8 devices, one account, iTunes being difficult - help?

Question

OK, here goes:
We have two MacBook Pros, two iPhone3G, one iPhone 3GS, one iPhone 4S, an iPod Nano (1st gen) and an AppleTV (1st Gen).
Home network is on a Time Capsule (3rd Gen), which has USB connections for drives/printers/etc. I have two USB drives available to use.
The laptops are our main computers, used for everything including entertainment.
The 3G phones are used as iPod Touches by the kids (little kids, no phone service for them yet).
The 3GS is my active phone and the 4S is my wife's.
iTunes is kept updated to current versions: with 10,000 or so songs, 120 movies, many TV shows, many podcasts... etc etc.
We originally had two iTunes accounts, one mine, one my wife's. A long time back before even adding the 4G and 3GS into this mix, we abandoned using my wife's account because iTunes will not let HER listen to what I buy, and vice versa, becuase of the idiotic rules of purchase/licencing. So we have been just using my account for a long time. We have also been forced to sync the AppleTV to my laptop.
All this adds up to my laptop having to 'host' all the data for all the devices, which must all sync with it. This is a huge pain in my a*s, takes up a lot of my disk storage, and it seems dumb as dirt that we must use such an awkward method to use all of our devices.
Please note: I AM NOT GOING TO PAY TO USE 'THE CLOUD'. I have plenty of storage space of my own, thanks, and I don't need to pay subscription fees just to do what I can already do remotely - get to my data at home from elsewhere....
So here's what I hope to find out here in the support community:
Based on the equipment listed, and assuming I can manage configuring stuff (or will ask how),
1) Can I put the iTunes 'library' and data (the actual files) on a USB drive attached to the Time Capsule? {If Y goto A, if N goto 2.}
A) If yes to (1), can I then use iTunes from BOTH laptops and access this SINGLE library (assuming they both use the same iTunes account info)?
B) If yes to (1), can each laptop sync whatever device it wants to?
C) Can the AppleTV be told to sync itself to the library without iTunes running on a laptop? (Don't care if I need to hack it to do this, warranty is over)
2) If I cannot put the library and the files on a remote drive, HOW THE **** can I achieve this sort of functionality:
Access one library and one set of files from both laptops, sync any device from either laptop.
(Access WITHOUT having to have BOTH laptops on the same network, 'awake', and running iTunes)
BTW - "Home Sharing" does not seem to let me do anything more than "see" my library from my wife's laptop - useless for our needs unlessI'm missing something there. Seems to be set up for letting to teens access each others music.

Answer 1

Nixt wrote:
1) Can I put the iTunes 'library' and data (the actual files) on a USB drive attached to the Time Capsule? {If Y goto A, if N goto 2.}
Yes.
Nixt wrote:
A) If yes to (1), can I then use iTunes from BOTH laptops and access this SINGLE library (assuming they both use the same iTunes account info)?
Yes, but... the two iTunes will not necessarily automatically stay in sync. If music is added to the iTunes library of one computer that same music will need to be manually added to the iTunes library of the other computer. However you may be able find some scripts at Doug's AppleScripts to help keep things up to date.
Nixt wrote:
B) If yes to (1), can each laptop sync whatever device it wants to?
No. iOS devices and iPods can only be synced with one computer at a time. However one computer can sync to an unlimited number of iOS devices or iPods.
Nixt wrote:
C) Can the AppleTV be told to sync itself to the library without iTunes running on a laptop? (Don't care if I need to hack it to do this, warranty is over)
No. iTunes must be running for the ATV to sync.
You might want to think about getting a refurbished Mac Mini and making it your central media server. That would dramatically simplify your setup.