Tuesday is here at last, and for Windows Home Server owners that means one thing… Power Pack 3 Day!

Microsoft have released PP3 for download via Windows Update, and it’s free and waiting for you to download. Simply open your WHS Console, go to the Settings dialog, and click Update Now in the General section. You’ll need to restart your home server, and each hope computer connected to Windows Home Server, after which Power Pack 3 will be yours!

Let’s recap on what’s new, courtesy of the Windows Team Blog:

Windows 7 Libraries integration

When you install the Windows Home Server Connector and log on a computer running Windows 7, you can access the Windows Home Server shared folders from the Windows 7 libraries.

Windows 7 Action Center backup warning suppression

After you install the Windows Home Server Connector to enable the home server backup for your computer running Windows 7, you can suppress the Action Center warning reminding you that Windows Backup has not been set up.

Windows 7 power settings

You can configure your computer running Windows 7 to wake up at a scheduled backup time and then go back to sleep after the backup finishes.

Console support for Windows 7

Windows 7 is properly displayed as the operating system shown in the Computers & Backup tab.

Windows Search

Windows Search 4 is included to improve query search times, indexing times, and reliability. Extended Remote Discovery increases the efficiency of searching across all your libraries running Windows Search 4. Files encrypted with EFS are now supported.

TV archive

Windows Home Server can automatically archive recorded TV by moving your recordings from a Windows Media Center computer to your home server in the format of your choice. This enables playback in the correct format for your home computers and/or portable devices.

Console view

You can view information about your home server’s storage space, hard drives, backup status, and more from Windows Media Center.

Complete details are available in the Power Pack 3 Release Documentation.

If you’ve been running the Power Pack 3 beta, make sure you uninstall it before you install the final PP3 update. Here’s how (thanks to Janne Strom for the heads up!):

1. Access the Windows Home Server Administrator’s Desktop (How to connect to the Windows Home Server Administrator’s Desktop)

2. Navigate to the Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Beta folder at Start > My Computer > D: > Shares > Software > Windows Home Server Power Pack 3 Beta.

3. Run the Uninstall.cmd file to un-install Power Pack 3 Beta. After reboot, your Home Server will revert back to your previous version.

4. Re-install the updated Windows Home Server Connector software on your home computer. (Windows Home Server Connector installation)

Source Article:
Windows Home Server Power Pack 3, Waiting For You

Two Windows Media Center MVPs, Andrew Cherry and Ian Dixon, have collaborated on a new resource for Media Center owners. Made for Media Center is an “app store” for Microsoft’s “TV on your PC” platform, combining a website for plugin authors to submit their wares, and a Media Center plugin which allows users to browse and download those applications.

A growing list of free plugins are now available for beta testers – fingers crossed the Media Center developer community jump on board and help support a great resource for MCE owners. To find out more about the plans for Made for Media Center, check out Missing Remote’s interview with Andrew Cherry.

More Info: Made for Media Center

Source Article:
Made for Media Center Now Open

Windows Home Server was designed to “grow with you”. That may be obvious when it comes to adding additional hard drives but also includes the option to install extra software features to help customize your Home Server. The development community has created “add-ins” for Windows Home Server that extends its capabilities in fun, exciting, and useful ways. There are currently over 100 add-ins available for download.

Three widely popular add-ins that are being used today include: Lights-Out, WebGuide, and Whiist.

Lights-Out

This power management add-in is used to put your Windows Home Server in a hibernated mode when you are not using it. This is a great way to cut down on energy bills and make your home or office a little “greener”.

*Windows Home Server console screen shot of Lights-Out add-in

This add-in allows your Home Server to go into hibernation mode when users are not using it, based on your calendar of events, or a combination of both. You will also have the option to set a defined time in which the Home Server will fully turn back on. Windows Home Server will never remain asleep if you have a backup scheduled. Therefore, all of your important data will remain safe and still be automatically backed up.

WebGuide

WebGuide allows you to remotely view live and recorded TV programs while you are away from home. It will also enable you to remotely schedule and manage your recorded television programs, music, pictures and videos on your Windows XP Media Center edition or Windows Vista Premium, or Windows Vista Ultimate PC.

*Screen shot of Windows Home Server’s add-in, WebGuide

*Screen shot of streaming videos through Windows Home Server’s add-in, WebGuide

WebGuide provides you with mobile access to your music and videos from your Windows Mobile devices. This means you can have access to all of your pictures and movies while you are on the road.

Whiist

Whiist is a Windows Home Server add-in that allows you to create and manage web content on your Windows Home Server. Once downloaded, Whiist can be used through your Windows Home Server console. This tab makes it so that you can easily create and manage new websites, photo albums, and homepage links.

*Screen shot of Windows Home Server console with the Whiist add-in

Some of the key features that are found in Whiist include:

• Quickly create new websites on your home server.
• Create new photo albums to share with family and friends in a few simple steps.
• Share photos with family and friends through online photo sharing.
• Create public content, or restrict access to users of your Windows Home Server.
• Easily customize your public and private Windows Home Server Homepage links.
• Fully integrates with the Windows Home Server management console.
• Customize your Windows Home Server homepage

You have now seen three out of many Windows Home Server add-ins. If you are interested in learning about all of the other available add-ins to download, you can visit: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/add-ins.mspx.

Source Article:
Windows Home Server Add-ins: Lights-Out, WebGuide, and Whiist

Now that we’ve covered a handful of great plugins to improve your Windows 7 media Center,  it’s time to go through a few programs and background plugins that can greatly improve your experience. These programs and plugins will improve on the Media Center interface as well as adding some missing options and features that are lacking in the basic Media Center installation. Add logos to the TV guide listings, create your own Media Center themes, put Caller ID on your TV and more.

Programs

My Channel Logos allows you to quickly and easily add channel logos to your Windows 7 Media Center’s TV guide listings improving both the appearance and usability of the guide. The newest versions of this program even include sets of downloadable channel logos including color versions. Using the program is quite easy as well, once you’ve setup your TV guide listings inside Media Center just open the program and select your region then apply channel logos. My Channel Logos will search through your guide files and make the appropriate changes to add logos, just relaunch Media Center.

Media Center Studio, the successor to Menu Mender, is the ultimate in Windows 7 Media Center customization apps. Allowing you to design, create and distribute your own Media Center themes as well as customize and create your own start menu strips. Change the Media Center background, add a games strip and more all with ease using this handy program. This program makes it simple to create and rearrange your Media Center interface until you’ve got it just the way you like it. Make changes to the graphic interface by using your own images and fonts then just drag and drop start strip tiles to make your Media Center truly unique.

More Plugins

Though a sleep timer likely isn’t one of the firs things to cross your mind as a missing feature, if you’re used to having one on your television it can be a sorely missed feature. MC7 Sleep Timer is exceptionally easy to use as well. Simply install the plugin then use the plugin interface in the Extra Programs listing to set a sleep timer for any number of intervals. Quick buttons are available for 30 and 60 minutes as well as teh ability to create a custom timer button and even just turn off your monitor. This handy little tool is sure to make at least a few Media Center enthusiasts’ setups complete.

There are plenty of movie and media enthusiasts that prefer to watch their content the way is was originally intended, which includes in the original refresh rate. By default Windows 7 Media Center runs in the default resolution of your monitor, typically 60hz, however much of today’s HD media is intended to be played back at 24hz. Refresh Rate Changer will let you do just that. Just setup the resolutions and refresh rates for your monitor and media in the options file then access the plugin inside Media Center to change the refresh rate. Though not automatic and requiring an automatic restart of Media Center it’s a solution to the problem.

Not just for Vista any longer, Vista Caller ID’s developers have even create a plugin to allow you to harness the program’s functions to get Caller ID right inside your Windows 7 Media Center. A feature commonly included in modern cable and satellite DVR boxes and sorely missed by many making the switch. As long as you’ve got a compatible analog modem, install the basic program and the Media Center plugin to get started. Then be sure to setup your preferences and you’ll be all set.

Source Article:
Programs to Customize and Improve Your Windows 7 Media Center

There may come a time when you want to edit the metadata of a WTV or DVRMS file manually. Luckily, Windows 7 includes a built-in editor allowing the editing of metadata of both file formats. Much like music metadata editor provided in previous versions of Windows the metadata editor for WTV and DVRMS files can be accessed by right-clicking the file in Windows Explorer and selecting the properties window. From inside the properties window, selecting the Details tab will bring up a basic editor for viewing and modifying the current metadata of the file.

Just hover over the value area for any given detail and a text entry box will appear allowing editing of that value. Unfortunately, not all the values are displayed or editable inside this basic metadata editor. There are a number of additional meta values that can be used to customize the categorization of files such as genre and whether or not a particular file is a movie.

Fortunately, there is a third-party program created by Steven Toub that’s perfectly capable of editing these hidden metadata values in both DVRMS and WTV files. His DVRMS metadata editor is quite old at this point but still works quite well with both file types. When opening a WTV file you’ll just need to adjust the file filter dropbox to show all file types and select the WTV file you’d like to edit.

As you can see, Toub’s editor provides a much more comprehensive listing of metadata values available inside DVRMS and WTV files than the built-in editor. Having access to the genre and movie meta tags and well as title, description and HD designations makes this an excellent tool for anyone looking to convert their movie collections to the new WTV format standard in Windows 7.

There are a few reasons some may be considering converting their collections to WTV, not least of which is the ability to play the format on any Windows Media Extender. This means not having to deal with the issues that seem to plague other formats such as .mkv on extenders. We’ll be covering more on this movement as software becomes publicly available to facilitate the switch such as the next version of DVRMSToolbox from Andy VT’s blog.

When you’ve finished editing metadata details inside Toub’s editor just hit the Save Metadata button to commit the changes and that’s all there is to it.

We’ve already covered replacing the built in movie library with a third party plug-in like MediaBrowser or Open Media Library. There are even a handful of solutions to hide the default movie start strip and add our own, such as MC Studio and Mikinhosoft’s Hide Strips program. The one problem that has persisted, however, is that pressing the video button on your MCE remote still takes you to the built in movie library. It’s as if there was nothing we could do to completely eliminate this cockroach like infestation inside our Windows 7 Media Centers. Luckily, with a few quick tweaks and Melloware’s Intelliremote program we can take down this final issue once and for all.

The first thing we’ll need to do is head over and download and install the latest trial version of intelliremote. This latest version fixes some issues that cropped up with Windows 7, so if you’ve got a previous version installed be sure to remove it and upgrade to this version. The trial version can be used for 30 days and the full version will set you back $24. This modest price will is likely worth it for most Media Center enthusiasts simply for the ease of use that Intelliremote provides as well as the fantastic support evident on their forums.

Once Intelliremote is installed we’re going to perform one more quick fix to enable the program to take control of the system once inside Media Center. By default Windows 7 Media Center takes control of the input device and overrides any other program’s preferences once inside the Media Center program. To disable this we need to open up the Services and disable the Human Interface Device Access service.

To do this open Control Panel, System and Security, Administrative Tools and open the Services application. Locate the Human Interface Device Access listing, right-click the entry and select properties. Inside the properties dialog select Disabled under startup type and Stop the service using the Stop button. Press OK to save your changes and exit the properties and Services application.

Now let’s open up the Intelliremote program from the programs menu. Then open the Customize options from the system tray icon by double-clicking or right-clicking and selecting Customize. This brings up the options to set the buttons on your MCE remote to perform any action you’d like.

Let’s get started by selecting the Media Center icon on the left then choosing the MCE Videos button from the listing just to the right. Next press the Learn Code button and on your MCE remote press the appropriate button. If Intelliremote has detected the input properly a Success message should appear briefly then close the dialog. Afterward you can establish the action you’d like that button to perform.

For example if you’d like the MCE Videos button to open MediaBrowser instead of the native movie library choose the application event option and enter the location of the ehshell program, usually “C:Windowsehomeehshell.exe”. Under Params, set the entrypoint parameter by entering “/entrypoint:{ce32c570-4bec-4aeb-ad1d-cf47b91de0b2}{fc9abccc-36cb-47ac-8bab-03e8ef5f6f22}”. This is the “/entrypoint:” switch followed by the AppID, a slash and the EntryPoint ID. For example, to change the button to run Open Media Library the parameters would be, “/entrypoint:{3f0850a7-0fd7-4cbf-b8dc-c7f7ea31534e}{1044a023-44cc-401c-a5df-4f58601f1f57}”.

Once you’ve set the application and parameters be sure to press the Apply Change button to commit the changes you’ve made to Intelliremote’s settings. That’s all there is to it! Relaunch Windows 7 Media Center and give it a try. As long as the HID Access service has been disabled you should now have total control over the Media Center remote using the Intelliremote settings. Note: Should you notice any remote buttons stop functioning properly inside Media Center you likely need to use the Learn Code function for that particular button inside Intelliremote.

A new program we’ve all been waiting for quite some time to get our hands on, Media Center Studio, has finally arrived allowing even the most novice users the ability to create their own custom Media Center themes and Start Menu arrangements. Media Center Studio, created by Advent of the Australian Media Center Community the author of Media Center Menu Mender, gives users the ability to do what could formerly only be done with heavy editing of system files and registry settings. All this has now been packed into one handy program that’s reasonably easy to use by comparison.

To get started just head over to the Media Center Studio website and click the Download link to get the latest version of the program. There is also a sticky thread for the app on the Aus Media Center Community Forums you can check out should you have any troubles getting started. The software is still very early beta and as a result there are still a number of bugs to be found.

Once the program has been installed launch it from the programs menu and you’ll find a well styled interface allowing you to create new themes and edit the Media Center start menu. Let’s start by creating a new theme. To do this make sure you are on the themes tab and press the New button. This will create a new tab with all the theme editing options available including changing fonts colors, fonts, and images for each theme.

Just select the item you’d like to modify on the left and use the settings on the right to change that item’s appearance. You can change font colors using a series of sliders allowing for any RGB color allow with an alpha setting. A color selector would have honestly been preferable to this system as it can take quite a bit of play to get the color you are looking for. A point and click color wheel or similar system would be much simpler. Also, under the fonts section a crash occurred whenever attempting to bring up the dropdown box to select a new font, likely due to it’s just released beta status and will likely be fixed soon.

Though the font color selector is somewhat tricky to master it is still a huge improvement over not being able to edit the colors at all. Modifying the font colors using Media Center Studio allow for successful font color changes for the first time which should open up a large number of possibilities for Media Center background images that would have previously conflicted with the bluish font colors that are default.

Changing images was also a snap. Just select the image that you’d like to alter and hit the browse button to select it’s replacement. However, after modifying the images another small bug was noticed as the option to save the theme wasn’t available until the font color was changed. There seems to be a bug in the detection of altered images and the save function.

Themes aside, Media Center Studio also provides an excellent Start Menu editor. Selecting the Start Menu tab will bring up an editor similar to the Media Center Menu Mender that was popular with Vista Media Center users. Selecting the Start Menu option at the top also allows you to create custom entry points. The editor made it fairly easy to create a new strip and add an all new application to it.

Start by creating a new strip, press the Menu Strip button at the top and a new strip will be added to the lower viewport. Edit the name and location by pressing the small notepad icon next to the name then dragging the strip to the location you’d like it to appear. Next create a new entry point by pressing either the Application or Game button at the top. This will bring up a pane allowing you to select the application and then edit the icon and details of the program.

The program options allow for some very advanced configuration of just what actions to perform before launching the program and how to exit the program and return to Media Center. There do seem to be some remaining bugs in the plugin that launches the programs however causing some Extensibility Host errors though they are being looked into and will hopefully be cleared up soon.

To add the program to your new start menu strip return to the Start Menu tab and expand the Entry Points pane at the bottom of the application. This will bring up a listing of all the available entry point which you can then drag and drop onto your new start menu strips. It should be noted that due to restrictions put in place by Microsoft you are still unable to add new tiles to the default strips.

Once finished be sure to apply any theme changes you’ve made by returning to the original Themes tab and pressing the Apply button. You’ll notice there are also options to export and import themes from other Media Center Studio users. Expect to see plenty of new themes popping up over the course of the next few weeks available for download.

That’s all there is to it! Relaunch Windows Media Center and bask in the glory of your newly customized interface.