Home Sharing Loading Forever and Windows 8

So I thought I'd leave this here since I scoured this site via Google for answers and couldn't find anything that helped.
I could not get iTunes Home Sharing to work on my Windows 8 PC (64-bit) in the last few months. My AppleTV would just sit there and attempt to load the video file forever, making very little progress (if any). I knew the movies played previously and if I loaded them on my wife's MacBook Pro, they'd play fine over AirPlay (something my Windows 8 PC couldn't do either). The AppleTV could see my Home Share (via the Computers app) and my iTunes could see my AppleTV (the airplay icon was visible). My AppleTV could also stream just fine from Netflix, the iTunes Store, and it could do mirroring from iPhones and a MacBook just fine as well. I tried turning Home Sharing on and off. I did both kinds of resets (settings and factory). I unplugged it form the wall. Still no luck. From all this, I could tell my AppleTV was not the issue.
I disabled Windows Firewall (after attempting to clear every possible port iTunes might use through the rules). I added every process to Windows Defender. I disabled IPv6 via Network Settings and the Registry. I made sure Bonjour was enabled (after disabling it and re-enabling it). I checked that iTunes was completely updated (along with the AppleTV). I had every update for Windows 8 installed. I tried older versions of iTunes without luck. I tried turning on and off Home Sharing. I changed the name of my computer. I changed the name of my iTunes library.
I went back to every hardware change I'd made recently. I tried my older wifi usb dongle. No luck. I zeroed in on my new ASUS RT-AC56U router as a possible culprit. I updated its firmware. I changed the network names. I disabled any QoS it may have had running along with any firewalls or protections. I even tried a custom Merlin firmware that others here had suggested made everything work again. I tried running on 2.4 GHz and then 5 GHz, then with one disabled and then the other. I eventually got a family member to let me borrow an Apple Airport Extreme to test with and I still couldn't get any Home Sharing streaming to work. At that point, I had pretty much ruled out any networking hardware as the cause.
So that left something still causing hangups on my Windows 8 PC. It really left me with no other choice aside from attempting a clean install of Windows. All my music, iTunes movies, and iTunes TV shows were on separate hard drives so I bit the bullet and wiped my system drive clean. However, it still wasn't working upon re-installing Windows 8 and the newest version of iTunes.
The only thing I could figure at this point was that I had upgraded to Windows 8 (from 7) sometime last fall. So maybe Windows 8 itself was the culprit?  I knew that Home Sharing was working when I first installed Windows 8. I can't recall exactly when nothing would play but I definitely know that I was able to do Home Sharing streaming initially. But it did get progressively worse since then. Movies would play for half their length and then stop to load. Eventually, nothing would load. But when I tried previous versions of iTunes, I still couldn't get Home Sharing to work. So something deep in Windows 8 had changed that iTunes hasn't adjusted for yet and was preventing Home Sharing from working.
So I did the last thing available to me: I dug out an old copy of Windows 7 and did a wipe and clean install. Lo and behold: Home Sharing is working right off the bat. Very short load times, I could skip ahead, Airplay and Home Sharing working as intended. I went back and re-added everything piece by piece to make sure none of them were going to set me back with video playback.
-Switched out the Airport Extreme for my own router (after setting it up like new...again). My test videos still played! Check.
-Went back to my newer USB wifi dongle. Check.
-Added more non-HD videos to the Home Share. Check.
-Added 720p HD videos to the Home Share. Check.
-Added 1080p videos to the Home Share. Check.
-Windows Firewall is currently active but I'm still Home Sharing just fine.
I'm back up and running on Windows 7 and Home Sharing is working just like I remembered it. I know this isn't much solace to anyone encountering this and trying every fix imaginable from Google. I know I didn't want to flatten and re-install my OS (in fact, downgrading it) to get it working. But something with how recent iTunes or Windows updates are interacting were just completely ruining my home watching experience. It's just so bizarre that it worked in Windows 8 at first but then progressively got worse. And a fresh install of Windows 8 and iTunes didn't set it back to the way it was. It has to be some recent changes between the two that interfered with the process and that neither company has addressed it yet.
I know this will probably get buried among the thousands of other help threads but I hope it does manage to assist someone in getting a better handle on this problem should they face it. And maybe someone from Apple will take another look at Home Sharing in iTunes for Windows 8.

In case anyone is interested, last night I installed Paralells, Windows, Overdrive Media Console on Windows, and then was able to download my book in WMA format. I was hoping parallels would allow me to crossover sync to iTunes on the Mac and have Overdrive recognize that I had iTunes open, but I had to choose Windows or Mac when connecting my phone through the USB and had to choose Windows in order for it to successfully transfer. I was able to get it to work it is now synced to iTunes in Windows. The nice thing was that it pulled in all my music/apps that I had set up in the Mac side, so I didn't have to go through that exercise again. I tested it on my old phone. Now I need to decide if I want to set up my current phone on Windows or Mac, it seems that once synched it only opens the device in windows, I haven't figured out how to force the choice between mac or window again. If I do windows, I can't take advantage of the cloud or iphoto/imovie directly. I'm totally new to mac, but I think I'll have to import my photos manually.

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