I Built a Windows Home Server

I ran out of storage and purchased a 1.5 TB hard drive last week, which showed up earlier this week.  I wasn’t sure how I wanted to handle the use of the drive – I could have jammed it into my 7MC machine but was dreading the idea of turning that drive into a dedicated “Video” drive just to reclaim space on the primary drive for recorded television.  So, instead, I used an old computer I had lying dormant and built a Windows Home Server.

If you’re scratching your head right now wondering “What is Windows Home Server?” I’ll try to clear it up over time with more post on how it works.  In short, its a specialized version of Windows Server 2003 Small Business Server with some built in configuration and software that allows it to easily integrate into your existing home network.

Its pretty great, and dead simple.  Installation was just like installing windows on any other machine.  Configuration of network shares were automatic.  The best part is how it handles storage: I simply connected the drive to an open sata port and “added” it to the existing array of storage.  About 60 seconds later the space was available for use, balanced between the big 1.5 TB drive and the much smaller OS drive.  Additional drives are added the same way, without the need for raid or external controllers.  Its a rather unique approach to storage management, and I hate raid so, for the moment, I love this.

Being social with TV?

Everything in the entire world it seems has gone “social”. Social media, social graph, social networks, everyone wants to share everything with everyone, why should our TV’s be any different? Going against my early adopter nature I am extremely late to the game of ‘social’ and it is because of this that the jury is out for me on the whole social media idea when it comes to my home media center needs.

To be clear the social TV concept that I am talking about is pretty simple, it is about watching the content you normally watch and sharing what you are watching with your friends. Sharing what you are watching as well as sharing your ideas and opinions on the Films and TV shows you are watching. There are lots of ways of sharing this information but services like Boxee, Hulu, Joost and  Netflix have this type of social interaction built in. There are also plug-ins available for other Media Center applications such as the watchmi plug-in that lets you recommend things you like from Windows Media Center.

These services and plug-ins give you the ability to actively and passively share your thoughts on every television show, movie, or video clip that may pass your eyes. Other popular social services like Twitter and Facebook have found their ways integrated into our TV’s themselves. Verizon FiOS has integrated both Twitter and Facebook into their set-top boxes allowing users to update their feeds and information around their TV viewing experience. For UK users of the BBC iPlayer they have also recently added Twitter and Facebook as well as Windows Live Messenger which will display real-time data about how many minutes into a particular program a user is and allow users to join their friends and chat about shows live.

The saying about how “everyone’s a critic” becomes quite literal where everyone can be a critic of everything. With all of this traffic around our media there seems to be a serious need for a way to filter what types of things we see and from who we see it. Boxee uses a model that allows you to connect with people you are friends with or would value the opinion of and see only their stream with likes and dislikes, Netflix uses a similar approach where you can connect with friends and show your selections to each other.

Where does all of this sharing get us? The cynic in me worries that the only real value that is being generated by all of this is for the benefit of the services that we pump our information into giving advertisers more data to use. I can, however, understand the appeal of seeing what your friends like and don’t like, there is certainly value in their opinion because you know and trust them. I don’t know that I personally would find any value in the opinions of strangers. In my experience with open comments on something like a YouTube clip the conversations that arise are pretty pointless to say the least.

To me incorporating the new social web into our home theater products makes sense based on the popularity of these services alone. Used properly it could add a very interesting layer on top of your home theater. Implementing it the wrong way, however,  certainly has an equal opportunity to cause clutter and unnecessary noise to a previously enjoyable and tranquil activity.

Hello World!

It’s my pleasure to christen the maiden voyage of MEDIACENTERed – A blog about Media Center and most things home theater related.

I’m really excited to start this chain of thought with my good friend and colleague Rodney Shetler. Rodney and I are both IT professionals and full grown nerds. The two of us have found that we share a desire to integrate our passion into home theater. That passion has has driven us to this point, where our families use HTPCs instead of cable boxes and we feel like writing about it. Blogging is, certainly, the last thing that I would expect to find myself doing right behind gouging out my own eyes and riding a mechanical bull. But as it would seem there are at least a few people I know (and a lot that I don’t) who may be interested in reading about how others stare at their television without using a cable box or cable at all. We hope to share a relevant perspective.

We’d love to make this blog as interactive as possible – we want to hear from YOU. Feel free to contact us at mediacentered@gmail.com or on twitter @mediacentered to submit questions, comments or suggestions for future posts.