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It made a lot more sense before CableCard. CableCards are the stumbling block to a Media Center Server. I think most people that say new $1800+ CableCard MC boxes are to expensive are looking at the big picture. Given all the major cable providers are in the process of going to SDV in the next year or so, CableCards become useless at that point. I know I can't justify the cost for only a year or 2 of use.

Rewind a year or 2 and you could get dual tuner cards for  $200+/-, there was no HDCP requirement, only ATSC was available for HD streams, all in all you could get away with pretty light specs and still have a fully capable Media Center Server for not much money. Hell, my "old" MCE box IS my WHS now after having been let down by this whole CableCard fiasco.

No, I don't really see the point.  If I wanted a Media Center "server", all I'd do is put a standard Media Center PC in the corner of the room and not attach a screen... Perfect... Or at least, it would be if softsled was around.  IMO, softsled is far more important than a device or OS which calls itself a "Media Server"... After all, you need things to serve to! (and yes, I'll be getting a Pika Extender as soon as they're out, but I also want the same functionality on my laptop / PDA please!).

It makes perfect sense, and I'd buy one, IF the extender could do everything the regular Media Center PC could.  

Splitting the front end/back end services is not a hard concept to understand, even for my mom and my wife.  BUT, it would have to be a seamless process, plug and play , before they would be able to use it.  My family members opinion is make it as easy as WHS to install/use and they would consider it.

WHS would not require tremendous hardware to run the MCE interface & applications.  This includes streaming centralized music & photos which WHS already does today.  WHS also streams video today.  Where you folks seem to find fault is the reasonableness of configuring WHS to support Live TV streaming and DVR.  I'm not going to argue with that but there are many consumers today who would be happy with just a Music/Photo solution.  And I would argue that WHS is adequate to support a Movie download service.

I would buy one, or really build one. Actually I have built several over the last couple years.

I think this critical to own the garage. I don't think anyone really wants the heft of the full system in the living room. The boxes that are quite and small enough to fit in don't have the power of storage or expandability to make it worth while compared to what you get out of back end server.

I wish windows home server natively supported the MCE blade architecture for the 360 and other extenders.

My utopia dream is to have one open ended server on the back end that can capture (from any vendor, cable card, sat, ota, IP/TV whatever it shouldn't matter) and stream to any of my media to any end point that I own. My extenders in the house, my phone, my wifes phone, our cabin in timbukto if that is what I really need.

I would pay for this, I would pay a lot of get out of the yoke of proprietary service providers like dtv, comcast etc. I don't mind paying for delivery but everything else chaps my hide as a consumer.

I would absolutely love it if they can add media center to home server.

My fileserver at the moment runs Vista because of media center. I extend the MC experience to my 360. I want to sidegrade (it is not an upgrade or downgrade imo) to home server, but it does not have MC.

The current featureset of home server is good for me, but I am not building another dedicated box for either one.

and for the record, that Vista box im running my fileserver and mc needs on has a network and a powercable attached... god bless remote desktop.

It should be the same price as either a MC Vista box or a HS box.

In terms of extra costs there aren't really. I dont think it should be a stand alone package next to HS. It should be an integral part of the next HS update.

Chris, I agree that adding more features to cablecard PC's that are already expensive is difficult from a marketing perspective.  That said, it just makes too much sense to not merge WHS and MCE.  Just like you can buy cablecard and non-cablecard PC's, you should be able to buy cablecard and non-cablecard WHS boxes.  Leave MCE desktops and MCE set-top boxes for those that want a simple solution, but have cablecard equipped WHS for those that want a true one-box solution.  In reality, with the advent of cablecard and V2 extenders, what is the real purpose of having MCE in a desktop or set-top box?  All the high-end MCE companies (Vidabox, Niveus, Inteset) are really just trying to fit servers into a set-top box, but why hassle with having a big, loud, noisy machine in the TV room if you can get access to everything you need through a V2 extender or 360?  Once you get the cablecard MCE out of the TV room, then your options for adding more tuners and HD's is a lot easier without having to worry about space, heat, noise etc.

As an aside, I wonder how many people with high-end MCE's from Niveus, Vidabox, Inteset etc. already have their MCE stored in another location and essentially treat it like a server anyway.

Chris,  

I was one of the people that made those comments. I think you have a point but are missing the bigger point.

That is:

It isn't just about price.

The other points that make this desirable:

The full computer media center is noisy, bulky, and is one more full fledged PC that comes with all the standard PC headaches, backups, maintenance, updates, configuration, etc.

I think it would be very beneficial to have one central authority for sharing out shared resources, Live TV, music, video, and then have quieter, easier to maintain dumb clients (extenders, both hardware/software) that accept those streamed services. That way I have one place to back, one machine to configure, one machine to work out issues, etc.

My two cents anyway.

Chris, a tuner-less WHS that supports IPTV/DVR and serves MCE interface & applications, I would pay $600 for that.  A WHS supporting those capabilities should run fine on a low-end dual core processor.  HP has been able run 6 HD streams from their MediaSmart WHS (35watt, AMD 1.8Ghz Sempron processor).  $600..thats about the same price for regular desktop.  Except with WHS, you can set it and forget it.  We have laptops at home and their availablility isn't guaranteed.  WHS solves that...just got to get the MCE interface going.  You may suggest, just buy a MCE PC.  But the point is, I don't a PC that everyone can muck with in our living room.  Using Extenders as the only means to display MCE minimizes that problem.  MceWhs is just cleaner in my opinion.

Chris, the current CableCard PCs are too expensive for some reason.  Is it the fancy custom enclosure that looks nice in a component rack?  It is the super-quiet cooling system?  Is it the Blu-Ray reader/writers?  Is it large profit margins?  I don't know.  I'm running Vista Media Center with 2 analog and 2 OTA HD tuners that streams to multiple 360s on about $700 worth of hardware that I built myself.  You don't need $2k worth of hardware to make HD work well in a "server" media center box.

What I want is an OEM to make a dual CableCard box that is like that ($700 + the cost of 2 CableCard tuners).  Put it in a loud beige box for all I care.  It's going in my Laundry room anyway.  Leave out the fancy optical drives.  As far as I know, Dell is the only one who comes close to that today (but they make you buy a BluRay drive and a Monitor).

So, $1300-1500 for a basic dual cablecard Vista media center machine.  I'd buy that.

P.S.  I don't personally care about the WHS feature set.

Chris,

I am talking from a enthusiast point of view, not from a mass market point of view. My response was would ease some of my pain. For mass market, they need to first remove the word Server from WHS unless they are focusing on the enthusiast. Usability is my forte and the Server word alone will scare a lot of people away. It may simple, but it is like saying Windows Home Rocket Science to a lot of consumers. If I purchase WHS, which I will do, then I still have to have another PC stuck in the closet for MCE. Which I won't do until cablecard prices fall.

You may be correct in that it isn't the path they will follow, but as always, marketing is over half of the battle whatever path they do take.

Great blog btw.

I don't know if I want or even know why I would want a Media Center Server I mean isn't that the whole point of MCE in the first place? They already have a client/server architecture in place with Extenders/MCE so why would I want a client/server/server ? What happens to my existing MCE machines?

If the Media Center Server could do all he things that are missing right now - such as Softsled, full media streaming support regardless of codec, multiple picture-in-picture support, integrate multiple MCE machines to a MCE cluster then I'd be interested.

As it stands right now, all I want are functionality updates (software) not hardware - thx.

"It just doesn't make sence to me why you would spend money for a product called a "Media Center Server," when current Media Center PCs and CableCARD PCs are really "servers" to begin with, and yet we all complain about the high price of these PCs.  Why?"

Yes, they are indeed expensive, but cost is only part of the equation. The real question is one of Value. As I said in my post above, CableCards have a very short life expectancy. Shell out a bunch of money for an OEM CableCard PC, that's only going to last till your local cable provider switches to SDV at which point OCURs become useless. In addition to that there is no apparent upgrade path, it's only been recently that rumbling of Bidirectional cablecards are even being worked on.

So you spend big money on an OEM CableCard Media Center have it last for a year or 2. Then be in the position to quite possibly have to drop another big wad of cash on a Brand new OEM Media Center to get BOCR support IF they are out by then...

That's Why people complain about MCE prices, the Value is just not there. Now if BOCRs come out at comperable costs, and some other Cable network technology isn't on the horizon that will obsolete them, OEM MCE boxes might be more attractive even if the price points are the same.

So as this relates to Windows Media Server. If you've already decided to buy an OEM Media Center, and you plan to buy a WHS, it stands to reason that a Windows Media Server combining those 2 products isn't likely to cost more than buying both systems separately.

Finally to answer the overall question, Yes I would be greatly interested in a Windows Media Server that was even more expensive than today's OEM Media Centers. That is with 1 major caveat, It will have to have BOCRs or some other way to ensure it's going to be a viable platform for more than a year or 2.

This is just ridicules. I don't see how MS could take all of our comments the last couple of years and come away with this stupid idea.

We don't need a Media Center Server Edition; we already have Windows Home Server now. All MS needs to do is add MCE features to it and to add softsled like features to Vista and call it a day.

WHS should support extenders, multiply tuners, "MCE clustering" (you have three Vista boxes and all three connect to WHS for guide data and scheduling so that all recordings are made on the WHS box.) and full video streaming.

The point is is that MS already has a product out that could accomplish what we enthusiasts want as well as giving everyone else more "bang for the buck." Coming out with a MCE Server Edition is just going to fail and further diluted the market.... then again we are talking about a company that has, like, a dozen different versions of Vista. /sarcasm

We’re talking semantics here.  The existing Vista MCE IS A SERVER.  It servers/streams audio/video to extenders and servers files on the network.  MSFT differentiates workstation and server class operating systems by a variety of factors (how many cores it will support, what applications it’ll run,etc).  Many applications which run on MSFT server operating systems are available from third parties for workstation class OSs(web severing, etc.).  What we should be focusing on is the functionality we want in our applications.

WHS is a headless PC using a different remote administration tool.   They did a very nice job on it, but similar functionality can be achieved using Remote Desktop.  The backup application on WHS is great, I wish it was available on more products(like Small Business Server).

CableLabs will be tying MSFT’s hands for the foreseeable future.  DirecTV shows no inclination of being any different.    That means you’ll have a new OEM PC for CableCards…..and a different new OEM machine for DirecTV.  To my knowledge you can’t add CableCard tuners.  So if you don’t want to pay 5K for high-end 4-tuner system….that means two PCs.  Therefore future MCE integration will have to be peer-to-peer or hive based.  Unless we wait for a democratic president/congress and some new FCC rules and regulations.  But new regulations take FOREVER to be implemented (how long ago were CableCards legislated-10years?)

Finally I would argue that if Softsled existed today, the existing version of vista would be close to the Media Home Server proposed.  Vista still needs TONS of improvements, but it is a Home Media Server.

I'd pay between $500 - $800 and that's attainable.

I'm currently running Vista Media Center on a 3 year old Dell 3000, 2.8GHZ Pentium4, 2GB of memory with a nVidia DualTV tuner that acts as a media, file, backup, subversion and IIS server and it's completely headless, with all viewing done via my XBox 360 downstairs, managed via Remote Desktop when needed.  Guess what?  Works great.  

If a sub-$500 system like that can work as well as it does then there is no reason there can't be a $750 system that is WHS + a media server.  Home nerds are already gravitating towards having a server of some sorts, whether it's the more formal WHS, a cobbled together Linux system or a spare Server 2003 machine.  From there you just take the next step and add Media support.

I bought my Dell 3000 for $389 and it would have even been cheaper if I could have bought a version without the modem, mouse/keyboard ports, audio, video or expandable slots.  All I really need is power, LAN and a ton of eSATA and USB 2.0 ports.

I find it funny when people say things like, "Microsoft shouldn't focus on...", because that implies that there is a small number of people available for working on these issues.  Do you think that if the WHS team starts working on a WHS+MCE concept that the eHome/Media Center team will just stop working?

WHS+MCE is a great idea and it's time is coming.  Three years ago when I bought a new house I not only picked out cabinets and floors but also sound systems, network drops and the location and size of my patch panel where all my phone and data would come through and this isn't on some big expensive house, just a basic 1100 sqft townhouse in the lower end of our area.  I can easily see the next step being a "Server Package" where you can pick something from HP or Traquil and for $750 they plop it in a little cute home rack system with WHS+MCE installed.

Chris Lanier asks whether you would buy a Media Center server. I would. Leave him a comment with your

It's not really a question of would you buy MCE + WHS. But more of if I buy this MCE + WHS super product what does it solve? I keep going back to features but hey that is important. If this super product still doesn't support core features Softsled, or full video streaming, or cluster pooling, buy anywhere watch anywhere, etc. then what use is it?

After spending $1500 or whatever and the product still doesn't let you stream your damn wedding dvds then whats good about it?

I'd pay 1200-2000 for a MHS.

The existing OCUR tuners are too expensive.  The PCs are a bit difficult to get apples/apples comparisons.  

A MHS better have more functionality than my current TIVO Series3 setup....and be just as reliable/simple.  

chrisl, no one is saying that improvements such as softsled and zune/mce integration shouldn't come first.  But I think it is an equally desireable *future* to have MCE running on WHS hardware.  It seems to me that you are not sold on the value or marketability of WHS.  If you were then you probably would want some convergence as well.  Wouldn't you prefer to keep just one device (excluding modem/router) powered 24x7?

I like the Home Media Server concept.  I like the Media Center PC concept. I don't think it needs to all be in one box, but integration between components (MCE, Servers, Extenders) could be more robust and seamless.  I know others have said it before and perhaps Microsoft (Charlie Owens recent plea) is now willing to listen when users ask for simple things like the ability to record on a Media Center PC but then automate the moving of that file over to the Home Media Server for sharing across the connected home.  As for power...if you are in such a position as to be streaming HD content to 3-4 destinations at the same time, you may as well admit that your needs require more bucks.  For me...I have a MCE PC Athlon 64 3200+ w/1 gb ram, a Media Server Athlon 64 X2 5600+ w/2gb of ram, a 360 in the living room streaming off the server for my kids movies all day long and connecting with the MCE PC occassionally, and another MCE in the bedroom, and never a performance hiccup.  Now...I'd really like to sync the 360 with more than one MCE PC without all the hassle and integrated Directv, but I'm not entirely unhappy with where we are today.  My two cents.

chrisl:  I'd pay up to 2k for a MHS because i assume it could replace my existing SBS at that price point, and have substantial storage.

What's stopping me from buying one now?  Wife acceptance factor.  We HAD a MCE2005 and a MSFT comcast STB.  She didn't like the GUIs.  She also hated the bugs and updates common in PCs.  Her expectation is appliance level stability, and that means TIVO.

I have sat around and waited for the integration of HD Digital Cable and or HD Satellite for Media Center now for 3 or 4 years, the version two extenders are ridiculously behind schedule and overpriced (no Blu-Ray or HD DVD), this whole thing has been botched so bad now by lack of any real marketing and lack of product availability I don't believe there is any hope for what could have been a really cool basis for a home entertainment system, if not the best.

Media Center Server???? Please...get the first product right first, and it was already a server when applies correctly.

How can a company who dominates the OS, Software and Gaming markets do so poorly with this product? Not to mention most cringe when they here  the word "Vista" at this point as they clutch their antiquated XP machines to their graves.

It's over unless the extenders are around 100 bucks, there is reliable quad tuning digital cable and or directv media centers for under two grand, and they make the consumer understand the concept with some real marketing.

Chris:

You keep asking but no one is giving you the answer you're looking for--an actual price.

They've already sold me on this whole OEM only for HDTV structure.  I get that it's going to cost me more dollars, but it should have better than support than I can get from component manufacturers.

I'm a DirecTV customer with 13 boxes paying about $350 a month (when you factor in all the NBA, NFL, NFL SuerFan, MLB, College FB, Nascar Superfan options).  The only reason I've been waiting on pulling the trigger for an OEM VMC box to repalce my MCE2005 box sitting in my rack is that I'm worried the CableLabs ceritifed OEM Vista boxe's won't support DirecTV.  I've seriously considered changing to cable but with cable I lose the #1 benefit of DirecTV, all the extra HD channels.

My personal opinion is that DirecTV has already sold many many HD Vista Tuners, they just don't look like an ATI Ocur so we haven't noticed them yet.  THe HR20 and HR21 have ethernet ports, and I truly believe that since, and I may be wrong Chris, that the whole OCUR standard is somehow IP based, that maybe DirecTV is going to dump it's HD stream directly to the Media Center's hard drive.  I just think this is the only way to be somewhat upgrade-proof.  I know that cable is moving to SDV and DIrecTV is moving to MPEG4.  

If the provider owns the tuner, and the tuner is a box, then you can charge a full subscription fee for the box and the box can be upgraded for free.  Plus if they come out with better compression schemes or new technology, like SDV, then you can simply upgrade the box.

Anyway, I'd pay $1499 if it was a home media center / home server.  I'm not including OCUR or DirecTV tuner costs, becuase I fully expect to pay a monthly fee for those, even an additional monthly fee, which I'm willing to do.

I think the reason why everyone wants the vista media center server is that we want an ugly, loud, rack mountable media center device that can record HDTV.  Why do we want it ugly, loud, and rack mountable?  So that its cheap.  We don't care what it looks like or what it sounds like in our Media Closet.  If it could be quiet, fine, but I don't need burshed aluminum finish or LCD screen or even a $50 HDMI card.  $50 is 3.5% of the total cost I want to pay.  It doesn't sound like much, but if you can remove the LCD screens, sideshow screens, DVD drives, Blu-Ray drives, expensive cases, video cards, you can offer redundant hot swap power supplies, removable drive bays, next day onsite service.  Ideally I'd pay $1999 for a 4 or 8 core Dell PowerEdge 2950 with media center.  I'd pay for a hardware RAID card, but never for a blueray drive.  Microsoft doesn't allow me to legally play a DVD across the network (I'm not talking about copying it to the network, they won't even let me play the physical disk over the network, even in 480i and 2.1 sound) so why would I ever have a BluRay or HD-DVD player in my media center box.

If I could buy a Windows Home server for $1499 with redundant power supplies, adding an additional $500-$1000 for Vista Media Center capabilities is a steal. That's who they should be marketing the Vista Server to, the people who are already happily ponying up $1499 for a very redundant WHS box.  Then, you can tell your wife that the Tivo functionality is only an additional $500 bucks + a monthly fee from DirecTV.

If they had that, I wouldn't have to buy all this stuff on my business credit card and lie about how much money I've spent.

So again, my final answer.  $1499 for a good WHS box without cringing.  $1999 for a decent combo box.  (note, I'm not including any substantial hard drives in this because the consumer already knows they need to spend more for more space.  I'm talking about a base of two 73GB SAS / SATA drives in RAID 1.  But, I do want a 3 year warranty like Dell has.  You call, they send you the hard drive overnight, you send the defecting one back.  That's worth a lot of money.  I don't want to have to call the makers of components.  My time is worth more than the $500 I'll save building it myself.  Unless you're a gamer, or need a custom case, there is no reason imo to build your own station, save for saving a slight bit of money.  If you're in college and you're going to pirate the OS, then it's totally worth it.  With HD, it doesn't seem like you can do that anyway.

I lagged between starting my post and submitting it, as I was putting my daughter to bed.  The two previous posts weren't there when I started, but I do want to acknowledge they answered the question and submitted a price tag.

Also, like your blog Chris.

I have more comments. Yes, I do think that this is possible to do. SageTV does something very similar to this with Windows Home Server and the hardware requirements aren't very high. Just about a 3 GHz P4 will do for High Def. (And that's just to transcode HD down to SD.) Any modern processor would have no problem.

gblinckmann.spaces.live.com/.../cns!7386096BFC12195A!896.entry

Where to start...

I'd pay over $2000 for this and here is why.

My problem with Media Center currently is the Desktop OS.  While I have yet to make to jump to Vista MC, I find XP MCE very unstable.  And my experiences with Vista don’t make me think it’ll be any better.  I install and uninstall a lot of programs on my computer.  This eventually reduces stability to the point I have to rebuild it every year or so.  

Another big problem is I can’t use my computer when Media Center is doing something.  When I want to play MS Flight Simulator it takes 100% CPU and causes issues with Media Center.  I don’t want to watch “Gossip Girl” but I can’t use my computer when someone else is!  If this was on a server, I wouldn’t have this problem.

With WHS MCE, I would hope that it would be a stable server version of MCE!  With limited additional software installed on the Server, It would be Tivo Stable!  

I don't currently have Cablecards, it isn't because of the price.  I don't want to spend that kind of money to get access to 10 or so HD Channels Most of which I currently get OTA.  If DirecTV had a card available at the same price, I'd have them today!  70 Channels today soon to be over 100!!

Maybe DirecTV should release there own version of WHS!  Then they could lock it down.

This is indeed more expensive then just watching TV, but sometimes you have to pay to play.  We as early adopters always pay more.  If/When it takes off, prices will come down.  

I haven't read other people's comments, so sorry if I'm saying the same thing everyone else has said...

Yesterday I watched an online presentation about the HP MediaSmart Server based on Windows Home Server.  They had someone answering questions live.  Over and over people asked about adding media center capabilities, essentially a media center server.  There is no question that the interest is there.  The main issues are probably price and the added complexity of media acquisition/management.

The HP WHS-based server is $600.  I think they could offer a media center server for under $1k, which is well under the price of the high-end stuff offered by Niveus and others.  You can make it cheaper by specializing what it has to do.  WHS works great with a wimpy CPU, 500MB RAM, and no graphics card at all.  It isn't a compute server, nor is it a visualization server.  With the tuners doing the media encoding, the rest of the media center server's components could be as wimpy as the WHS product, which implies a lower cost.

I think the added complexity might be a bigger issue.  That seems to be why the WHS team shied away from media center in the first place.  And I think they underestimated the demand.

I would buy a WHS.  (I hate having to leave my pc on all the time just so I don't miss a recording.)  On the other hand there is no way in h**l that I am paying $1800 for it.  I might consider paying $600 for a headless, 500gb, dual tuner system.  I don't know how much cablecard would raise the price so I don't know what I would pay for that integration.  Why doesn't MS give the non-geeks an option to buy a Windows Media Center server that looks just like an extender?  They could sell tuners & hd upgrades that plug and play via usb.  The other "dumb" extenders would pull their content from this server.  If they can build and sell the Xbox 360 for $400 with a 20gb hardrive, they can surely add a 500gb hard drive and a couple of tuners and bring it in under $600.  That would really be the only need for a server edition of Media Center in my opinion, because those of us who really want it will build it ourselves.  We're not gonna pay the absorbent prices.  Plus, we can build small and upgrade as we go.  Glad to see Softsled being mentioned!

No, I wouldn't buy a Media Center Server, but I would buy a server built to be an always-on server that has Windows Home Server, Windows Media Server and Windows Home Automation Server functionality.

Windows Home Automation Server includes lighting control, window shade control, audio/video distribution and video security camera control.

All this hooked up to a few Sony 400-disc DVD changers along with my home network would be a great solution for my home automation.