Jess Zahn, a Program Manager on the Media Center team at Microsoft, does a fantastic job of enagaging with the WMC community over at The Green Button in the Ask Jessica area of TGB’s forum.
Today, Jess is looking for your ideas on how Media Center should integrate with Windows Home Server. She writes:
Your turn: I want to hear how you want Media Center to integrate with Windows Home Server.
Some ideas: A tuner farm, where all your tuners are stored and you watch TV on other Media Centers or Extenders throughout your house?
A single location (basically, a network share) for recorded TV, music, photos, etc, and your tuners are on other Media Centers in your home?
Other ideas?
So, if you’re one of those people frustrated at WHS’ refusal to automatically backup your Recorded TV folder, or you want to give your views on future integration (think WHS v2/Media Center vNext) then tell Jess what you want.
For me? I don’t need a heap of tuners inserted into WHS - the hardware requirements would go through the roof. But yes, it would be great if WHS didn’t exclude Recorded TV from its automated backups, and I’d love Media Center Extenders (inc. Xbox 360) to be able to playback a lot more file formats from WHS.
So, it looks like the MC and WHS team are talking, and who knows, we may have seen the first buds of WHS v2 activity….
September 17th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
What I’m looking for is the ability to centrally store and retrieve recorded shows from any MC on the network, with the option to record them locally as well. In addition, I’d like to be able to play shows stored on a local MC from another MC on the network, and the ability to configure any MC’s record options from any other MC on the network. I got spoiled by Replay TV over the past 5 years or so. I have 5 Replays connected in my house, and can access any Replay from any other Replay, but they don’t do high def, so I’m starting to look for a system that will, without giving up any of my current functionality.
November 14th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I recently purchased a decent HP media centre running vista - quad core, 500mb video, 860gig Hard diskand and 8gig RAM…
and an Xbox 360 elite. I already had a decent wirespeed wired network.
I had everything setup within a hour.. with no instructions, setting up PVR functionaly, schedule recordings, streaming content via Xbox and love menu system was a breeze.. M.S got it right for one.!
but I didnt buy £1350.00 worth of equipment to just be able to have PVR.. as there are cheaper ways to do this!
One of the other big advantages of the Media Centre/Xbox it to backup my huge pile of purchased DVDs and stream to any TV in the house with a media extender attached.. this is a god send as my kids had loads of DVD’s piling up around the TV, getting eaten/scratched etc, and now its clutter free and kids can watch stuff on other TVs.. so adults get to watch adult TV also. then combine with the Nice PVR with loads more storage that Sky + (plus Ive seem triple TV tuners!) and music storage played in various rooms via wireless music players.
Plus media centre PC makes an ideal beefy games PC.. and Ive checked I can play games and play content on the TVs with no hassle… and also media cenre is the family PC…
Only slight reconfig I needed to do was due to jumpy video quality for HD quality on WMV (Zune/WMV 1 was ok though ) i know my network was fine as its wired 100/1000 LAN, in the end I traced down to there is a family & a High def setting on Xbox setup.. which fixed the problem… plus I moved Xbox to 100Mb port on switch and changed media server to full duplex… but setting on ebox to High def probably made the difference.
Hoping this helps someone out.
Has any tested/installed duel/triple tuner cards with Vista media centres - how did it work?
December 1st, 2007 at 7:50 pm
I am having nothing but trouble trying ot get my xbox360 to see my shares on my Windows Home server.
What steps did you take to make this happen?
When I go to my xb360 and then hit media then go to My Videos then hit “Add Videos”
My WHS Shares are not visible.
Any suggestions?
December 1st, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Hi Jon,
Have you enabled Media Sharing? Go to the Settings Tab on your home server and you’ll see a Media Sharing option - enable it and you should be fine.
Terry
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:46 am
I think the problem is the Guest account must be enabled and given read access.
Testing now but I am almost certain it will work.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:29 am
Hmm still think I have perm issue somewhere but I am a step closer.
December 2nd, 2007 at 3:20 pm
For MPG PLay back and other codecs Media Center MUST be used.
So basically I have a media center pc that points over to my whs box for the data files.
But in order for the xb to make a connection to the WHS server GUEST must be enabled and with read permissions.
Not thrilled about this but it is the *only* way it will work.
MS should have had it read the MCX user and emulated it for permissions.
I any event I got it working and if anyone else needs a hand with this just let me know.
January 31st, 2008 at 9:29 am
Guest does not have to be enabled for you 360 to see the shares on your WHS box. All you really need to do is to enable Media Sharing on you WHS and then search for sources on your 360 (Press the X button once your under Videos and that should locate the WHS server. Note that you also need to open a certain set of ports if you have a firewall on your WHS or your router)