Just to be honest, I find the FAQs annoying. Most people I know have already been through all the stuff covered in the FAQs, and that is why they post here. If the answer was in the FAQ, why post?
Home Sharing is extremely buggy in my view. For instance, there doesn't seem to be a protocol that designates who the master/slave is. I can have my iPad set for Home Sharing and my PC set for same. But if I close down iTunes, the iPad acts as if Home Sharing is still active --- the shared library titles and icons all remain, but obviously you can't play anything. If you reopen iTunes on your PC, evem though you didn't close down home sharing in the File menu, the Home Sharing link is broken, but yet both iTunes and the iPad have no display that notes that --- both appear to be set to Home Sharing. Then one must launch into the game of logging out of home sharing on either or both devices and logging back in. Although not 100% reliable, I've found by exiting Home Sharing on the PC and then signing back in, I can reestablish the link to the iPad. EXCEPT --- if I have made any major changes in my iTunes library, the iPad doesn't perceive these and operates from the previously shared library settings. So now you are in the business of getting the iPad to sync up to the new library.
I don't know why or how my iPad only recognized 51 of the 293 albums in my library, but the only way I was able to get rid of that "memory" on the iPad, and get it to sync up to the entire library using Home Sharing was to connect the thing up to my PC, and restore it to factory settings via iTunes.
Do appreciate you offering a suggestion, but I believe Home Sharing needs some monitoring features built in so users can see just what the status is... (I know this is anathema to Apple types, but if it doesn't work 100% of the time without user machinations, you need some ways to see what is going on).
