Apple TV refuses 802.11n

Question

Howdy folks...
Bad week for Apple products for me. I went through two iPhones and now my Apple TV has decided to downshift! In the middle of watching a movie, the screen went black and came back with "Your iTunes Library is unavailable, make sure *computer name* is on and iTunes is open". I went over to the main computer and sure enough, iTunes was on, open, there were computers showing up in the shared section, but the Apple TV was missing under Devices.
I'll describe my setup:
I have a main file server in the house with the master iTunes library, it's the only library Apple TV syncs with. Connected to the server's ethernet port is an Airport Extreme N in bridge mode (one of its LAN ports), also, there is an 802.11 G "UFO" Airport connected to one of the spare LAN ports on the new Airport (this is the primary base station that is connected to my modem). I designed the network this way so that I can get the full 802.11n speed to my 802.11n devices (black MacBook and Apple TV), and other 802.11g devices would have their own portal into my file server. All Macs in the house run OS X 10.4.10 with iTunes 7.3.1 (I'm a freak about versioning)
I navigated to the Network section of Apple TV's settings where I noticed it was no longer connected to a wireless network, and in fact wouldn't scan or display ANY networks (there are about 25 within range of my apartment that I ALWAYS see), so there was no possibility of me rejoining my network, even manually. I realized the situation was crappier than I thought and would require some hard-resetting and restoring. Here's everything I did:
Factory reset Apple TV
Factory reset BOTH Airport Extremes (G & N) and set them up with NO security
Reinstalled iTunes, re-imported entire library
Turned Syncing off, then back on (I could only enter the pairing code when joined to 802.11G)
I discovered that after the restore, the Apple TV's Network utility on first boot would see my base stations! However, it would only join the 802.11G network, it continuously errored out when attempting to join the 802.11 N network (either -6, -3 or 0 as a code, which I couldn't find documentation for). Mind you, my MacBook can join my 802.11 N network with no problems at all, both before and after the factory reset of the base station. After I got the error code, and I went back to try and join my 802.11 G network, all the within-range networks were gone, and the scanning no longer worked as I described above. So I had to factory restore AGAIN. When the Apple TV came back up, I joined my 802.11G network with no issues, the Apple TV popped up in iTunes and began to sync. I cancelled the sync and ran the Software Update to get me to ATV 1.1. When it rebooted, I tried to switch networks and got the same loop of errors - try to join N network, fail, then no networks at all are displayed.
Does anyone have any further recommendations for troubleshooting, or is the wifi card in my Apple TV fubar? I'd imagine that would be covered under the 1 year warranty, but since I got the Apple TV on launch and more than 90 days has passed, AppleCare refuses to speak to me (an ex Apple employee, a current Apple certified technician, in the Apple Consultants Network, and Apple Store business liaison for small/medium business in the Bay Area....what nerve!) even though I never used my "one phonecall".
I've been really disappointed with their customer support as I've seen many of you on the boards have been as well, so hopefully we can help each other!

Answer 1

I know it's a lot of work, but you could try setting up your network and tv again, using entirely different criteria, ie new network names, device names and passwords. I'm not guaranteeing success, but I have seen networking devices behave as though they remembered passwords and names after a reset and have conflicted with a new set up using the same passwords/names etc.