Notice: Members with an underscore in their username will not be able to log into the Wiki; this is a limitation of the MediaWiki code so if you wish to amend your username please email me.
Windows Home Server
From Mediacenterhouse
This is a version of Windows (Windows Server 2003 to be exact) that comes with a few additional features for the sharing of media across the home. Slightly cheaper in price to that of a normal Windows OS license, and able to 'manage' upto 10 PCs, once installed it is designed to be left running with no monitor or mouse/keyboard attached - a 'headless' installation. Its main screen is very basic and reminiscent of the first XP release and all of its clever stuff lies in 'services' that run in the background and are only accessible through the Home Server Console from the other client computers on the network.
For hardware it needs nothing more than a basic PC to run (a P4 CPU with 512Mb RAM is enough, although Gigabit ethernet is a must for speed) with the only desirable feature being the ability to hold and connect plenty of hard drives. Its main feature is it creating the storage visible on the network as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks), so you can fill the PC up with whatever drives you may have lying around and it will combine them all automatically to create one large network folder with sub folders for Videos, Music, Photos, Software and RecordedTV, be warned that these drives are formatted when added to the Home Servers network storage! At the moment (Jan2010) a 1.5Tb SATA drive is aprox £80, so even with newer drives server storage has never been easier or cheaper to implement.
Once the Home Server has been installed on its dedicated PC, by simply visiting http://server:5050 on the other PCs in your home you can download and install the Windows Home Server Connector software which once installed then remains visible in your system tray highlighting the Home Server status (green for On and Healthy). The network shares of Videos, Photos etc are automatically added as watched folders in Media Center by the Home Server Connector software, and with the release of the Power Pack 3, Windows Home Server will also automatically move your RecordedTV material to itself so you can access it from any other PC automatically.
