iTunes Home Sharing
Nathan
22 Nov 11
With iTunes v10 Apple introduced a new feature called Home
Sharing. This allows iTunes users to share their library
with other apple devices on the same local network, for example
your network at home. Sounds good? It is when it
works, but it can be a nightmare to troubleshoot when it
doesn't.
I recently purchased an Apple TV specifically for the purpose of
playing my iTunes library through my TV and AV receiver.
Apple TVs are great, as well as doing that they also connect to
the Internet so you can use Internet radio, YouTube, Vimeo,
Flickr, and rent a wide range of new release and older
movies. However, I had a very frustrating Issue where I
could see my iTunes library briefly, but clicking on it would
cause it to disappear. Reading the Apple forums shows a lot
of people with Home Sharing issues and many possible
solutions. I started with the most drastic first, replacing
my router with a different make and model which fixed the issue
for some - but not me.
What fixed the issue for me was opening TCP port 3689 And UDP port 5353 in Windows Firewall on my PC. Even though iTunes was set as an allowed program in my firewall, only by explicitly opening these ports as well did the library stay permanently. These ports are listed in the Apple support article on Home Sharing troubleshooting.
Once this was sorted out I had a second issue. I could see
all of my music library on the Apple TV and play any song
individually, but all the song names were dark and I couldn't
play an album in total or shuffle. It was like the Apple TV
thought they weren't available even though they played when
chosen individually.
This was sorted out within iTunes itself. If you use the
check box (also called List box) in iTunes, and use the
"only sync checked items" option, It seems the Apple TV
thinks that only checked music is "live". The fix is to
untick all music, then in preferences turn off "show checklist
box". It's really more of a workaround for a bug than a fix
as now I have turned off the checklist feature I need to manually
manage music on my iPad as it isn't big enough to hold my entire
itunes library. Hopefully Apple will fix the way this is
managed in a future release.
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