Q: I have to restart iTunes every day to access my home sharing on my Apple tv

Same here.  I don't like this solution, but it works.

So it just stays on the screensaver & never goes off? I guess I can do that if I really have to but I'd rather not have 2 of these things running all the time.

Same issue for me! I'll try the never option. My guess is that will simply keep the iTunes connection alive so iTunes never drops it's bundle. I reckon an iTunes update will be needed to fix this one. At least it's not just me!

Same problem here - I've been using iTunes sharing for years and its worked great - now I have this problem and its making my wife and kids crazy.  They have come to rely on this for video.

I called Apple yesterday and they tried to tell me that it had something to do with my router - I reset it and continue to have the same problems.

David

It has nothing to do with your router. I have traced the problem to leaked  connection ports from the Apple TV to the iTunes. When I use TCPView to close these leaked ports, iTunes recovers and Apple TV works again, no restart requried. I have reported this to Apple but no response yet.

Nice work!

"Never" option didn't work fopr me so hopefully your work will get into a iTunes update! SOON!

I can confirm that setting appletv to never sleep works lile a charm as a temp workaround, at least for this specific home sharing problem.   Where leaked ports on the itunes side are created by improper initiation/closing of connections from appletv, caused/aggrivated by faulty connection handling of appletv sleeping.

I have a similar setup:

Late 2011 27" iMac, Lion 10.7.4, iTunes 10.6.3, ~2 TB of music, TV and movies

1x 2nd gen AppleTV, 1x 3rd gen AppleTV, static IP.

All hard wired with CAT6 ethernet, AppleTVs with DHCP.

4x Airport Express w/ direct attached speakers, Static IP addresses.

About 3-4 months ago, iTunes would stop responding to the AppleTVs and any Remote app on 2x iPhones and 2x iPads after around 6-8 hours.  Would have to restart iTunes in order to get it working.  This includes just playing music over remote Airport Express to powered speakers. 

I changed both the AppleTVs to never sleep and just turn off the TV instead, and I have >24 hours with no hangups.  Seems to work.  Great work on isolating and identifying the issues. 

If you do a netstat -a, you will see more than 100 connections.  iTunes stops accepting more than 100.  What fixed my problem is setting the ATVs to wifi, instead of wired.  I think it forces the extra connections closed.  No problems in a week!  I also turned off ipv6, but not sure if that contributed to the workaround.  I can't believe how many hours I wasted on this crappy software bug...

This advice is dead-on right. You can see the number of connections growing with time. Setting the ATV to never sleep keeps the open connections near or at zero and I've had no trouble connecting with the remote app to iTunes. I'd like to see this fixed in a software update.

I'm having the same problem and it has to do with Lion.  After upgrading my server from Snow Leopard to Lion, the problem started to occur.  My other Macs are on Snow Leopard - no problem at all connecting from my AppleTV. 

Is everyone using apple TV 3 or 2?  I have 3 Apple TV 2 boxes and I wasn't having any issues.  I upgraded two of them to the Apple TV 3.  Right after doing so I have to restart iTunes nearly every single time I want to stream anything from my computer.  I decided to switch back to the Apple TV 2's until Apple decides to fix the stutter issues with the Apple TV 3 (all movies stutter until completely buffered, home movies taken on iphone 4s are basically unwatchable streaming from new iPad until fully buffered).  Anyway.. I switched back to the Apple TV 2 and it seems the issue of having to reset iTunes has gone away with along with the Apple TV 3.  Its funny because all my bluray movies that I've ripped in 1080p play just fine on the Apple TV 2 now, which is why I dropped 200$ on the Apple TV 3s to begin with.  Fix this crap already Apple!!!  Its been going on too long.

You don't have to switch back to the ATV2.  As was stated by me and confirmed by many, just set your ATV3 to never go to sleep.  Just make sure you have some kind of screen saver set to avoid any burn in problems.

I switched back to my apple tv 2 until apple fixes the stuttering issues with the apple tv 3.  Not having to restart iTunes is just a bonus.  With the apple tv 3 right now all my movies stutter until they are fully buffered.  My network is hardwired 1Gb so there is no issue there.  And of course all I have to do is swap the boxes to make the problem come or go.  It's definitely the new apple tv.  You would think a bug like this would not be allowed to persist for so long but it's pretty well documented on this forum.  I love my apple tv but v3 will have to stay in the box until there is a firmware fix.

Stuttering is a different issue and not one that I have ever seen.  Even on my wifi connected ATV3.  And like you all of my movie content is 1080p.  You may want to make a separate post here on the forum and ask others about it.