2017-04-07

Apple TV has gone terribly wrong for me

First off, my Apple TV appeared not to work - I swapped cables, nothing! So I got a new one, same model. Worked! Yay!

Simple enough, though sadly since then the new one did the same a few days later and I now conclude it may be the port on the TV that is being flaky, so on a new port - bugger. I may have chucked out a working Apple TV. Idiot!

However, that aside, the new apple TV is being odd.

Yes, I signed in to iTunes. I have 2FA set up, but that is not actually the root of this issue as I tested today. That all worked, all my stuff shows.

Problem is that every new episode of something I want to watch, even though already purchased, is asking for my Apple ID password, every fucking time.

To start with it popped up on my iPhone as well, so I had a keypad to enter it, but even that has now stopped.

It is making watching anything on Apple TV unbearable and I have no idea why. I have already removed the old Apple TV off my account. I tried removing 2FA (and have since put back). The best I have now is dictating my password for EVERY FUCKING EPISODE!!!

I have no idea why - I even told the Apple TV not to ask for password for purchases, yet it does, many times, and the still asks every time you try to watch every episode.

I will have to ditch it if this keeps up.



P.S. tried all the suggestions, thank you all for them. Finally removed from iTunes, factory reset, upgraded, and re-set-up. Seems to be being sane now again. But really, what a messed up failure mode.

P.P.S. Bollocks, that was fine for two episodes and then again is asking.

16 comments:

  1. I hardly dare suggest talking to Apple, they are usually friendly and polite but that's often about all. There is a 'feedback' bug reporting system on the www, which I'm sure you're aware of.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What about creating a new test Apple ID temporarily? Only for the sake of science, doesn't help otherwise?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I believe this is because Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to introduce two similar approaches to 2FA (2 step authentication and 2FA) and without ensuring that their older hardware (oh and yes.. I believe this includes the most recent Apple TV kit) included full firmware support for the revised approach.

    Sadly the solution is to adopt weaker security and you can disable both approaches. In my view it's not really a "solution" if you have to reduce your security but.. hay ho. I'm not an Apple fan. How to disable.. (you need to scroll down a lot).

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204915

    https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204152

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As I said, I tried turning off 2FA. Did not help.

      Delete
  4. It's not something really daft like a parental control setting?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Restrictions are all turned off. Shame, that would be easy to fix.

      Delete
    2. Silly suggestion, perhaps, but i have seen this before because of "restrictions" on a friend's Apple TV. Is it fixed if you turn on restrictions, then turn them off (and perhaps do a device reset)? I *think* that's what we did. But restrictions caused the problem in that case, which seems different here.

      Delete
  5. I have virgin media, and that makes you enter a pin every time you want to watch anything higher than PG content before 9PM. There is no way to turn it off. It does it for recorded content too. But it is a pin and the remote has a numeric keypad. I have Nvidia Shield (AndroidTV) and that does let you watch stuff without entering passwords (not apple stuff obviously). But you can steam warcraft to your TV @2K at 60FPS and play with a console type controller.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Virgin & Sky have the pin restrictions in place to satisfy Ofcom.
      For whatever reason, these rules don't apply to streaming based services, only broadcast.

      Delete
  6. I had a similar problem with the original Apple TV; practically every time I wanted to watch something it made me enter my password, then sent me to a webpage on my computer to 'reactivate' my account, then made me enter my password _again_. I eventually gave up on the Apple TV.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I remember having something similar, but I think you've already done all the steps I had. I guess you'll just have to phone tech support :(

    ReplyDelete
  8. seen this on my apple tv, turned out firewall was blocking access as once unblocked auth worked ok after.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Maybe your Apple Id is under attack, with someone trying your password ? I know this happens a lot to popular podcasters and the like who use an Apple Id that people have guessed.

    Though if that was the case you'd expect password prompts on other devices that use the same Apple Id of course.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is just the apple TV, and I have 2FA back on again anyway. Just annoying as hell.

      Delete
    2. Time to attach a Bluetooth keyboard to the Apple TV then ;)

      Delete

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