My goal is a central media-hub server for my household. When my kids handbrake a film, I want access to it. When I purchase music, they should be able to listen.

iTunes sharing will allow them to stream, but not to have the songs on their boxes which means, that they can't sync them to their iPods/

iPhone

 s either.

The answer is a little app called SuperSync (supersync.com) - it is essentially a parallel application that runs in harmony with iTunes. It allows you to configure synchronization between multiple

mac

 hines - both

Mac

  and Windows - so that music is exactly where you want it. It will do movies and TV as well.

It's a purchased app (I bought the 10 license kit for $59) but very worth it. I tried to do some tricky stuff and so it was a little funky at first, but once I got things straightened out it runs like a kitten.

/p

I think any sync software will work for this, just supersync is specific to itunes, or at least intended to be. I use SyncToy which is a vista addon, and it works well. You actually only need 1

mac

 hine doing all the syncing technically, if it provides enough options for sync types (mirror,push,pull,echo). but yea it can get funky. especially when you have things going to multiple places with different criteria. my desk is the master, I sync music to the TV and Jenny, I push images and movies to the TV, and I echo work stuff to my NAS, as well as echo Jenny to the NAS through me (though she could go direct).

what I would love is if itunes could use a non-local library, and sync those songs to

iPhone

 pod. Currently the 3 libraries is dumb.

The handy part is that it interfaces with iTunes itself rather than just the

mac

 hine - so when you sync to another

mac

 hine it shows up in iTunes with the appropriate rating, artwork etc - movies do the same. No need to "add to library" in iTunes. But you're right, it's basically just a sync'r with linkage to iTunes.



Agree ... I think this was a DRM issue. I did a lot of research here because I wanted the same. The issue is iTunes lock on the local library file. I can (and have) hooked multiple

mac

 hines up to a single NAS stored iTunes library, but only one can have the lib open at a time.

i believe that if they wrote iTunes as a database app so that multiple people could use it simultaneously the recording industry deities would clamp down and close up like a virgin that just found out it's a fake ring. I mean, if the RIAA is asking for 1.5MM in penalties per song (as a famous blogger I know wrote recently here  ) then the notion of a music server would be just verbotten to them I'm sure.

edit: fixed your busted link

actually you nailed it. that is the reason. whats wierd is they were ok with everyone listening to the music, like at an office, but not being able to have a copy of it.