What I would like to do now is capture FreeviewHD TV etc on WHS and stream it to the various TVs and PCs using either a STB, PS3 / XBOX or if necessary Media Center PC.
In this situation WHS could just serve up the live or recorded MPEG4 files.

I think this could probably be implemented as a WHS plugin.
I could go with Sage TV HD…

Also, Microsoft could and probably should make it an immediate priority to see that MC can play any and all file and content formats. If you have MC then you have fooled with codecs and have spent some time trying to get some type of media to play or had to deal with some DRM issues. Balmer could eliminate this hassle (Microsoft should have the capital and resources to do so) and would thereby make MC much more viable.

1. WHS takes over all the parts that is nessecary for recording tv, radio etc., and the MC-software in Vista and (when it arrives) 7 is reduced to a front-end/software-remotecontrol.

2. MC continues to record tv, radio etc., and at a certain time, transfers the recordings to WHS.

I would prefer the first solution. Why? Simple, the current solution, as well as the second, requires two computers to run at all times, which is a waste of energy, especially considering how little work WHS has in most scenarios; it should have no problem also controlling a couple of video-cards.

If the two were combined, the hardware reqs for the server would probably increase and lost of people (myself included) would probably have to upgrade their systems.

Just as Steve, I was 100% sure that WHS includes some sort of MC, even was searching on how to start it instead of searching whether it present.

Just one persons thoughts

I don’t think we’ll see it until WHS v2 though, and rightfully so. WHS v2 will no doubt be built on top of windows server 2008. This is great because, server 2008 has new capabilities to strip down to only necessary parts. For instance, why should the DNS component of the server even be there if I don’t need it? In server 2008 it doesn’t have to be there because you can easily create special purpose servers. Hopefully the same will be true for WHS and media center. They should be able to strip down Windows Server 2008 as much as possible to make WHS v2 the best it can be, including media center support :)

This is something I wrote about when I first touched WHS in its final form… I didn’t speak up externally before that, because I was holding out hope that MS would have at least fixed the hinderance of blocking MC recordings.

WHS’s strength is the fact that it is a true server. It’s strength lies in its ability to be a file server and hub. A Media Center’s strength lies in its ability to provide a rich media and simplified user-experience when dealing with the variety of different media types it handles. Also, the PVR aspect of a Media Center’s capabilities cannot be ignored – that in itself chews up a lot of internal CPU and GPU bandwidth – internal to the Media Center machine that is. You really don’t want a WHS machine being bogged down with that.

A Media Center is a very user interactive focused system. WHS is supposed to be an appliance – it sits in a closet somewhere and silently does its magic.

The physical logistics is another consideration. Any system that would double as a Media Center would have to be in close proximity to your entertainment system (i.e. TV, surround sound system etc.).

What I would like to see is a stripped-down and simplied overall configuration for a Media Center/WHS equipped house:

1. A dedicated Media Center system and OS with a killer graphics system that can drive high-def video systems and 7:1 surround-sound. It would also have gigabit network connection (wired, not wireless – wireless is OK, but still not fast enough) and just enough internal hard driver storage for the OS and the PVR live TV Pause buffer. All the video codec processing and playback happen on this machine because it has the GPU and CPU bandwidth to handle it.

2. The dedicated WHS system that seemlessly connects to the Media Center (and vis-versa), which stores all the content (pictures, TV recordings, music, etc). The Media Center drives all its content (except for the Live TV Pause buffer) to WHS and allows for the sharing of all of that content among all of the machines on your network. You would even be able to set Media Center TV recording times via the WHS remote web site and view the same content (even recorded TV) over the same web site.

While it is true that one system could ultimately cost less, I believe that the best results in performance, reliability and quality of experience would come with dedicated systems that serve discrete functions.

1. Softsled. There is still no simple way to aggregate multiple Media Center installations together except by extenders. The trouble is that there is no extender software that will run on a Vista installation. Maybe a UPnP service for media center to share content is the logical next step. Which brings us to the next problem:

2. DRM. I currently use a CableCard Media Center PC, but the recordings that it has are not available to my other Media Center PC because of DRM. What Microsoft needs to add is the failed idea of “Castles.” They were like mini domains for the home. If Media Center did get rolled into WHS, there would need to be some way to authenticate multiple PC clients to the content being recorded.

This is still all moot however as (if I’m not mistaken) the team that manages the development of WHS is the same team that does SBS and EBS. This is a totally different team from the Media Center development team, and it is unlikely we will see collaboration between the two.

My preference would be for Media Center to be easier/simpler to combine with WHS but for it to be possible to purchase WHS by itself.

Also, please, make WHS V1 to V2 upgrade very cheap …

Seriously though; Media Center should be integrated into WHS so it would be possible to really, really have just one HUB for all media in a house. You could beef up the WHS server and put like 4 decoders in it and stream TV to all rooms in the house. If we got a softsled as well that would be awesome! Or perhaps just a Silverlight client? :)