Vista Media Center Server
on 02.01.07, 06:14am in media • digg this • comments (9)
Well, now that Windows Vista is officially out the door, I finally decided to upgrade my Media Center Server (more here and here) from Media Center 2005 to Vista Ultimate.
So far, I’ve been really happy with this setup:
- The ‘theater’ room is entirely run off an XBox 360.
- The 360 pushes video via VGA (I used to use DVI when the MCE was in that room, and HDMI wasn’t really an option when I bought it in 2004) up to a Sanyo Z2 projector displaying 1080i on a Da-Lite 106″ screen.
- In the wiring closet on the other side of the house sits my “Vista Media Center Server”, which is basically just used as a mechanism to drive the 360 (via media center extender mode) with all sort of content. Since the box is basically ‘headless’, I shut off a bunch of services, including aero glass (no need for it taking up extra memory, etc).
- Also sitting in the closet is a 2TB Infrant ReadyNAS that’s used as a central storage device to place all my movies, music, photos, etc. And, to get Vista to use these via the extender, see this post. (Side note: I’ve had several folks ask me “why not use Windows Home Server“? The reason: I wanted a super small footprint network storage device that I could run today. WHS looks like it would work perfectly for this scenario in a few months, but the hardware isn’t out yet.)
Anyways - this provides me with a really nice, WAF (wife acceptance factor) friendly setup in the theater, with all the benefits of the new version of Media Center. Now, the only thing left to do is show Liz how to turn on the 360, the projector, the receiver and get into Media Center mode. 
LonerVamp (February 1, 2007 @ 7:21 am)
This is intriguing to me, although I can’t go full in with permanent fixtures in my rented apartment. A couple questions.
1) Do you tend to download your movies or rip them off your owned DVDs? No, I’m not going to be ethics-police. I’m just curious, as it might give me an idea how full you fill that 2TB drive and what might be appropriate. I guess other than being lazy and putting in a disc, there’s not much reason to rip my own DVDs to a drive (unless they are Netflix and I’m just making a backup just in case their disc gets lost in the mail…I’m doing them a service, right? right?).
2) Any ballpark on how much that NAS cost ya? Just not finding pricing, but looks like a nice solid unit for many years, plus your SATA drives. Drives aside, I wonder what that chassic costs?
I will admit, as much as I’d like to do this, I won’t get a project like this done anytime soon. My first step will be the Xbox 360 to my plasma TV. Then I can look into a media center and NAS. But the NAS can have further benefits on my network until then.
Ian (February 1, 2007 @ 7:55 am)
I did the same thing, I have the 360 as my main device and Vista Ultimate running on my Media Center box as a server.
I wrote a post on it on my blog
http://iandixon.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!36983156CAA83EA9!1762.entry
Timmy (February 1, 2007 @ 8:21 am)
You need to get a harmony remote…
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/detailsharmony/US/EN,CRID=2084,CONTENTID=12498
Willy (February 1, 2007 @ 8:56 am)
I serve to 360 as well and this is my wifes 2nd favorite battery operated gadget in the house…
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/detailsharmony/US/EN,CRID=2084,CONTENTID=11250
John (February 2, 2007 @ 8:26 pm)
Steve, please explain how you managed to get DVI video out of your 360.
Steve (February 4, 2007 @ 9:12 am)
Oops, my bad. I had forgotten that it was a DVI connection when I had the MCE box set up in there. Now that I’m on the 360 exclusively, I’m using VGA up to the projector.
Sorry bout that.
PJ (February 13, 2007 @ 12:22 am)
For this setup to stream cable or terrestrial video, your house has to be hard-wired with 100MB/s or preferably gigabit networking, correct? In other words: for TV via MCE we´re all still stuck to either a decentral architecture (hosting the MCE with direct connection to the TV) or to do some serious home renovation..
PJ
OffBeatMammal (March 2, 2007 @ 12:40 pm)
Just out of interest has anyne managed a good solution to get archived or changer hosted DVDs from the MCE to Xbox (I notice you the comments here http://blogs.msdn.com/smakofsky/archive/2004/12/26/332579.aspx that you’ve had a similar setup to me)
It means I still have a PC and the Xbox next to the TV and too many cables for WAF 
I’ve tried things like Runtime360 running behind MyMovies and it just doesn’t want to work on my Xbox360
Chris Luce (March 8, 2007 @ 7:14 am)
I have a similar setup as well. I’m running Vista on a SFF box in the garage where I have it displaying on a 7′ screen via 800×600 projector. 1 HD OTA tuner and an nVidia DualTV tuner. 10/100/1000 throughout the house on CAT 5e where the xBox 360 picks it up in the living room. I run a Server2003 box on a dual Opteron as a domain controller. I have a RAID 5 array that is currently at 750GB. I’m working on making Media content available to Desktops, Media Centers and Extenders. I also have another box with a dual tuner card in it that I schedule stuff that won’t fit on the main MC. It would be nice if 1 Media center could handle all the scheduling for multiple Media Centers on a network. I am aware of multiple tuner hacks, but if you have the hardware, why not use it? Also most newer computers are short on PCI slots, and tuners are slow in coming with PCI-e. Some other projects I have in mind are ripping some of our Series DVDs (24, One Tree Hill, OC, Firefly, etc) to the server. Another thing would be access to netflix queue and netflix video through the Extender.
Just so I am a giver, if you press the green button on your 360 remote, it will power on and go directly to the Media Center interface, even with a DVD or game in. Might help the WAF. Use a Harmony remote and you could turn everything on with one button.