Planning HTPC + WHS setup

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donnsuil

18 posts

Geek

#77362 15-Feb-2011 12:58

Hi,

I'm planning an upgrade, and have a basic ouline of what I want to do but I'm not sure it's possible:

Currently I have a PC with the following specs:
- Asus M378-EH http://www.asus.co.nz/product.aspx?P_ID=rnAox5xCubN78BKh&content=specifications
- 4 GB ram
- 2-3 samsung 1TB drives
- HVR2200 TV card

What I would like to do is purchase a new small HTPC, and rebuild the old PC with WHS, so it would look like:

- HTPC attached to TV
- WHS with TV card and plenty of storage

What would be the best way of accessing the TV from the HTPC through the TV card on the WHS (if it is possible)?

CYaBro

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#439805 15-Feb-2011 13:47

I have this setup at home:

An old PC running WHS v1.
It is an AMD 3400+ - 2GB RAM - 2x 1TB HDDs (data & client backups) & 1x400GB (Recorded TV only) - 2x DVB-S TV tuner cards.
I have installed the TV Server part of MediaPortal on it.

For the HTPC I am using an Asus EeeBox with ION graphics card running the client side of MediaPortal.

It works great and we can watch or record live TV, with the Recorded TV being stored on the WHS box.
We can also do the same on our laptops as they have the mediaportal client on them too.

It can also be done with Windows Media Centre but you need to purchase DVBLogic TVSource & Network Pack.
The downside to the WMC is that the recorded TV will be stored on the HTPC, which will then need to be transfered to the WHS box, if that's where you want it stored.
Also, if you use more than one WMC client you won't see what the other machines have set to be recorded unlike MediaPortal, which stores the database on the WHS box, so all clients can see in the guide which programs have been set to record.

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

donnsuil

18 posts

Geek

#439829 15-Feb-2011 14:44

cheers for the quick reply

, it doesn't sound too difficult.