It's ridiculous to tell users to reinstall iTunes to fix a problem that Apple should just figure out and fix.
You're not saying it doesn't recognize the unit and before you said it had a dropping problem. Which is it? There's a big difference there. You're not providing much information in regards to the unit itself and its connection ot the Internet. You say other devices "just work" but all devices have to be connected to a network first before they can do anything. Wireless networks need to be assigned. How does your ATV fare on its own? Can it see the iTunes store and its contents? Does YouTube function normally? Do Podcasts work? All these can function without ANY connection to another computer or iTunes. If they're not working normally, then there's a connection problem with your unit to your own router in which case nothing will see them. Networks are strange things. I had a power outage the other day and when everything came back up, my Mac wasn't connected to the Internet (I had to manually assign it its former IP address first for reasons unknown) and neither Apple TV unit showed up or one of my printers. All the devices had to be reset and restarted (some where backed up with UPS units; I have three computers, two printers, two networks (one routed through the ethernet switch on the other Network) and numerous wireless devices. Some devices had to be reset. Once the router could see everything and the Mac had a proper connection to the router, it could THEN and ONLY THEN see all the other devices. What I'm saying is sometimes there's a problem where you wouldn't expect one. Why shouldn't the network come back up normally after a power outage? I've had my NetGear router go wonky for no reason on the wireless channel but still function on the Ethernet channels and the only thing that fixes it then is a hard reset. Why? Who knows. There's a bug somewhere in the firmware that only occurs once every few months or so...sometimes longer. I've had XBMC running on Apple TV act all choppy when connected to an Airport Express, but function PERFECTLY when connected via the NetGear router (Apple's software works fine with either one). Why? I have no idea. Apple is well known for weird networking issues with their Airport devices (just look some time at all the posts about them dropping Macbooks and other such issues) so I shouldn't feel totally surprised that an Apple TV unit using similar internal hardware might trip up, especially on one of Apple's routers.
Sounds a lot like Microsoft's approach. The fact that Apple -- and everyone else -- has come up with more than a half dozen ways to "fix" something -- none of which work for everyone -- is a good indication that there's something seriously wrong with the product.
Well, it works fine here and I'm using an old PowerMac as my server. It worked fine under Tiger and it works fine now under Leopard on the same machine. I've used every version of iTunes from 7.x to the latest 9.0.1 and its worked without issue on every single one of them. I also have iTunes set up on my MBP running Leopard and my PC running XP with those same versions as secondary shared devices with iTunes and both of my two Apple TV units show up on every one of them without exception. Now if I can own two Apple TV units and have them function reliably on three different computers (a PPC PowerMac, an Intel MBP and an AMD powered PC running XP) I would have to say the problem lies in your system somewhere and it's not the computer if two of them cannot see it. It's your network somewhere/somehow.
What router/wireless networks are you using (brand/model/type of network)? What type of encryption did you select in the router to use with the Apple TV? I'm using WPA2 (AES) and it works fine. I've heard it might not work reliably with every method. I've reserved it and all my regular network devices static IP addresses on my own home network because I've had devices try to usurp an existing address and knock that device off the network before (i.e. my iPod Touch would log on to the network and grab the spot my Mac was already using and suddenly my Mac would stop working because it was no longer logged into the router at the address it thought it was using). It also makes it much easier to do any networking tasks if you always know where to find a given device on your home network. It doesn't matter which of the two networks I log a device onto, the Negear router assigns it its IP address (the Airport Express is routed through the Netgear router via Ethernet).
Have you tried plugging in your Apple TV via wired Ethernet to see if that behaves any differently than using wireless?
I've done everything suggested in this forum and by Apple but switch to static IPs and reinstall iTunes. Yet iTunes still refuses to recognize my week-old ATV. (I have another copy of iTunes running on a Powerbook, and it can't see the ATV either.) Every other networked device in my home network works just fine, including an Airport Express. You plug it in, it should work. Period.
Here you talk about it not recognizing the device, but earlier you said it was working but dropped it. Which is it? To get a computer to recognize an Apple TV, you MUST pair it up with that computer first or it will not work in iTunes period. Just working after plugging it in sounds nice, but that's not how iTunes operates. It needs a pass code first. You must select to pair it up with a computer in the Apple TV menu. At this point, ANY computer running iTunes should then show an AppleTV as a device and will then ask for a pass code that's listed on the Apple TV screen which you must enter into iTunes. It will want to register the unit for the main computer to sync with (additional computers added for shared access will ask for a pass code, but not a register).
Sounds easy enough. But: (1) I think I should be able to buy a consumer product and have it work as advertised, no hacking required; and (2) I've heard the mother ship periodically resets hacked ATVs to the default configuration. If that's still true, hacking doesn't seem worth the hassle.
The current hacked software has an optional BLOCK to prevent Apple from updating your Apple TV automatically. I've used it and it works perfectly. After I unblocked it to upgrade my software this past time, it did remove the hacked menus after the update, but to get them back, I only had to put the USB key into the back and within 2 minutes, it was back to the way it was. Apple didn't remove anything on the hard drive itself for those install preferences (i.e. once XBMC was back up, it still had all my prior preference settings intact) so it was really quite painless to get back up operating. The only thing to make sure of is that the hack works with the latest updates before installing them. The units can always be restored to factory operation if desired, though. I think the hack will even let you backdate your Apple software to previous versions if you don't like an update for some reason.
OTOH, if AppleTV just won't work for you for whatever reason, you might want something like a Popcorn A110 or C200. It will do 1080P as well. The menu system isn't as nice and you don't get things like movie rentals, but it seems you can't have everything these days (yet anyway). The C200 has optional Blu-Ray capability, although I think it just plays discs when a drive is connected.
Personally, I've got all my movies, all my music CDs (even DTS ones), all my photos and all my home videos available with a few button clicks with my Apple TV units. It's SWEET. I can also get on the Internet (Couch Surfer) and even watch old TV shows (Boxee; although Hulu doesn't run very smooth for HD). If the ATV hardware were sufficient to run full 1080P at good data rates, the device would be perfect for my media uses. As it is, I only have a 720P projector at the moment anyway, so I've been simply re-encoding HD movies to 720P for the moment. I can also do a whole house party mode with both my Apple TV and Airport Express units. At the moment, that means having 4 different rooms and stereos playing the same music in perfect synchronization, all of which I can easily control from my iPod Touch anywhere in the house and even from the backyard. I can even see my PC web cameras on the iPod Touch through the Remote Buddy application. If only the iPod Touch had IR outputs to control all my other stereo equipment directly....
TV simply won't show up at all in 10.5.8 Leopard but always shows up in 10.6.1 SL. Granted I am on iTunes 9.0.1 on Leopard, and 9 on SL. I am afraid to upgrade the iTunes on SL since it is working at the moment.
