I have two media centers. One connected to a TV in the living room and one connected to a TV in the basement. My objective is to be able to watch any recording on each TV regardless of which media center did the recording. Although it is a simple matter to share the recorded TV folder of each computer with the other, the result is not what I expected.

For example, I go to the  Recorded TV menu on the Living room media center and it now shows every recording twice. One is the physically recorded show on that computer and the other is presumably the pointer to that same recording which exists on the basement media center as a result of the media library setup. So yes I can now watch any show on either TV regardless of which media center recorded it, but having  each  recording show up twice is not going to be acceptable to my wife.

Any ideas on how to set this up and avoid the problem? 

so, there are actually two physical recordings of the same program, just done by the different media centers? if thats the case it sounds like it is behaving as expected.

A possible solution could be to move all recorded tv to a third location once complete by script and delete any duplicates. add that third location to your recorded tv libraries and you're good. there is a script that does this wtvmetarenamer.codeplex.com

I have a similar setup to you. I have 2 win7 pcs that are set up for wmc and a NAS that houses all of my recorded tv, pics, music and videos.My main watching tv is where i typically do all of my recordings. I try to do the recordings on the main because it has my extenders connected to it, and in the case that something is DRM i would be able to watch it everywhere but the secondary pc. Having FIOS i dont really worry to much about DRM. The main pc will record to a local drive and i have a script that gets run nighlty to move all the recordings to the nas. I like having everything on the nas as it keeps all my media in a central location. If i were to have a problem with a PC i could easily rebuild it without having to worry about my media. Once you have your media all in one location you just need to add the media location to its respective library. You dont need a nas to do this but in my opinion it is a clean way to manage media across multiple WMCs.

Now if you want to record the same show on both pcs you will get duplicates as spaceboy pointed out. To eliminate this you may want to dedicate a single pc to handle your recordings. I've yet to mess with it but there is an addon called shared guide potato that levereages remote potato (which is pretty awesome). From what i understand you install remote potato on the pc you want to dedicate to recording and the addin goes on the secondary. This allows for the secondary pc to manage the recordings on the primary pc.

My .02cents hope it helps

Isn't this what Home Groups do?

I have two Win 7 PC's one my HTPC and one my laptop.

They are both part of the Home Group I've set up on my network.

When I want to watch, on ly laptop,  a recording done on my HTPC, in the recorded programmes screen you just click on the menu at the top and select the other PC to view everything recorded on it.

Is this what you want to do or am I missing something?

No there is only one physical recording of any given program. As I looked in to this I realized that the problem only occurs on the living room media center. It does not occur on the basement media center. However these are slightly different versions. The basement system is recent and therefore has Windows 7 SP1. The living room is the original Windows 7 plus any patches. I never applied SP1 to that and would prefer not to since I am reluctant to introduce that amount of change. Maybe there is a media center specific patch that would get it to the same version as the basement media center, but so far I have not found anything on the MS site.

yes I am using a Homegroup. I believe what you are describing is the Shared menu inside the Recorded TV menu. Then within there, I can choose either "DVR-PC" (living room), "DVR2-PC" (basement), or "All Computers"

For example, I have 75 programs on DVR-PC, 10 on DVR2-PC. I can choose either one and the recorded programs listed will display as appropriate. If I choose" All Computers" I should get 85 programs listed. Once that option is selected,  my wife can then choose what she wants to watch without knowing where it was recorded.

And that works fine on the basement PC. On the living room PC the "All Computers" option when first set up yesterday would show 160 programs. (75*2 +10). Today it is in triplicate 75*3+10 = 225. Each of the shows recorded on DVR-PC is listed three times. Very strange.

Anyway as I noted in a previous post there is a version difference in the two media centers. There may be a patch I need.

Have you checked your Recorded TV libraries to make sure your 'DVR-PC' isn't pointed to more than once?

Ended up being a simple solution. I removed all devices from the HOMEGROUP then added them back and the problem is gone