What I'm trying to do is have one central PC with all the media on it and have client PCs that do the playback.
so you are not talking about syncing tags made on clients to the server? What is not (or maybe when) syncing ?? The media itself? So you can't choose it for playback?
Basic idea is that you have your LAN set-up already, and the drives with the media are shared, right?
The PC acting as the server has to be running at least the media server (can be loaded automatically on boot); set-up in Network Options use media network, right?
The client PCs do not have the Media Server checked in options, right?
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_ServerOn the client(s) you have loaded the PC server's library, right ? (not the one marked Main as this is always a local library and exists on for install).
Each client after the intial loading of the remote library should remember it and try to connect. Any newly added media will show up after "awhile" or on a reload, provided that the server PC is not off or asleep. You can force this by a manual sync ....
The Sync Library function in the Library Manager is a fairly esoteric function, designed only for certain use-cases. It is generally not designed for a situation where all PCs are on the same LAN. It is targeted more at syncing a Library over to a laptop that might be used offline and away from home.
MC's Media Network system is designed for most other situations.
hmm this might not be needed for the OP, so O.T.
@Glynor is it really that esoteric? been using this for years when I do extensive tagging and wantt to ensure a realtime sync ... the autosync syncs tags ervy so often but not immediately .. been doing this for years, is there a better way?