iTunes home sharing videos with iOS 10.2 TV app

Question

I have videos in iTunes on my Mac desktop (in the TV Shows and Movies sections) that are shared using Home Sharing with my Apple ID. Home sharing is turned on and working; I can watch the videos on my Apple TV.

I used to use Apple's Videos app to watch on my iPhone. As of iOS 10.2, Videos seems to be gone, nominally replaced with TV. Apple's instructions for Home Sharing, published Dec 6, 2016, refer to Videos and don't mention TV at all.

I don't see any obvious way to watch shared videos with the TV app. I went to its Settings pane and signed out of my Apple ID and back in, but still nothing. The Settings pane does explicitly list Home Sharing, which suggests that it should be possible, but I am stumped.

How can I watch videos shared from iTunes using Home Sharing on my iPhone with iOS 10.2?

Answer 1

I found that once i downloaded a free tv episode my shared library showed up.

Answer 2

The TV app will show all iTunes libraries that are shared under the same Home Sharing account right on the "front page"

When you start the app, you should be on the "Library" tab (check tab at bottom, you have "Library", "Watch Now", "Store" and "Search").

Your home sharing libraries will be listed on the Library page, you have "TV Shows", "Movies" and then the name of your library, with the name you picked in iTunes' General Preferences, Library Name. If you have more than one iTunes instance running on your network, and they're all shared on the same account, they will all show up there.

Answer 3

I have multiple devices for the family with multiple accounts, all of which share the same Home Sharing account. It used to work, and does on my personal device, but not the rest of the family sharing the same home sharing account. Use a different iCloud ID and login with your home sharing account and you'll see.

Answer 4

If you have no purchased/rented content, it will not show up. As soon as you load some kind of content it will show up on the Library page. If this is intentional, it stinks...