Media Center Server
on 02.19.06, 06:12am in home theater, media • comments (7)
After my initial experiments last week with the XBox 360 as a MCE extender, yesterday I bit the bullet and completely ripped MCE out of my home theater. After gutting it’s essential components (basically the WinTV card), I decided to "transform" my RAID media ’server’ into a Windows Media Center Server - basically dropping in the WinTV card and reformatting the box with MCE. Since the box is next to my structured wiring cabinet, wiring in cable to it was a piece of cake.
I’m happy to say that after several hours of reinstalling software and downloading 53 (I kid you not) updates from Microsoft Update, everything is back up and running beautifully. The box (which has a terabyte of storage on RAID5) basically hosts all of my photos, MP3’s, videos and recorded TV content, that I can easily stream to the XBox in the theater, to the Tivo in the living room (photos and music), to any laptop around the house and to the networked DVD player upstairs. I might even go ahead and install Bonjour for Windows on it to see how the macs like it.
Not only was I able to eliminate 1 of the computers in the house, I now have a home theater that my wife can use.
Of course, the first question I was asked is how I’m streaming DVDs to the XBox. The quick answer is that you can’t directly stream, you have to convert them. More on that in a future post.
Ian Dixon (February 20, 2006 @ 2:41 am)
The 360 does make a really good extender. I just got mine and have moved my PC to the back of the room now where it works more as a server like you have done.
I like the idea of the PC being a Media server with lots of connected devices consuming content from it.
It somthing I talked about on my show quite a few times. I wonder whether there is enough demand for a SKU of a Media Center Server Edition?
I am going to read out some of you post on this weeks Media Center Show (podcast) if thats ok with you
Steve (February 20, 2006 @ 7:14 am)
Sure, that would be cool. Let me know when the podcast is posted and ill post a plug
Christoph (February 20, 2006 @ 8:00 am)
AMD has an interesting concept of an “Extended PC” which goes a little in the same direction:
http://www.iapplianceweb.com/story/OEG20060214AMDExtendedPCInsight.htm
DWAnderson (February 20, 2006 @ 8:03 am)
I have done the same thing with except I have 4 Xbox 360 extenders hooked up to a Media Center PC that sits in my basement. This has worked quite well. To my mind the main advantages are: (i) less chance of PC apps (e.g. a Java update) messing with the user experience when watching media; (ii) easy hookup to AV equipment with the component video and optical outputs; (iii) not haveing to administer 4 additional PCs; and (iv) many things can be set up once and are instantaly shares between all of the extenders.
I just wish that many of the online spotlight applications were designed to run well with the 360 extenders– most are not.
It would also be nice if DVD and CD playback could be accessed from the Media Center interface, but I realize this is inconsistent with the extender paradigm.
Steve (February 20, 2006 @ 8:20 am)
Wow - you were actually able to find 4 XBox 360’s? That’s a feat in itself.
Robert N. Lundy (February 28, 2006 @ 6:50 pm)
I did the same thing in December-moved the MCE box (2 ATI 550 cards & two Fusion5 lites) to my office. Finding two 360s before Xmas was a major chore, but I did and was amazed. My wife definitely uses the 360s more than she would ever use the MCE box. I added an Xbox I in the bedroom for my last SDTV. And I’ve never owned a game console. I’m 41 and haven’t played games seriously since Doom II. My daughter loves to watch me get killed by the PG3 pros on Live now. And how about some games I can play with a six year old!
I do wish MS would look at a SKU (maybe OEM/system builder only-like MCE has been-0 support costs) that incorporated the media storage, DVR, etc (recording) functions only, with full MCE pcs and 360s acting as the front ends. I went through a 3 month project of testing MythTV just because it had this functionality and in fact was optimized for it. Learned a lot about Linux-also figured out the WAF was going to be low.
The cheap hardware (think Dell SC430-big, quiet, cheap, cool, designed to run 24/7) would attract people with multiroom set-ups. once you have the MCE interface at one TV, you want it everywhere and the base 360 isn’t a giant investment if you’re hooking it to an HDTV.
Please go front-end/backend Microsoft!
Wesley Mullings (March 5, 2006 @ 7:53 pm)
Steve,
My name is Wesley Mullings. I am the Founder and owner of Digital Lifestyles, LLC. My company is a home automation design house, and we have the market that this server application would serve well! My company is developing several deals with a number of key manufacturers and software developers to make this solution real. The hub of the entire design is the MCE/Vista OS! I would like the opportunity to talk with you more direct to discuss ways of getting Microsoft interested enough to do some large-scale business. Thank you.