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Homesharing, suddenly disconnects all the time

to add more to the fire:

i was watching a movie from my itunes library on my mac mini to my atv3. i paused the movie. walked a way for a bit. My screen saver came on on my atv3..then it went to sleep...i think its set for 15min...and when i came back and turned it back on with the remote i couldnt connect again. i have all the other issues from people in this thread...all apple...ipads atv2 atv3 all cant connect until i restart itunes. Just adding that i literally paused a movie..walked away for 20 mins and lost connection
 
This is a network issue nothing to do with apple tv as far as a product goes. You have to make sure there are no conflicting IPs on the network. Make sure ports are open that need to be. Static the ATV and Comp with iTunes, ATV with higher ip address than pc, so pc 192.168.1.103 APTV 192.168.1.111 also make sure power is not shutting off connection in advanced power controls.
 
jroth21 said:
This is a network issue nothing to do with apple tv as far as a product goes. You have to make sure there are no conflicting IPs on the network. Make sure ports are open that need to be. Static the ATV and Comp with iTunes, ATV with higher ip address than pc, so pc 192.168.1.103 APTV 192.168.1.111 also make sure power is not shutting off connection in advanced power controls.
Click to expand...

Been through all of that. I have hard coded IP addresses and there is no conflicting addresses. There is much more too it than an IP issue.
 
jroth21 said:
This is a network issue nothing to do with apple tv as far as a product goes. You have to make sure there are no conflicting IPs on the network. Make sure ports are open that need to be. Static the ATV and Comp with iTunes, ATV with higher ip address than pc, so pc 192.168.1.103 APTV 192.168.1.111 also make sure power is not shutting off connection in advanced power controls.
Click to expand...

i think youll see that if you actually read through the post youll find that people have stated numerous times that they KNOW its not the ATV and that the KNOW its not the network...besides youre using windows IPs and most people here are having all mac issues...its itunes plain and simple
 
I have multiple machines on my network running iTunes. I wonder if it is possible of some contention. I should check the machines and see if there is any other iTunes with Home Sharing turned on.
 
So far 72 hours since I updated to Mountain Lion and it hasn't happened once. Prior to Mountain Lion at least once to twice per day!
 
CylonGlitch said:
I have multiple machines on my network running iTunes. I wonder if it is possible of some contention. I should check the machines and see if there is any other iTunes with Home Sharing turned on.
Click to expand...

I think youve done enough empirical debugging to know thats its clearly an itunes/all mac issue. My setup is as simple/new/apple as it gets:

newest airport extreme
2010 mac mini - itunes library on external drive
ipad 1
ipad 2
ipod 3g
atv2
atv3

brand new house...brand new cat 5e...wireless works perfect etc etc etc


every single device loses the itunes library daily/hourly/aftersleep etc...
 
whoiare said:
I think youve done enough empirical debugging to know thats its clearly an itunes/all mac issue. My setup is as simple/new/apple as it gets:

newest airport extreme
2010 mac mini - itunes library on external drive
ipad 1
ipad 2
ipod 3g
atv2
atv3

brand new house...brand new cat 5e...wireless works perfect etc etc etc


every single device loses the itunes library daily/hourly/aftersleep etc...
Click to expand...

Same here. My Airport Extreme is older, but running the latest soft/firmware, and my "hub" is a 2011 iMac i7 with the iTunes library on an external, firewire-connected drive. 2 of my 3 ATVs are connected via Cat 5e ethernet, and one is wireless.

Unless I restart iTunes immediately before trying to watch content, it will not connect to my ATVs. Every. Time.
 
rayward said:
Same here. My Airport Extreme is older, but running the latest soft/firmware, and my "hub" is a 2011 iMac i7 with the iTunes library on an external, firewire-connected drive. 2 of my 3 ATVs are connected via Cat 5e ethernet, and one is wireless.

Unless I restart iTunes immediately before trying to watch content, it will not connect to my ATVs. Every. Time.
Click to expand...

yep...its quite simply itunes
 
Hi folks - I finally got to the bottom of this after trawling apple's community discussions.

To sum up:

If you have an ATV3 on your network then make sure it's not wired. i.e wi-fi only

The ATV3 basically opens endless home shares when it's wired. When the open homeshare connections on the iTunes server exceeds 100 then iTunes will refuse to accept any more (hence the requirements to restart).

I've now had my ATV3 connecting wirelessly for a few days now and everything's been fine. I'll see if I can find the link to the discussion thread at some point.
 
Well, I had thought that Mountain Lion fixed the problem, but today it happened again. Restarted iTunes and all back to normal. Strange that it went almost 4 days without a problem. I do have a wired ATV3 on my network, so I'll switch it over to WiFi and see how it goes.
 
mroberts48 said:
Well, I had thought that Mountain Lion fixed the problem, but today it happened again. Restarted iTunes and all back to normal. Strange that it went almost 4 days without a problem. I do have a wired ATV3 on my network, so I'll switch it over to WiFi and see how it goes.
Click to expand...

According to the apple discussion boards, it's a combination of wired ATV3 and when they're sleeping. So theoretically you could also try just disabling sleep on your ATV3. I just decided to move my ATV3 to wifi and it's been fine since (touch wood)
 
Wavell said:
Hi folks - I finally got to the bottom of this after trawling apple's community discussions.

To sum up:

If you have an ATV3 on your network then make sure it's not wired. i.e wi-fi only

The ATV3 basically opens endless home shares when it's wired. When the open homeshare connections on the iTunes server exceeds 100 then iTunes will refuse to accept any more (hence the requirements to restart).

I've now had my ATV3 connecting wirelessly for a few days now and everything's been fine. I'll see if I can find the link to the discussion thread at some point.
Click to expand...

This is very interesting, I will probably try this in the next day or so. I did notice that most of the people complaining about this problem have at least one wired ATV3 . . . maybe the fundamental problem. Would be nice to be able to finally fix it.
 
CylonGlitch said:
This is very interesting, I will probably try this in the next day or so. I did notice that most of the people complaining about this problem have at least one wired ATV3 . . . maybe the fundamental problem. Would be nice to be able to finally fix it.
Click to expand...

Here's the link to the discussion :)

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3948888

at this point in time, it's about 14 pages - it's worthwhile reading it through from page 1 as you can then see the solution (and cause) being progressed.
 
My MBP and ATV3 are both wireless and I get dropouts daily. It has to be an issue in iTunes with home sharing.

I think until there is a definite solution I will just connect the MBP via HDMI and use remote app on my phone to control the content being played on the TV.

On a related topic, has anyone tried to play a video via another media player in ML and airplay it through your ATV3? Does this drop out? If not surely that points to iTunes being the issue?
 
I also had the same problem. I called apple support and they said it was most likely a bug of some sort that should be fixed with future updates.

Anyway, I was using a Logitech router. Recently acquired AirMac express and no longer experience that problem. Perfect connection every time. So I think home sharing just doesn't play nice with some routers
 
Mine did this a couple of months ago. I changed the apple tvs to 'never sleep' on all 4 apple tv's (in 3 different houses) and have not had an issue since. One is wired and the other 3 are wifi.

Good luck!
 
so far moving my atv3 to wireless has fixed my issue....did the fix last night and this morning homesharing worked instantly....also to note even though this isnt the correct thread...huluplus showed up on my JB atv2 after reboot...i still dont understand how thats possible without a software update
 
whoiare said:
so far moving my atv3 to wireless has fixed my issue....did the fix last night and this morning homesharing worked instantly....also to note even though this isnt the correct thread...huluplus showed up on my JB atv2 after reboot...i still dont understand how thats possible without a software update
Click to expand...

I suspect the huluplus icon and associated code has been part of the iOS build on apple TVs for some time. They've just enabled it somehow. I'm guessing your ATV "phoned home" at some point and then the "huluplus flag" within got enabled..
 
Wavell said:
I suspect the huluplus icon and associated code has been part of the iOS build on apple TVs for some time. They've just enabled it somehow. I'm guessing your ATV "phoned home" at some point and then the "huluplus flag" within got enabled..
Click to expand...



the enabled somehow part is what has me curious. The last time they added apps to the atv it was a software DL...now it just SHOWS up....and even more curious that it showed up on my jailbroken one as well. was it on a timer? i just find it all odd and even odder that no one is really talking about HOW it actually appeared
 
whoiare said:
the enabled somehow part is what has me curious. The last time they added apps to the atv it was a software DL...now it just SHOWS up....and even more curious that it showed up on my jailbroken one as well. was it on a timer? i just find it all odd and even odder that no one is really talking about HOW it actually appeared
Click to expand...

yep I hear you. As I said.. I suspect the app's been there all along but periodically the ATV checks with a server somewhere to see if it can enable xyz. Only apps / menu structures that are enabled will appear. This would be outside any jailbreak.
 
So I think there are a couple of things worth mentioning that could help isolate the issues people are seeing further.

- disable sleep one the Mac temporarily to see if the problem goes away. It could be that sleep triggers the issue, as it did for me.
- when the problem happens, try restarting the Airport device, or any other device that acts as a Bonjour Sleep Proxy on your network. Does not apply to most 3rd party wifi base stations.
- try the things in this thread that resolved the issue for some people, but don't expect a cure all. What worked for one person has shown not to usually work for others but you don't know until you try. Like static IPs or switching ATV from wired to wireless.
- just a request: wait several days before updating the thread on success/failure. There are lots of reports of "this fixed it" followed hours/days later by "oops, no it didn't :(" by people trying to help but just making it hard to find the things that might be most helpful.

FWIW, I used to have this problem within a day or two at most, and now the problem hasn't happened in 2.5 weeks by merely changing the password on my airport express. I don't think it's the password - I think it caused some corrupted config in the express config to be rewritten.
 
I did notice one day, when there was no network activity I looked at the router that the ATV Server is sitting on and it was going crazy. I didn't think much of it, but reset my router and everything went away for a while. It could have been the ATV's trying to make connections to the server. This would make a ton of sense now.
 
mroberts48 said:
So far 72 hours since I updated to Mountain Lion and it hasn't happened once. Prior to Mountain Lion at least once to twice per day!
Click to expand...

For me it's been the opposite. I didn't get the problem until I upgraded to Mountain Lion. Home Sharing drops after 5 minutes and now, the ATV3 has begun losing it's connection altogether (not just Home Sharing but Netflix, etc).

Verizon Router to Airport Extreme (in bridge mode) on 5GHz, Airport Express extending 5GHz, MacMini (hard wired), ATV3 (wireless on 5Ghz) -- all running latest firmware. I have an Xbox connected on 5Ghz as well, no issues with connectivity. IP's are all DHCP. No issues with this set up for 3+ months when I was running 10.7.

I haven't tried home sharing on the iPad etc, when all of this happens. Will look at that next.
 
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