Chris Lanier

I agree 100%.  The second I heard about Windows Home Server I immeidately thought that its true calling was to serve also as the central media center of the home . . . streaming its content to devices like the 360 placed elsewhere in the home.  It has all your other media files anyways, so why not your recorded tv shows?

Actually, I'm not sure if I entirely agree.  I'm of the opinion that part of the problem with the Media Center concept thus far is that it's just far too geeky and costly for most humans.  

A headless, self managing appliance that costs under a thousand coupled with inexpensive extenders capable of streaming wirelessly to every room in the house might be just the thing to draw more people in.  I've yet to show my Media Center / Extender setup to a person and not have them impressed with what it could do, and this is with SDTV, V1 extenders, and ethernet.  Vista HD support, 802.11n wireless, fully functional extenders and a headless client that doesn't require much attention could be just the thing.

I REALLY wish Microsoft would take the time to release the product.  IMHO it's time is here.

I think Microsoft should take a

XBox (w/USB Tuner) => WHS (MCE enhanced) => Extender (same XBox, other PCs, other XBoxs, etc) approach were the encoding is done on XBox and then a simple data stream is sent to WHS.  This would keep WHS hardware requirements to a minimum.  And for Microsoft, it would further add value to XBox...enable sale of games and enable Media Center (were thousands of MC enabled PCs don't include tuners).

$299 XBox

$599 WHS

=========

$899 ..great value

If the rumors are true about update XBox hardware in Q4 then I think it would lend itself nicely for a Quiet living room experience.  I can then see Microsoft create tuner add-ons for XBox like a thumb-drive sized USB std/atsc tuner or USB OCUR/CableCard Tuner.

We aren't talking about that much more than what home server does.  makes way more sence to have tuners in that thing and some extender interface.   You don't want that, don't buy tuners for it.  its minimal cost increase to make it do both.  but it the config you want.

Then you can go from mce to extenders to home server as your upgrade allows but doesn't break the home storage and backup market at all.  

It can do it all, and I'm tired of the V2 will be better and they'll just buy it again.  I"m tired of rebuying equipment for media center.  home server NEEDS to do tv and extender distribution or its not a server and just a nas.  

Great post, you inspired more extensive thinking about what markets Media Center is best for and what it takes to do well in those markets.

http://thunor.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!71C238B5E0E3724D!171.entry

As detailing in my post, some keys: better home networking; desire for a multiroom solution; and the expanding world of internet media all would be quite helpful for MC in addition to a Media Center server.

I completely agree with you Chris. As has been said so many times in recent times, Making the OCUR an OEM only option makes it difficult for us to "warm up everyone else".

I just hope one of the BIG OEMs makes a reasonably priced OCUR compliant rig suitable for me needs.

Given what I understand, you cannot directly record via a shared drive, DFS, etc.  I see no advantage of this product over just buying a big, fat Vista Media Center.  You can share from that box anything you want to share.

A Home Media Center Server is exactly what I want.   In my house, all of my systems are MCE with tuner cards, plus a primary MCE box driving my TV with dual tuners.  My family loves it, but we're running into picture quality issues with all the splitters and bosters only help so much.   Ideally, I would have a MCE server with 4-8 tuners that not only handles the music, picture sharing, but also all recording needs.   I want any of my desktop systems or Xbox to act as extenders to access the available media streams.   If you make it simple to manage, headless, it would be a BIG hit with lots of people.  Helps create the true digital experience that MCE promotes.   Would I spend 2-4k.  Yes, if I could start of with a base system (1-2 tuners, 500gb storage or <, with the ability to expand storage and tuners.

I simply want the ability to record to and watch from a NAS share from multiple MCX.  With a hard-wired GbE connection, this should be easy...I fail to see why this artificial restriction continues to exist.  

I saw a comment from one of the WHS product managers who said..."people have multiple PCs in the home that want to share data".  Well, the same applies for TVs!!  I just want *one* server with to enjoy my Pictures, Music, DVDs and Recorded TV through the MCX experience!!!

Help me understand.

So, what you are saying or implying is that I cannot have a Vista MC box at my main Household televisions with say a small 80GB drive and then use them to record to the shares on this server?

If I cannot do that, can I at least record to some other shared network drive and then have that backed up to the central server and then PLAY the video from the server?

Without recorded over-the-air HD video, this is useless.  If I want a centralized backup for Photos, Word Docs and MP3s, I will either buy a $100 external drive or a $200-300 NAS device.  

To answer Jim, I think you can indeed record the shares onto the server.

Whether an extender can see the shares, I can't say (it might - I just really don't know.)

Now for my own comment:

I would really like to see TV tuning integrated into WHS as well. Having a headless solution with extenders would be great for my parents. Actually, sounds a bit like a super Tivo.

However, I have question: would implementing TV recording, particularly for HDTV, on the WHS box greatly up the processing requirements (and, therefore, cost)? This seems to be implied by John's comment about leveraging an XBox for encoding. Having multiple tuners would only exacerbate the situation.

If the processing power goes up, what would distinguish a WHS from a Vista MC box with a really big hard drive? Would the differences be compelling in light of the increased price?

Alternately, since most people would buy WHS only if they have multiple home PCs on a network, as long one of them has a TV tuner and XP MCE/Vista Home Premium/Ultimate it seems like you're set.

In that case, the main advantage to having the tuners in the WHS is the ability to place this trendy looking WHS by your TV and hook up your cable/satelite, which might make it easier for the average household to move to MC (don't have to run cable wire to home office, etc).

Once again, this all supposes that the CPU/GPU requirements --> cost go up if you start stuffing in tuners.

It seems like Microsoft wants WHS to bring order to existing chaos, not start up new digital households by itself.