Shared database for family pictures (on local network, not online)

Hi all,
We recently purchased our first Mac and I am now looking into how we can use a shared photo database. We have a Macbook, a Windows 7 PC/server and a Media Center Extender connected to the PC.
My plan is to use the individual files as the database, via rating (1-5 stars), tags (to create "albums") and time (photo capture date). This works for the PC (Windows Live Photo Gallery) and the Media Center Extender.
Do you know of a Mac software that can do below?
- Read pictures from a network share, cache info in a local DB to increase response time
- Write tags back to the image file on a network share
- Group photos based on rating, tags and capture date
- Lightweight and convenient interface
My planned budget is up to 100 USD.
I have tried a few with no luck:
- iPhoto (appears to only use it's own db)
- Deep (appears to only use it's own db)
- Photoshop Elements (writing back tags seem to require a manual click on each image)
- Picasa (has no grouping of tabs, and Picasa local albums are not easily viewable by other computers (and not writable at all). I did make a PowerShell script to make a new folder for each Picasa local album containing shortcuts to the pictures in it, this works good for the Media Center Extender but no on the Mac).
- BONUS: Offline sync of selected photos (e.g. 4+ stars or part of an album/tag)
- I have read quite a few similar threads regarding "iPhoto server" etc but I found no solution
If you have another success story, I would be happy to hear it. Other ideas:
- Other options if I replace my PC with a Mac and the Media Center Extender with a PS3?
- iPhoto server?
- Windows Home Server?
- Use a shared database (without corruption), e.g. using Picasa on both machines
- Online service (however I hesitate to use this due to privacy and due to 27 000 images / 45 GB)
Thanks in advance,
Fredrik

Your $100 budget is going to be tough. But generally you want a piece of software that does not have its own 'data base' ... rather it will store the tag info with the picture on a file system somewhere. A couple pieces of software that I have used may fit your needs (with some cavests):
- Nikon ViewNX ... which came free with my Nikon will look into a file system for pictures and let you tag them with keywords and ratings etc. All of that is written back to the picture itself. Not sure if you can just download a free version from their site without a corresponding camera purchase
- Photoshop Lightroom (which I currently use) would has lots of capabilities to help you organize the pictures. The key words, tags etc are also written back to your picture (or a separate 'side car' file). The caveat it is $300 ... but for that you get a lot of high end photo editing features as well
Good luck

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