AppleTV Dropping out of iTunes Solution

[jb60606]

No iTunes or ATV updates since my last post, yet my ATV has mysteriously stayed on the network for a good week+ now. Granted, there were a couple of times where I opted to set the ATV to "standby" mode (overnight), just in case. However, a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't get it to stay on the network for more than 6hrs.

Keeping my fingers crossed. I was getting tired of rebooting the ATV on a daily basis.

 

[Rich1963]

Until recently, I pitied anyone who had this problem, and figured my combo of time capsule (1st gen), hard wired ethernet, and leaving my imac on 24/7 was what kept me immune. Since the last iTunes minor update, I've lost the AppleTV twice. Now, in the grand scheme of things, this isn't that big of a deal, and simply quitting and restarting iTunes solves the problem.

But it's frustrating. And what's even stranger is that since the last update, I will also come downstairs in the morning to see that my AppleTV has decided to come out of standby by itself occasionally. Not the end of the world, but odd nonetheless.

 

[MacBoobsPro]

I had this issue when the ATV first came out and it was because my ATV IP address didnt start 192.168 etc.

I set the IP manually during wireless setup on the ATV and have never had another problem with it. It may be worth checking the update hasnt changed the IP address on your ATV.

 

[jb60606]

3 weeks since it last dropped off of the network.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I think I've finally found the solution to my problem of the AppleTV units dropping out of iTunes. It appears to be a matter of finding the most stable channel with the strongest signal and lowest noise ratio on the wireless router. This is hard (a pain) to test with something like my NetGear router due to a lack of a monitor mode, but it's very easy to do with my secondary Airport Express router since Apple's Airport Utility has a channel monitor mode (click manual and then on the word "channel" and a graph and table will appear with updated monitor conditions for the signal strength, noise level and transfer rates for any devices connected to it.

I went through and manually tried ALL available channels (in 5GHz mode it will only do automatic and it was VERY POOR in that mode compared to the 2.4GHz reception on some channels, but your house/location may vary. Clearly, some channels were doing better than others and since I have two AppleTV units in two different areas of the house, it helped to try them all. I found Channel 10 to have the best signal overall and since switching both AppleTV units to use the Airport Express (by itself, it was still unstable and would drop on Automatic) and changing to Channel 10, it's been over a week since either unit has dropped from iTunes. It wasn't generally lasting a day for the closer unit on automatic. Clearly, the signal level plays a HUGE part in whether the units remain connected to iTunes. Maybe even a temporary signal interruption can cause it to drop? In any case, getting the best possible signal to all units seems to be the key. This might mean moving the router (or adjusting antennas if external) or just finding the best possible channel and bandwidth range for your location. It clearly made a huge difference here. It's never been this stable over the past two years for both units (one would usually drop sooner or later, usually sooner and require either a reset of iTunes or a reboot of ATV (or Finder reset on hacked version) to get them to reappear. Now they rarely ever drop to begin with.

I'm not talking about huge signal differences either making a big difference in behavior. It went from -68 to -70dB on average to -64 to -66dB on average with noise down from -94 to -97dB. Transfer rates vary somewhat over time, but I seem to get over 100Mbit per channel on average now whereas it was getting 68-90 before (My NetGear router often gets 160-180Mbit, but it's a lot harder to monitor the signals over time to find its optimum channel (it also sits in a different location in the room); maybe I can find an app to help with that somewhere?) For most uses, it doesn't make much difference, though. I simply switched my iPod Touch over to the NetGear and the AppleTV units to the Airport Express (was the other way around before; I don't want them on the same unit since a G device can slow down N devices).

 

[Geordie56]

I was having exactly the same problem. After working fine for months, iTunes would lose one or both Apple TVs. iTunes would fine, one, both or none of the Apple TVs on restart with apparently no logic to this and rebooting the Time Capsule normally had the effect of losing whatever Apple TV had been found.
I first tried setting the Apple TV's to static IP addressees with no effect. I tried the channel thing. Again no effect.
The (possible) answer - I restored the Apple TVs to factory settings and then updated the software to the latest version. An hour or so of time invested but the result is consistent Apple TV connections. Running for over a week now with no issues.