the router tries to fix the conflict.

I run two ATV's plus iPad,iPhone iTouch and none ever drop the connection once I assigned them the ip addresses. Noticed the problem when the two kids would come over and connect to our WiFi, that is when the home sharing would drop. Their mobils were grabbing the sleeping ATV ip's. Once assigned to the devise by the router it holds them for their devises for about 24 hours. That is why it seems so intermittent and is making you crazy!!
Click to expand...

I feel bad you typed all of this, because honestly my network and every other device(including ATV) i own is on a fixed IP, they never have issues, in fact everything on the ATV is fine, but not homesharing. In fact it's seems so specific that I can stream short TV epsiodes fine, but a 2hr movie, as of the last update, disconnects. I appreciate the advice, but this just seems to be a bug apple needs to address. Maybe your adivce will help others though with their networking issues, so kudos to you for helping and thanks! :D
 
It's a huge Pain to constantly have to go reboot itunes before use, I may just put my Mac Mini back and plex, at least its available when I want it.
 
When Home Sharing disconnects, do the other streaming services still work? (Youtube/Vimeo etc?). In my case, when Home Sharing drops, all networking stops.

I went through many 'fixes' (changing router, turning off DHCP, switching Wifi channel to ensure it's unique in my building) with only little improvement. The only thing that made a substantial improvement was switching from Wifi to Ethernet, but even then upgrading the iOS firmware made it unreliable again.

I eventually swapped my ATV (under warranty) and it's been far better since. I do have some errors, but I never get the issue where the ATV drops the network connection completely. Fingers crossed it stays this way.
 
I've noticed when I'm scrolling through my music on my AppleTV2 when I select Metallica I get kicked out of my music library and it says to turn home sharing on (even though it already was!). When I go to my iMac, iTunes crashed. I can play anything from Metallica on my iMac through iTunes but on AppleTV2 it kicks me out and crashes my iTunes.
 
Mine don't drop in the middle of movies or music, but they do not connect to home sharing after waking from sleep mode. It happens on both my Apple TV2 on wi-fi and Apple TV3 on Ethernet. I also tried to put them both to never sleep but still have issues.
 
Possible solution

I had both these problems:

1. Media stops playing on ATV and I have to restart iTunes
2. Media stops playing on ATV because home sharing disconnects.

Problem 1 stopped happening when I moved iTunes from my Windows workstation to a MacMini which is now acting as our main TV in the living room.

Problem 2 went away when I stopped using my ISP provided (Telstra) wireless router, and started using the Time Machine for wireless. It turns out that the Telstra router was limited to only support 5 devices at a time, and once new ones connected, the older connections simply stopped working. When I launched an app on my iPhone, the ATV would stop working until reconnected (or restarted), and then if I started watching a Movie, my iPhone browser would freeze. All fixed by shutting down the Telstra router and using the TimeMachine Airport.
 
Doing some tests and find out that home sharing doesn't quit when streaming music, only movies. I wonder if there's something limiting the amount of data thats being streamed through my network. Not sure why. Also, the other day I deleted and reinstalled iTunes and home sharing worked great - was able to stream a whole movie, but the next day it would disconnect.

This is driving me nuts.
 
sers said:
Doing some tests and find out that home sharing doesn't quit when streaming music, only movies. I wonder if there's something limiting the amount of data thats being streamed through my network. Not sure why. Also, the other day I deleted and reinstalled iTunes and home sharing worked great - was able to stream a whole movie, but the next day it would disconnect.

This is driving me nuts.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if it were related to the data usage - i.e. the connection drops more when under heavy load. Thus, it drops more when playing movies than when playing music.

I was meddling with my router settings, and turned on 40MHz mode on my router; and not only am I getting much faster loading, but my ATV playback seems more reliable as well.

I can now play a 1080p video on my ATV2 (obviously, downscaled) and fast-forward through it without it disconnecting almost immediately. However, if I keep fast-fowarding, the video stops buffering/loading. Then when the play position reaches the end of the buffered video, I often get a disconnect.
 
So I put a good two hours into trying to fix it this weekend. After everything I did, hard wiring the ATV to my modem seemed to get me the best results. Even though I have a great wifi modem, it just seems hard wiring it solved the issue for now. Haven't had one drop since it has been hard wired. Watched most of season 3 of Modern Family, and two films Girl w/ The Dragon Tattoo and MI: Ghost Protocol. Both films and about 6 episodes of Modern Family all played fine with no drops.

So fingers crossed this helped. However I'd like to go back to wireless, and it being flawless like it used to be. I hate wires!
 
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