Lying in bed watching TV this weekend I found yet another perk to Windows 7; the ability to watch currently recording material from another PC across the network without waiting for it to finish recording.
Take this screenshot from the bedroom TV showing the availability of a BBC HD recording from the lounge PC halfway through broadcast, and even though it lacks any proper metadata from the guide about program length etc (which I guess is written once the file is closed)…
…it plays as if it’s a local recording. Brilliant.
I have already recently found through installing the Windows 7 Release Candidate on both my Media Center PCs at home that sharing Recorded TV across the network not only displays it in the main Media Center menu but also brings up thumbnails (a feature always missing from previous versions of Windows, unless you hacked it), and now that a program halfway through recording on another PC can also be played as well it adds another great feature to the system.