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Compatable Media Card for WHS? RRS feed

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    Since WHS will house my pictures, music, movies, etc, I was wondering if there is a decent Media card that someone can recommend?  I would like to just hit play on WHS and watch the movie on my T.V.   Is this an issue?  I tried to load Windows Media Player and it would not let it load.

    Thursday, August 23, 2007 9:23 PM

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    WHS is not designed to be a desktop OS that you log in to and use programs in every day. It's intended to sit in a corner and protect your data. It's designed around Microsoft's current server OS, Windows Server 2003, so you have limitations similar to that OS. This is why WMP 11 won't install. YOu'll find that there is other software that won't install, and you may also find that you can't locate drivers for some popular consumer hardware. Finally, you will probably also find that WHS simply disables certain hardware (probably because it's not needed to fulfil it's design functions). On my test server, the onboard audio is disabled by the OS, for example.

    In any case, WHS isn't designed as a home theater PC operating system. If you're looking for that functionality, you'd be much better off with Vista Premium or Ultimate, which has a lot of it built in. WHS is intended as a backup, data storage, and data sharing solution with some media features (it can stream some media, but the list of codecs supported is fairly limited).
    Friday, August 24, 2007 11:39 AM
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    I agree with Ken.
    You can use WHS to store the data (Muisc, Pictures, video, etc) then use XP, MCE PC, or a Xbox360 to access the data from WHS.
    I would let WHS do it's job and let the Media Center PCs do there's.

    Friday, August 24, 2007 6:09 PM

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    WHS is not designed to be a desktop OS that you log in to and use programs in every day. It's intended to sit in a corner and protect your data. It's designed around Microsoft's current server OS, Windows Server 2003, so you have limitations similar to that OS. This is why WMP 11 won't install. YOu'll find that there is other software that won't install, and you may also find that you can't locate drivers for some popular consumer hardware. Finally, you will probably also find that WHS simply disables certain hardware (probably because it's not needed to fulfil it's design functions). On my test server, the onboard audio is disabled by the OS, for example.

    In any case, WHS isn't designed as a home theater PC operating system. If you're looking for that functionality, you'd be much better off with Vista Premium or Ultimate, which has a lot of it built in. WHS is intended as a backup, data storage, and data sharing solution with some media features (it can stream some media, but the list of codecs supported is fairly limited).
    Friday, August 24, 2007 11:39 AM
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    I agree with Ken.
    You can use WHS to store the data (Muisc, Pictures, video, etc) then use XP, MCE PC, or a Xbox360 to access the data from WHS.
    I would let WHS do it's job and let the Media Center PCs do there's.

    Friday, August 24, 2007 6:09 PM
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    I use WHS to share the media and an Archos 605 wifi with DVR Station to access and see the media files on the TV. The quality and stability of this setup is great. One thing though: the WHS media share is in fact limited, so it's better to access the shares from the Archos and play the files from there. This way all files are accessed correctly including the DivX/Xvid subtitles.

     

    Saturday, August 25, 2007 1:54 PM
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     cmuralhas wrote:
    ... One thing though: the WHS media share is in fact limited, so it's better to access the shares from the Archos and play the files from there. ...
    This is probably because WHS has Media Connect 2.0, which only has the ability to stream a small number of file types. Solutions to this problem include forcing Windows Media Player 11 to install (there's a way to hack it to install on Windows Server 2003), or installing one or more third party media streaming tools.

    I don't stream movies from the server, so I don't worry about the video much. For audio, I use Firefly to stream to iTunes DAAP consumers throughout my house.
    Saturday, August 25, 2007 2:00 PM
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