Is it possible to sync a home sharing playlist to iPhone / iPad?

Question

The issue:  My children each have PC laptops which they sync iPhones to, they each have a music collection on their own laptops.  I imported their playlist to my host machine and using Home Sharing I assumed I could sync their iPhones using their laptops to avoid having multiple music folders on each laptop and my host.  I would have thought that was part of the point of home sharing so I don't have to push music libraries to each computer when we get new music?  I am not wanting to have their devices to sync to my host machine as it's in my home office and I prefer not to have them in there on my computer all the time.
Or am I going about this totally wrong? 
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Each on iTunes 10.5
Laptops on Vista
Host on Win7

Answer 1

Hi judATL,
Unless I'm sorely mistaken, if you have your iCloud account set up on the new phone, and when you hook up that new phone to iTunes, if everything is set as I will indicate below, the phone should sync with iCloud automatically, and iCloud should push those contacts to your Mac. It will comingle your contacts with the ones on the new phone, because it will be Contacts in the same iCloud account. If that's OK with you, then do the following:
1.     Make sure your iCloud ID is signed onto the new phone
2.     Make sure that Contacts is checked to sync in the iCloud options on the phone - Settings>iCloud>Contacts (checked)
3.      Go into iTunes on your Mac and select the option to Prevent Automatic Sync under Preferences>Devices:
4.      Hook up the new phone to iTunes and click on the Device when it shows up (DON'T SYNC just yet).
5.     Click on the Info Tab in the Device Profile, and make sure it says the following for Contacts (click on the image below to make it big enough to read - you may need to double-click):
6.     Make sure both your other iPhone and your Mac have Contacts checked in iCloud
Give it a little time for iCloud to retrieve and push the Contacts to your other phone and your Mac, and for it to retrieve and push your existing Contacts to your new phone. If it were me, I would wait for a couple of hours. Probably totally unnecessary to wait that long, but I don't like to make myself crazy by checking something every 2 seconds....
Once you know the Contacts have been pushed to iCloud and your other devices and your Mac, you can then sync the new phone to your iTunes account. Be sure to set up the Profile pages as you want for this new phone before syncing. As Phil indicated, once you do the sync, everything will be replaced with what is in your iTunes library (with the exception, in this case, of Contacts, which is being sync'd via iCloud).
Hope that helps! Post back with any questions!
Cheers,
GB