Episode 98 of the BYOB podcast is up:
“Mike and Michael are joined by Josh Pollard from Entertainment 2.0 this week to discuss Media Center, HTPCs and where its all going on this weeks BYOB Podcast.”
You can find episode 98 here.
The DVBLink suite of products now include official XBMC support.
The DVBLink suite of products now include official support for XBMC with the help of the DVBLink XBMC addon. This addon features live and recorded TV, EPG support and timer recording management with the operations optimized for using a remote control.
Here’s the change log for version 4.5.1:
General:
•Fixed: server hangs when going to standby with one of the clients streaming
DVBLink TVSource
•Fixed: incorrect Chinese characters in channel names and EPG
•Fixed: diseqc commands do not work and channel changes fail for TBS tuners when TBS CI dll is used
•Fixed: unicable channel changes work unreliably on Techontrend sat tuners
DVBLink Connect! Server
•Fixed: getting epg for a channel in web interface takes a long time
•Fixed: opening live stream when using indirect http streaming takes a long time
•Added: timer and recorded content management pages to web interface
•Fixed: incorrect EPG information for channels with a small amount of epg data when built-in recorder is used
•Fixed: unable to select drive, which is larger than 2TB as a recording path for built-in recorder
•Fixed: pre-record margin cannot be modified for built-in recorder
•Fixed: impossible to add a manual recording that crosses 00:00 time
•Added: return channel type (tv/radio) in get_channels API request
The add-on can be downloaded from the DVBLink wiki here.
There’s a great 11 minute video on Windows Server Storage Spaces from the launch event is available for watching.
This video is a great watch for those of you who are going to be using Windows Server 2012 Essentials and it’s Storage Spaces feature.
You can watch it here.
HP have released a technical white paper on implementing Windows Server 2012 Essentials on ProLiant servers.
The white-paper looks at pre-installation tasks and tells us how to install WS2012e onto a ProLiant server and describes known issues and workarounds.
You can download the PDF directly here.
Episode 196 of The Home Server Show podcast is up:
“It’s another episode that is full of information, links, and news. Servers, NAS, software, deals, freebies, and phones.”
You can find episode 196 here.
Microsoft have released Health Report, an add-in for Windows Server 2012 Essentials.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34599
Generating a system health report was one of the popular customer requests in early Beta review. With "Health Report" you will see a automatically generated report that summarizes the health of your server and can be sent to a specified email allowing you to see whether the server is in a good state or not, without logging on to the Dashboard.
The health report add-in offers the following functionalities:
More details are available via the Windows Server Essentials and Small Business Server Blog.
If you are running Windows Server 2012 Essentials then any connected PC which is running Pro/Enterprise/Ultimate SKUs of Windows 7/8 will automatically be joined to the domain. Not so good for us previous Home Server users – But there is now a temporary workaround thanks to a registry key.
Before we continue remember this only affects the following versions of Windows:
You will not need to perform this task for versions of Windows below these versions (e.g. Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 8 Core), as these versions will not be domain joined automatically during the client install process.
On the client PC you do NOT want to be domain joined:
Info from the Windows Server 2012 Essentials forums.
Of interest to us Home Server enthusiasts is an article from the How-To-Geek on how Windows 8’s backup system differs from that in Windows 7:
Windows 8 contains a completely revamped backup system. Windows 8’s File History replaces Windows 7’s Windows Backup – if you use Windows Backup and update to Windows 8, you’ll find quite a few differences.
Microsoft redesigned Windows’ backup features because less than 5% of PCs used Windows Backup. The new File History system is designed to be simple to set up and work automatically in the background.
The article explains how only files in Library’s can be backup up and how file history can help us, especially when restoring from a backup.
You can find the article here.
Microsoft have published evaluation editions of Windows Storage Server 2012 in their Download Centre.
Windows Storage Server 2012 is Microsoft’s advanced storage and file serving solution which is available as a 3.3 GB ISO file.
You can download the eval from here.
A user over at the TekForums has posted a Purchase, Upgrade & Setup Guide for the HP Proliant MicroServer with some interesting links and tip bits.
Here’s a look at the list of contents:
1. Initial Purchase
1.1 – Specification
1.2 – Purchasing
1.3 – Warranty
1.4 – Additional accessories
1.5 – Other discussions2. Upgrades
2.1 – BIOS
2.2 – RAM
2.3 – Drives
2.4 – Graphics3. Installation
3.1 – Hardware
3.2 – Accessories
3.3 – Which OS?
3.4 – Drivers4. Misc Links
There’s some interesting info in here, so if you are about to purchase or already have a HP Proliant MicroServer then head on over here for a read.
