How to Connect Windows Media Center with WHS

One of the cool things you can do with Windows Media Center is connect it to WHS to access your media content. Here we will take a look at the process of using WMC Connector in Windows 7 to access WHS media.

This is another post in the WHS-101 Series.

Connect Windows Media Center with WHS

When you launch Windows Media Center you’ve probably seen the following message pop up letting you know that you can connect Media Center to WHS. When you click OK, it doesn’t install anything, it’s just a reminder.

You’ll need to Open the Start Menu in Windows 7, All Programs, and select Windows Media Center Connector.

This will launch the Connector Setup wizard to walk you through the setup process.

Enter in your WHS password.

That’s it! Then a restart is required to complete the process.

Using Media Center with WHS

After you come back from the restart, open Windows Media Center and you’ll find Home Server as an option in the main menu. You have two choices, either TV Archive or Console view.

First we’ll take a look at the TV Archive feature. This will show the activity of your Live TV recordings. You’ll get a list of shows that have been recorded and successfully archived or if the archive failed. You can sort by status, title, or clear the history.

It also allows you to compress the recorded TV to work on your various portable devices like Zune, Windows Mobile, and the original resolution.

Unless you’ve changed the settings, TV that you’ve recorded should be in the Recorded TV library folder, which pulls the shows from your server.

Select Recorded TV to check out the shows you’ve recorded.

Console View

Console View is essentially a light read-only overview of your server. From here you can see server storage space, drives, shared folders, health, media counts, and backups. You can’t directly control anything on your server from here, but if you’re watching a movie or TV and want an quick look at some server information, it’s easy and intuitive to use.

If you’re using Windows Home Server Version 1 with Power Pack 3, this should get you started with connecting Windows Media Center with your WHS. This is a basic feature with WHS and there are more complex setups you can do with other Add-Ins that we’ll be taking a look at it the future.

What about you guys? Do you use the Windows Media Center Connector with WHS? Leave a comment and let us know!

This is another post in the WHS – 101 Series. If you have questions or want to discuss it further head to the Home Server Show Forums.

Tags: Media Center, WHS, Windows 7, Windows Home Server

Category: Windows Home Server, Windows Home Server 101, Windows Media Center