The 2nd UK Windows Media Center and Home Server User Group Meeting

The UK Windows Media Center and Home Server User Group Meeting takes place on June 12th in Birmingham, UK.

I was fortunate to attend last years meeting which took place in a evening slot, but this years event will be a whole day event from 10am till 4pm. This longer time frame will give presenters a lot more time to talk, answer your questions, and to allow more varied topics for you to hear.

This years meeting will also have vendors showing their Media Center and Windows Home Server hardware/software, with some great prizes to be won, including a Microsoft Zune HD, TV Tuners from Avermedia and a Sonos multi-room music system S5 Zone Player.

As last year, the event is free and coffee and muffins will be available at 9.30am for a 10pm start, with a prize draw at the end of the day.

The event is being held at “the studio” in Birmingham, which is in Cannon Street, within walking distance of New Street railway station, and with an NCP car park nearby.  Travel information is available here.

There are a limited number of places available, so register early to avoid disappointment.

Upgrading your WHS Hardware

WHS enthusiast Richard Hay explains the critical steps necessary when preparing to do your own hardware upgrade on your Home Server.

From the final backup before upgrading to bios setup for the new motherboard and finally restarting the discovery process, Richard takes you through the process which you can read about here.

The Computer Failed to Take a Snapshot of the Volume for Backup

Joe’s backups started to fail on his Windows Home Server, with the following message:

"The computer failed to take a snapshot of the volume for backup."

Joe found out that the error was due to his Windows 7 PC not having enough free space on the system reserved partition, with the solution to expand  this 100MB partition to a bigger size, which worked in Joe’s case.

Backup-Fail

You can read Joe’s story here.

Add-In: WHS Thumbnailer 1.0.0.3 Beta

The add-in WHS Thumbnailer has been updated to version 1.0.0.3 Beta.

WHS Thumbnailer Console 1.0.0.3

The thumbnail generator for Windows Home Server includes the following changes (28 May 2010):

  • Fixed a bug where thumbnails would overwrite files with existing names if already present
  • More prep work for localization
  • REALLY increased maximum thumbnail dimensions to 2048 * 2048 this time!
  • More exception management around contacting the background service
  • Watermarking added
  • Fixed bug where very large numbers of files would crash the service
  • Added display of number of items in the queue
  • Added flush queue feature
  • Added window to display recently generated thumbnails (view feature not implemented yet!)
  • UI overhaul
  • Fixed many minor bugs

Known issue:

  • WHS Console crashes after uninstall of 1.0.0.2+, however, uninstall is successful & clean

WHS Thumbnailer Settings 1.0.0.3

You can download WHS Thumbnailer 1.0.0.3 Beta from here.

Windows Home Server Rocks

Richard Hay

Tech Evangelist Richard Hay has a great post on how Windows Home Server just keeps on working.

I am here today to tell you that WHS just keeps on keeping on. Without much interference from me it sits in the corner of our home office and backs up each PC at night and is the central repository for all of our families digital history – photos and music being the biggest areas.

Richard wrote this post as his hard drive started making a clicking noise. A Click..Click..Click noise from a hard drive is very bad news, but after purchasing a new drive, and 90 minutes of his time later Richard had his system purring perfectly.

All the details are here.

WHS and the SI3114 SATA controller

A Windows Home Server enthusiast wanted to add a SI3114 SATA controller to his Home server to add its 4 SATA ports to the system. Apart from the problem trying to find the appropriate driver for this particular Silicon Image controller card he also had the card froze his WHS at a prompt that said Press CTRL + S or F4 to enter the RAID utility. As the card has onboard bios and NEEDS the presence of a non raid bios to operate in Home Server correctly, the blogger managed to flash the cards bios with a non raid version which he managed to option…

4 Port PCI Sata Controller Card

You can carry on following his adventures here.

Interview with Tranquil PC

the media center show logo (2)

Episode 258 of "The Media Center Show" has host Ian Dixon talking to David Thompson from UK based Tranquil PC about their Home Server and Media Center machines.

A great episode which you can listen to here.

The Home Server Show Podcast Episode 92

home_server_show_small

The latest Home Server Show podcast is available with Home Server news from John, Chris and Dave as well as add-in chat and some craziness too.

You can listen to episode 92 here.

DVBLink 3.0 beta 1 – Transcoded Streaming to Browsers

Version 3.0 beta 1 of DVBLink is available for testing – The software which enables you to add tuner cards to Windows Home Server.

The main feature added to this release is transcoded streaming to internet browsers.

TV is streamed using Windows Media format and works both for internet and intranet although 5 consequitive ports need to be opened on your router for it to work.

The internet streaming works with IE, Chrome and Firefox (MediaPlayer plugin required), but the latter two do not support video auto-sizing.

The Quality of the transcoded video is defined using a transcoder profile, which you can edit to achieve best quality for your particular PC hardware, with the final version supporting several customizable profiles.

This version is currently in beta, may contain bugs, and currently does NOT work with Windows Mobile browsers, Radio channels and special DVBLink streams as well as IPhones and IPads.

What is new and fixed:
All source products (DVBLink TVSource, for IPTV, for DreamBox):
– Added background EPG information update for xmltv EPG source
– Added support for additional xmltv details: full description, genre, credits, thumbnail, rating, series information etc.
– Changed DVBLink addin user interface in MediaCenter
– Removed channel synchronization wizard in MCE
– EPG source, name and number of DVBLink channels can be updated after channel synchronization in MediaCenter
TVSource:
– Added support for diseqc 1.1 (uncommited switches)
– Added support for diseqc 1.2 in the form of custom diseqc sequences
– Added BDA device match using system specific device path. This should prevent shifting device index when new devices are added or old ones are removed
– Added parental control in MediaCenter. Parental control is activated or deactivated via DVBLink Mediacenter addin
– Added retrieval of provider-assigned channel numbers during channel scan for cable and terrestrial tuners
– Added support for diseqc control of Omicom tuners
– Changed the algorithm of stopping stream when tuner is idle. This should fix failed channel changes and no/not all services found during scan
Network pack:
– Added transcoded streaming to internet browsers
– Fixed server deadlock on stream stop
Things to know about installation/update:
– The software is in public beta stage, meaning that it may have bugs!
– To preserve your current system settings, run installation using the bat files
– Unfortunately, you will have to delete and synchronize the DVBLink channels again in MediaCenter. If you get "Program has stopped responding. You will now return to MediaCenter" message on MCE start up, you must boot to safe mode and delete mcepg*.db file in c:\programdata\microsoft\ehome\. Once booted up in normal mode again simply redo TV Setup.
Things to know about internet streaming:
– TV is streamed using Windows Media format
– It works both for internet and intranet
– For use via internet you need to open 5 consequitive ports, starting with base port (default value 443), on your ADSL modem and set up port forwarding for these ports on your router
– Use
https://<external ip>:<base port> to connect from ouside the house
– Use
https://<internal ip>:<base port> to connect inside the house
– Default user
– We have tested internet streaming with IE, Chrome and Firefox. The latter two do not support video auto-sizing.
– You need to accept security certificate warning on connection
– Quality of the transcoded video is defined using transcoder profile. The profile settings are stored in <dvblink2>\Addons\network pack\data\profiles.xml. You may edit profile settings there to achieve best quality for your particular PC hardware. The final version will support several customizable profiles.
– It does not work yet with Windows Mobile browsers
– It does not work yet with Radio channels and special DVBLink streams
– It does not work yet with IPhones and IPads
– You need to install MediaPlayer plugin for FireFox
Known issues:
– It may take considerable time (up to 15 seconds) to switch channels via browser on WinXP based server (WinXP and WHS)
– Graphical design of the webpage will be improved in the release version

You can download version 3.0 beta 1 of DVBLink TVSource and  DVBLink Server Network Pack.

Add-In: WHS Folding Coming Soon

Home Server Land has put up a teaser picture on their Wall in Facebook of a new add-in called WHS Folding.

Home Server Land WHS Folding on Facebook

Folding@home is a  distributed computing project which help scientists studying protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases by you simply running a piece of software on your PC, and in this case on your Windows Home Server.

Stay tuned for additional information.