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Kjesse · 08-30-2010, 09:02 PM

Hey buddy, thanks for the PM regarding IRC chat...that was a long time ago!

I'm running WHS on an Acer Aspire. (http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-AH.../dp/B001WGX15W) I bought it over a year ago, and have it connected to a gigabit router. That in turn connects to a Windows 7 machine, the main computer, and there are 3 other machines that regularly connect to the router: 1 xbox 360 in the main TV room, 1 xbox 360 in the bedroom (used for watching movies only), and 1 full sized arcade machine running Windows Vista in the games room/den. The main TV connection is hard wired while the other 2 are wireless.

Each of those machines is able to accept and process streaming of HD movies in 1080p. The wireless connection to the bedroom is unreliable and subject to suttering above 720p, but the hard wired connection to the main TV is flawless at 1080p.

Edit: I should also add that the iPad streams movies from the WHS with the AirVideo app....only over WiFi though not 3g.... better than the 360's do in terms of start up speed.... and does some kind of on the fly down-conversion but it never stutters and the video quality is great.

I bought the WHS because I got tired of looking at rows and rows of DVDs cluttered on my shelves... I ripped them all via the Windows 7 machine (using software called AnyDVD) to the WHS and the DVDs are now sitting stacked in my garage in bankers' boxes.... no more clutter.

I like iTunes but as you might expect it doesn't work with the Xbox 360's so I use the Windows application for streaming music.... and its pretty good, but inferior to iTunes. Eventually I'll phase out the 360's as better media players hit the market which allow competing applications. I don't know if your WD media player is compatible with iTunes, but I doubt it is. I do not know of any media device other than the Apple one (which sucks, quite frankly... but the next Apple TV will probably fix the issues) that integrates with iTunes properly. So don't expect to use iTunes on your main TV unless you get something like this: (check out the HDelight http://www.brite-view.com/)

I use the Mymovies app with Windows Media Center to manage the movie database. Search Mymovies on google and you can see its pretty slick. (edit: http://www.mymovies.dk/) Your WD media player will work fine with a WHS, but I'm not sure it will work with the mymovies app. I highly recommend the mymovies app.

If you have any other questions let me know... I started with 2 TB of storage and now have 4 TB, and am about to jump to 6....

08-30-2010, 09:02 PM	#2
Kjesse Retired Join Date: Oct 2003 Exp:	Hey buddy, thanks for the PM regarding IRC chat...that was a long time ago! I'm running WHS on an Acer Aspire. (http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-AH.../dp/B001WGX15W) I bought it over a year ago, and have it connected to a gigabit router. That in turn connects to a Windows 7 machine, the main computer, and there are 3 other machines that regularly connect to the router: 1 xbox 360 in the main TV room, 1 xbox 360 in the bedroom (used for watching movies only), and 1 full sized arcade machine running Windows Vista in the games room/den. The main TV connection is hard wired while the other 2 are wireless. Each of those machines is able to accept and process streaming of HD movies in 1080p. The wireless connection to the bedroom is unreliable and subject to suttering above 720p, but the hard wired connection to the main TV is flawless at 1080p. Edit: I should also add that the iPad streams movies from the WHS with the AirVideo app....only over WiFi though not 3g.... better than the 360's do in terms of start up speed.... and does some kind of on the fly down-conversion but it never stutters and the video quality is great. I bought the WHS because I got tired of looking at rows and rows of DVDs cluttered on my shelves... I ripped them all via the Windows 7 machine (using software called AnyDVD) to the WHS and the DVDs are now sitting stacked in my garage in bankers' boxes.... no more clutter. I like iTunes but as you might expect it doesn't work with the Xbox 360's so I use the Windows application for streaming music.... and its pretty good, but inferior to iTunes. Eventually I'll phase out the 360's as better media players hit the market which allow competing applications. I don't know if your WD media player is compatible with iTunes, but I doubt it is. I do not know of any media device other than the Apple one (which sucks, quite frankly... but the next Apple TV will probably fix the issues) that integrates with iTunes properly. So don't expect to use iTunes on your main TV unless you get something like this: (check out the HDelight http://www.brite-view.com/) I use the Mymovies app with Windows Media Center to manage the movie database. Search Mymovies on google and you can see its pretty slick. (edit: http://www.mymovies.dk/) Your WD media player will work fine with a WHS, but I'm not sure it will work with the mymovies app. I highly recommend the mymovies app. If you have any other questions let me know... I started with 2 TB of storage and now have 4 TB, and am about to jump to 6.... Last edited by Kjesse; 08-30-2010 at 09:29 PM.