Windows Media Center Connector is a software application that allows users to connect their Windows Home Server to the media center. This article will show you how to set up the Windows Media Center Connector on your Windows Home Server.

  1. Log in to your Windows Home Server and open the Control Panel.
  2. In the Control Panel, click on the Media Center Connector icon.
  3. In the Connection Properties dialog, enter the following information into the Connection Name field:
  4. Click on OK to close the Properties dialog and return to the Control Panel.
  5. In the Media Center Connector properties dialog, click on Add New Connection and enter a name for your new connection:
  6. Click on OK to close the Add New Connection dialog and return to the Control Panel.
  7. In Network Places, expand Local Area Network (LAN) and expand Remote Area Network (RAN).
  8. Expand Remote Desktop Services and expand Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).
  9. Expand Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 and add it as an exchange server: 10a If you are using an older version of Microsoft Exchange Server, you may need to add it as well: 10b If you are using a public or private Exchange server, you can skip this step and continue with step 10c below; however, if you are using a public or private Exchange server, be sure that you have added at least one public key certificate from a trusted authority in order for your connection to work correctly! 11a If you are using an older version of Windows Media Center Connector, there may be some issues with connecting if there is no network card present in your system; please check our support article for more information about this issue! Please also note that if there is no network card present in your system then we recommend that you use another software application such as NetworkManager instead of trying to set up a media center connector!

Install Connector

After you’ve installed Windows Home Server (WHS) you’ve probably noticed a message pop up when you start Windows Media Center (WMC). Just click Ok to that message, you don’t need to set it up right away unless you want to. We know we can set it up from the Start menu at any time.

Here we take a look at installing it on Windows 7 Home Premium. Open the Start menu and click on Windows Media Center Connector as shown here.

The setup wizard starts and you can click Next…

Enter in the password to your WHS…

That was easy! You’re all set…however a restart of the machine is required.

After returning from the reboot, open WMC and in the main menu you’ll see an entry for Home Server that includes TV Archive and Console View.

TV Archive

The TV Archive feature let’s you move recorded TV to your WHS with ease. You can select individual shows or have all of your recorded programs archived to the server.

You can have a compressed copy saved to the server or Public Videos folder as well. You can choose from Original Resolution, 320×240 for Windows Mobile, or 720×480 for the Zune –each in WMV format. The nice benefit to this is you can record your favorite shows and have the original and / or a compressed version stored on the server.

 

Console View

The other neat feature is Console View. It lets you see different statistic about your server right from the comfort of your couch – or computer, whichever the case may be.

From the Console View you can see:

Storage Drives Backup Shared Folders Media Counts Server & Network Health Windows Home Server Hardware Information

Now when you go into your Recorded TV folder you’ll see it is pulling the shows from the server. This saves drive space on your local machine, and relieves you of the hassle of manually transferring the files over.

It also works with Media Center in Vista as well…

The Windows Media Center Connector adds additional functionality for managing your recorded TV files. It keeps them off your local machine’s hard drive saving you the hassle of moving them yourself. Also, having the ability to view basic server statistics from the couch is a definite plus too.