We Got Served

Whilst going into depth on the Windows 7 feature set revealed this week at PDC is well beyond the scope of WGS, there are a couple of new features in the released build that will be of interest to Windows Home Server owners that I’d like to highlight.

Should future versions of Windows Home Server sit on the Windows 7 codebase, these features will, in some way, be included within the product, so it’s worth checking them out at this point.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that no announcements have been made, and as far as I know, are planned at this point by Microsoft regarding future versions of Windows Home Server, so file this one under “interesting stuff” worth considering.

Homegroup

Windows 7 comes with a new feature called Homegroup, which improves home networking capabilities (replacing Workgroup creation in previous versions of Windows) - allowing computers and devices to connect and work together seamlessly.

Here’s how Microsoft describe it, “A HomeGroup allows you to easily link Windows 7 computers on your home network so that you can share pictures, music, videos, documents and devices. It also makes them ready to stream media to devices on your home network such as a media extender. You can help protect your HomeGroup with a password, and you can choose what you want to share.”

When you install and setup Windows 7 on a PC, you are asked if you want to set up a Homegroup - this is a collection of devices and computers that will connect and share data with each other.

Setting up a Homegroup is easy - simply generate a password on the first Windows 7 computer you install, and then type in that password into any other Windows 7 machines you add to that homegroup when running through that same Homegroup wizard.

The PCs will be connected, and you’ll have almost immediate shared access to the Libraries (Windows 7’s name for media folders) across those machines.

You’ll have noticed a problem in there, right? Yes, that’s Windows 7 machines. Not XP, not Vista, but Windows 7 machines. At this point the M3 build of Windows 7 only supports homegroup connection to other Windows 7 systems, and at this point, no announcement has been made as to homegroup support on other versions of Windows.

Clearly, the Windows Home Server Connector has its own technologies for connecting machines across the network which works fantastically well, and connects machines running various releases of Windows (including Windows 7). How Windows Home Server will integrate (or otherwise) with Homegroup remains to be seen.

Windows Media Player

My hatred for Windows Media Player comes second only to my intense hatred of iTunes - WMP in Windows does it’s job, but if you have any kind of large music collection, it’s not great to use, particularly when it comes to library creation and management.

Three great pieces of news in Windows 7 with regard to Windows Media Player - firstly, the UI has had a big overhaul, and is starting to resemble the kind of media player 2008/2009 really deserves (although it’s nowhere near the gloss you get with the Media Center and Zune user experience).

Secondly, libraries are created automatically whenever you add content to key folders in Windows 7. The default media libraries are monitored automatically for new content, and added to WMPs library very quickly - you can test this by having WMP open when copying media across to the Music folder - as files are copying, you can see them pop into WMPs library. Hurrah! At last - take that iTunes!

Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, Windows 7 appears to be DLNA compliant! As soon as I opened WMP, it saw the DLNA media server PVConnect sitting on my HP MediaSmart Server, and could play back music  straight away via PVConnect.

That means that future versions of Windows Home Server (running Windows 7) will be DLNA compliant straight out of the box, negating the need for additional media serving software such as PVConnect/ TwonkyMedia in order to connect to DLNA-compliant Digital Media Receivers.

So, once again, a reminder that plans for future versions of Windows Home Server are currently shrouded in mystery, but if WHS does sit on the Windows 7 platform in the future, there’s a lot of under the hood plumping in there which should make life a lot easier indeed for home server owners.