It's been over four months since I've written about WHS and I thought everyone would be interested in an update. I've tackled a problem or two and tried a few addins. Everything works like a charm. Windows Home Server has become an integral part of my home network.
The WHS to xBox video tragedy
One of the reasons I had high hopes for WHS was the ability to store my DVD collection in a digital medium and stream them to my xBox360. One can only have so many DVD's lying around the living room before the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) weighs in on the subject. I had hoped to eliminate the DVD's from the living room and having the ability to browse and change movies from the couch would be a nice added benefit.
I also wanted to eliminate CD's from my living room. Moving my audio collection to the WHS was easy. Simply convert to mp3, store on the WHS, and stream to the xbox. It was nice to remove the CD changer from the entertainment center and clean it up a bit!
The real hurdle was video, and the first step was figuring out which video and audio formats the xbox supported. I had some basic requirements:
- High quality video
- A common video format
- Support for AC3 5.1 audio
I enjoy 5.1 surround. In fact, watching a movie without 5.1 eating cake with no icing! I feel the surround sound adds realism to movies. It is a must have! I learned the xbox supported two formats with 5.1 audio - xvid/divx and wmv. And that's where my problems began...
I started searching the web for programs that supported conversions to those formats with 5.1 audio. That didn't go so well. In the end I downloaded, installed, and tested over 30 programs. Of those about 25 couldn't convert with 5.1, which resulted in multiple emails to tech support only to find that their products couldn't do it (hmmm the advertisement says it can). I found several programs and methods that worked, but were extremely complicated or difficult to use. In the end I settled on DVD-WMV and DVDFab Platinum.
DVD-WMV is free and supports the wmv (Windows Media Video) format with 5.1 audio. I was so happy to find a program that actually worked. The downside is the user interface is outdated and the conversion times were awful. Then I stumbled upon DVDFab Platinum. WOW! DVDFab was a full featured product that handles every DVD related task you can think of. I was also impressed with the frequency the program was updated and that the author answers questions directly on the support forum. DVDFab supports the xvid format with 5.1 audio and conversions are very fast compared to the other programs. The downside is DVDFab isn't free. Let's just say that $50 later I am happily watching my movies (stored on the WHS) through my xbox. I wish I have found DVDFab first, as I spent at least 100 hours searching, installing, and testing all of those programs!
I am so impressed that I will be adding DVDFab to my recommended software list in the newsletter and on the website!
Power Pack 1
A WHS Power Pack is similar to a service pack for other Windows distributions. It hasn't been released yet, but I've been running a beta version for a few weeks. I have experienced no problems with PP1 and have nothing but kudos for the WHS development team.
The major features of PP1 are:
- Drive Extender has been tweaked for better performance
- Correction of a data corruption bug that affected some users
- Performance improvements when copying files to shared folders
- Improvement of the Hard Drive Removal applet
- Support for 64 bit windows versions
- Support added for backup to external drives
- Remote file upload/download functionality improved
- Improved support for Windows Media Playlists
- Improved dialogs and wizards
There are many more improvements and fixes, but these are the big ones.
Add-ins
Two addins I've come to rely on are Disk Management and Advanced Admin Console.
Disk management provides important information for each drive that isn't available from the WHS Console. Health, size, temp, and percent of space used are some of the info it provides.
Advanced Admin Console provides access to the control panel from within the WHS Console. This allows you to change system settings remotely.
If you haven't checked the Windows Home Server out you should. It fills a void in the home computer environment. As multiple PC homes and digital video/audio become more common place WHS will hit it's stride. This is an application that will be around for a long while, expecially in my home!