Plaidophile

The following computers are involved, with the stated purposes:

• Sparkle, a PowerMac G5 with two 1TB drives, in the studio
  • Project archive file server
  • Time Machine server for the whole network
  • Formerly the system I did all my work on, but soon to just be a passive file server and occasional Logic Node
  • CD ripping machine
  • Also, currently my iPhone sync point
• Gloss, a late-2008 Unibody MacBook Pro, in the studio (for the purposes of this discussion)
  • Main work computer
  • Only occasional music listening, with a hand-picked selection
  • Occasional iPhone sync point (contacts and apps only), when traveling; could be permanent
• Zephyr (née Honey), a G4 Mac mini with a 120GB hard drive
  • Bedroom media system (watching movies and TV shows via FrontRow and/or eyeTV, listening to music)
  • Possible master iPhone sync point (for everything, or maybe just for contacts/calendars)

The only connectivity between Zephyr and Sparkle is an 802.11g link. Gloss and Sparkle will generally be connected directly via gigabit Ethernet, and when they're not directly-connected they see each other via 802.11n (Sparkle is on a gigE link with both 11n and 11g access points).

I will still rip CDs and download downloadable stuff there (likely via VNC from Gloss or whatever, or maybe I can get a USB KVM and hook Sparkle up to the monitor via SVGA, which actually looks just as good as DVI - this is a rather excellent monitor).

I see two possibilities for setting up my bedroom media:

1. Use Sparkle as a NAS, fill Zephyr's iTunes library from this

   This has the advantage that I could use Zephyr as my main iPhone sync point (since it's in the bedroom that's useful since I can just dock my iPhone to it and sync+charge it overnight).

   This has the huge disadvantage that I need to keep Zephyr's iTunes library in sync with Sparkle's (which is painful), and further, occasional network hiccups could cause Zephyr's view of the library to get full of false "missing" files (plus, file renames tend to jack things up horribly).

2. Just keep the iTunes library on Sparkle

   This has the advantage of no synchronization issues, but it has the disadvantage that I still have to remember sync my iPhone in my studio instead of in my bedroom, and further it takes more steps since then I have to actively use Sparkle to do so (either via VNC or via KVM or whatever). Also, it means that starting up music/video watching via iTunes takes a lot longer, because iTunes is dumb about how it deals with remote libraries. Also, it means having to manually mark podcasts as not-new on Sparkle, but I already have to do some of that anyway so it's not a big deal (and on the plus side it means that if I fall asleep listening to This American Life it won't automatically just go away).

   Also, if I had done the NAS route, I'd have to decide whether Sparkle or Zephyr was responsible for downloading podcasts, and then that leads to even more wonky sync issues.

Does anyone have any insights? I realize that as far as problems go, these are pretty nice ones to have.