iTunes Home Sharing doesn’t work with AppleTV when it should

For about a year, I've been stumped on iTunes Sharing not working on AppleTV when it worked fine between laptops. Until today, when I accidentally discovered that iTunes -> Preferences -> Sharing -> "Share Library on Network" —which works for computers running iTunes— is not the same things as iTunes -> File -> Home Sharing, which is what AppleTV uses.

Oh well.

http://www.imore.com/itunes-9-shared-libraries-home-sharing

iTunes Home Sharing Not Working

There's a handful of reasons that can cause this. The probably definitive list can be found by combing the apple tech support discussion thread for it at https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2586385?start=105&tstart=0
I recommend you start at the end of the thread where you'll find the answers rather than at the beginning of the thread where'll you find the kind of posts that people write when they're tearing their hair out because their shiny expensive toy DOESN'T WORK.
The one that worked for me was:

  • Restart the windows Bonjour service. If you don't know how to do that, just restart your computer.
  • The other popular one is: "Sorry bud, you need a new router." Or if you're 'lucky' just a firmware update (Have you ever tried updating your router firmware? I did it once). You can't win then all.