Ian Dixon over at The Digital Lifestyle dropped me a quick IM this afternoon. He’s running a post today asking how his readers have attempted to integrate their Media Center set ups with Windows Home Server. It’s clear that these are two products which should, in a perfect world, work hand in hand to receive, store and distribute your digital media around the home. But unfortunately, the world’s not perfect, and WHS and MCE struggle to integrate, leading to a lot of frustration amongst users and a growing clamour for Microsoft to integrate the two products more closely in the future.
We thought it may be interesting to run the same debate with MCE and WHS users on both of our blogs at the same time and compare the responses from each side.
From a personal point of view, having been a dyed-in-the-wool MCE beta tester from the first UK release, I now admit to not utilising MCE at all in my home, due to its continuing lack of digital integration with Sky and a pretty shoddy experience with Vista Media Center. I’m hoping to have my faith restored by a future version.
Here’s Ian’s original post - feel free to submit your thoughts below, or over at our Media Serving and Streaming forum.
One of the problems with Windows Home Server is that out of the box there is no integration with Media Center. People have tried getting them connected (see this forum thread) but even without going to the lengths in the forum you can still use them together.
Do you store all your music on Windows Home Server and then distribute that to Media Center PCs, laptops and other devices (like ROKU Soundbridges)? Or do you have your content on the main Media Center PC and only use WHS as a backup tool. What about video, where do you like to store your video?
I leave my TV content on my Media Center PC and then archive selected shows to Windows Home Server. My music is all on my Media Center PC but I am thinking about moving it to the server.
So what are your thoughts? Do you not use WHS and use NAS devices or just add extra storage to your Media Center PC?
January 25th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
I have an EX470 with 4 500GB drives that holds my movies, music and photos. My Vista Ultimate box is connected to the server via a CAT6 network with a gigabit switch, as are 2 XBOX 360 consoles. I point my media center to my Home Server for the content, and watch it on the extenders. So far, no major issues other than a video hiccup now and then, when playing large WMV files. I plan on setting up an HDHomerun soon to integrate Live TV. Pretty happy so far, im able to stream two different movies at once.
January 25th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I can’t help but feeling that WHS should have MC capabilities built in, in future builds. After all we can stream from WHS to DNLA and other clients. Being able to have a few tuners in your server, to store and stream the recordings to other extenders would be ideal.
However, I have also played with MCE a lot and never been happy with it, so I stick with my DVR STB’s for recordng TV as they work reliably. Add in a Slingbox and I’m a happy bunny…
Now integrating the ability to interface to Slingbox in WHS as an addin would be a good idea!
January 25th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
All photo and music is on the EX470, 1.8 terabytes. TV is on the Vista MC PC. I’m planning on trying to set up WebGuide and see if this will ‘fill in blank spots’. I’m hoping Web Guide will be part of MC in a future release.
Rich
January 26th, 2008 at 2:02 am
All photos and home videos on EX470…but no Media Center integration, even though I want it very much. However the Music situtation is a mess and so is anything wth DRM. For me, I use the Zune music subscription service called Zune Pass. The problem with having this DRM content on WHS is that every 30 days you are required to refresh licenses. What we really need and I’ve been fighting for the need to have a License Manager service on WHS..that in turn can automatically refresh the licenses as needed. In addition, there should be a legal mechanism for transferring licenses from a Media Center/PC to WHS. Hi-Def CableCard is locked to the Media Center PC that recorded it. What happens when you want to upgrade that PC? WHS could be the perfect broker. As far as integrating Media Center software into WHS…I’d love to eliminate having to run a second device 24×7. Maybe in v2, they can forgo TV tuners and at least support serving the Media Center UI, Music, Videos and Photos. Whenever IPTV takes off, add support in Media Center for that…which eliminates the complexity/expense of a TV tuner.
January 26th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Hi
I have a home built Home Server. That has all my videos, music and photos. If i go to my vista ultimate pc an fire up MCE.. all is fine.. streams video. But when ever i go to xbox 360 to stream video on the mce extender, it freezes up. But if i take the Home Server out of the equation, and fresh install ultimate and stream a movie from my pc, it works fine.
Did that make sense??
January 26th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I have a homebuilt WHS with 5×500GB of storage. It holds my main collection of music (.mp3 and .flac), photo’s and video’s. The video’s are mostly DVD’s, categorized in a nice folder structure (kids\disney, music, movies, series etc).
On my XP MCE box, it’s easy to navigate all video’s, music and photo’s. Recorded TV Shows stay at the MCE except when I decide to keep them. Then, I perform a transcode to .wmv and store the (much smaller) files on the WHS. I also would like some tuner cards in the server and some nice transcoding solutions to shrink the dvr-ms - files to acceptable size during the night.
It’s a pity though, that the recordings on the MCE are by default not backed up on the WHS. That should be optional.
January 28th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Michiel - How are you encoding and playing your DVD on the MCE from the WHS? I have a similar setup, but I have some playback issues with VOBs stored on the WHS playing on the XPMCE using MyMovies. I think it’s a decoder problem in my case as they play fine in just the DVD player app. My intent is to use the XPMCE as a tv/media interface only (i.e. no keyboard or mouse just the remote). Which decoder are you using?
January 28th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Still running an old piece of junk for my WHS until HP do the right thing in Australia. Everything except recorded TV resides on the WHS including ripped DVD’s which play back on the Vista MCE without problem. My biggest frustration is that for music I’m primarily an iTunes user. My Mac’s stream from firefly on the WHS no problem, but the MCE makes a right mess of trying to build the music catalog. Can’t see an album half the time, and inconsistanceies in metadata make for a poor experience. Has anyone tried the old HP media centre iTunes add-in on vista? maybe that could be a solution.
P.S. Since the December XBOX360 update I browse straight to the WHS for video and only use the media centre interface for Recorded TV.
January 29th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
DC - I don’t know about the decoder settings. I’ve got a Philips Showline Mediacenter, and everything was installed and worked out of the box. No fancy fiddling on the setup. On the server side, I created a folder for every DVD, and using software as DVD Decryptor, CSS encryption was removed. I dumped all the files from the ‘video_ts’ folder into a folder on the WHS Video (sub)folder. Added a square ‘folder.jpg’ to that folder.
And then, on the Mediacenter (Mind you, Windows XP Media Center 2005), I added \\server\videos to the Video’s folder. You can then browse to the ‘My Videos’ from the main screen and an icon for \\server\video’s is added. Clicking that icon and voila, the whole shebang is visible.
Good luck!
February 20th, 2008 at 2:18 am
I just tell my Vista media center to to add \\share\whatever and then I watch/listen to everything from my WHS on my HTPC. Done.
February 24th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I’m the same as Jason. I really don’t see a problem with MCE not being part of WHS. The only issue is with extenders, but why would you want one of those as the format support is poor?
March 17th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
we are using a vista ultimate laptop as our media center pc - the win home server is just seen as another pc n the network to find content from. I have not encountered any problems streaming content from it or any other pc
April 20th, 2008 at 7:33 pm
Hi Terry.
You do realise that you can intergrate Sky Digital (UK) into your media center setup. Using the amazing FloppyDTV S2 over at Digital-Everywhere.com not only can you watch SkyDigital in Media Center, but you can watch Sky HD in Vista too, although sadly not in MCE due to the lack of support for HD (cheers MS).
Great product and software install package makes installing it simple. Not wishing to sound like I work for them, just love the product….mind you a kick back for the plugg wouldn’t go a miss
Couple that with MyMovies (www.mymovies.name) the free dvd catalog and playback tool now with network support for multi system access to a single database, and Magic DVD Ripper (www.magicdvdripper.com) for ripping to your hard drive your personaly owned dvds (legal bit) and you have an wicked MCE setup. I know, because I do.
Matt
July 4th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
I don’t run MC, as I do not need to record shows. I do run WHS and three first gen Xboxes with “the mod.” Everything is hard wired with cat 5 on a 100 mb system. Xboxes are connected to surround sound stereo systems. Can watch a movie on all three at one time with no lag and no issues with my WHS built with oooold slow-by-today’s-standards hardware.
May give MC a try just to see, but the thought of extenders and such seems pricey vs the gain. Though, connecting a MC to a TV would let me surf the net on the big screen