Apple TV keeps rebooting, won't sync

My Apple TV is very temperamental. Sometimes it works fine and I love it. Other times it acts up and drives me batty.
My set up: iTunes 7.7.1, Leopard 10.5.4, Apple TV 2.1 (160 GB), Time Capsule with latest Airport firmware.
The problem: The Apple TV will work normally until I open iTunes. Once iTunes is open the Apple TV becomes mostly unresponsive. iTunes will show the Apple TV as syncing but it just spins for maybe five minutes. During this time, the Apple TV will usually not respond to the remote - the light on the front of the device will turn off when I press a button on the remote and then back on when I press the remote again. Eventually, the Apple TV will drop off of iTunes and reboot. If I leave iTunes open, the process just repeats itself. Obviously, there is no actual syncing occurring. I don't want to do a factory restore because I have some rented movies on the machine and no way to get them off. I have tried reinstalling iTunes, using ethernet connections, and completely unplugging the Apple TV. All to no avail. This has happened in the past and eventually it started working again - inexplicably. But now it is having the same problem.
Any help?

iTunes will show the Apple TV as syncing but it just spins for maybe five minutes. During this time, the Apple TV will usually not respond to the remote - the light on the front of the device will turn off when I press a button on the remote and then back on when I press the remote again. Eventually, the Apple TV will drop off of iTunes and reboot. If I leave iTunes open, the process just repeats itself. Obviously, there is no actual syncing occurring.
Opening iTunes forces the application to scan/re-synchronize content with any/all connected devices. If, for some reason, iTunes is not able to complete this scan/re-synchronization process, it appears that iTunes will, at some point, signal the connected device to re-boot/re-start as the result of error trapping the uncompleted task. As a result of more and more processing power being diverted to the attempt to re-synchronize content, remote control operations become sluggish/ appear to "freeze." And, even if you are able to begin the playback of content, will likely not playback as expected. (E.g., on my movies play with audio but video is little more than a "skipping" of one frozen video frame to another.)
Basically, the problem appears to be anything that prevents content access in order to synchronize it -- usually an invalid or orphaned path to some form of content but may include corrupted database pointers; content moved or changed at the Finder level; the removal/deletion of content, playlists designated for synchronization, etc. In my case, I deleted several old itunes files but neglected to delete the associated playlists which were still selected for synchronization by specific devices. As soon as I deselected the playlists (and deleted them), my devices began to function correctly again.

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Apple TV keeps rebooting

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Apple TV keeps rebooting, won't sync

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