Thanks for the info about tvmanager.  I have set it up and it seems to be working ok.  Unlike Recorded TV Manager which I have not tried, TVManager is free.  One problem I am facing with TVManager is that my Vista PC does not return to sleep state after the recorded tv program has been moved to the server.  If you have a solution to this problem, let me know.

Have a look at MCE Standby Tool - has solved A LOT of my standby issues over the years.

Good luck!
/Victor

I’m hoping that someone can help me resolve an issue:

 

Two of the machines on my home network are primarily dedicated Vista Media Center boxes.  In the past, I have shared the Recorded TV folders between these machines by adding each machine’s Recorded TV path to the WatchedFolders in the other machine’s regedit.  i.e., all programs recorded on either machine show up in the Recorded TV menu on both machines.

 

I’ve recently set up a WHS server on my network, and moved a lot of the old shows from the Recorded TV folders on both VMC machines to a folder called Recorded TV on the WHS.  I’ve added that folder path to the WatchedFolders in each machine’s regedit.

 

I can see the WHS Recorded TV folder and all of its contents in the Vista Windows Explorer from both of my VMC machines, but the programs in that folder don’t show up on the Recorded TV menu on either VMC machine.

 

Have I missed a setting or a permission somewhere?

 

Thanks.

 

AntiguaGuy:

 

I can see the WHS Recorded TV folder and all of its contents in the Vista Windows Explorer from both of my VMC machines, but the programs in that folder don’t show up on the Recorded TV menu on either VMC machine.

I have a similar problem. I have 4 Vista MC pc's that are connected to the WHS. One of them is handling all recordings, every recorded program is copied to the WHS's Recorded TV folder with the Recorded TV Manager add-in. This always worked fine, every program was visible in the TV programs on each Vista machine.

Since a few days all Vista machines show "no recorded programs found" (except for the Vista machine that handled the recordings, there I see them on the local drive).

I had a problem more than a week ago with the Recorded TV folder on the WHS and I had to remove it an re-create it afterwards.

I already tried to empty the libraries in media player and scan for new content, the only thing that is recognized is the music, photo and video folder content but no recorded programs.

I also tried everything I found in this thread but I can't get to show the recorded tv programs on my vista machines, a few days/weeks ago everything worked fine.

Any idea's to resolve this problem?

Greetings,

Nic

The key for me was making sure to set the share permissions on the recorded tv share to "Full Control" for "anonymous logons" and "everyone"

CalypsoCowboy:

I got this working on my WHS as well, but rather than doing this route, I did something different.

I setup my media center user with a password and setup media center to automatically log in with the password. The account was setup as an admin account. Then I changed the 4 media center services to run under the account. I also setup this account on the WHS box.

I then changed the two registry settings for recorded tv and watched tv to be \\whserver\Recorded_TV, rather than hack the registry, you can also use TweakUI

So my questions is, which one is better? The advantage I can see of how I'm doing it is you cut down on just anyone getting access to the box, but I don't have a 360 yet to see how or if I can view the media through the extender, I'm thinking it may be an issue. Anyone?

 

I went this route, and after some fiddling it works great.  However, when my HTPC wakes up from sleep, the tuner is not happy (e.g. decoder error, restart VMC or Vista).  Currently I have the ethernet set to be able to be turned off to save power, but to be able to wake up the computer from sleep, but only from management stations.

If I uncheck all those (so ethernet can't be turned off to save power), the ethernet is dead on resume, and I have to disable/enable it to fix it.  If I just uncheck the management station box, the HTPC wakes up all the time.

Note that if I don't set to record on WHS, all is well.  I can use TV manager to move recordings to WHS, and they nicely show up in recorded tv, still.  That solution doesn't work for me since I don't have enough free disk space locally to record long movies, even though I have tons on the WHS.

Does anyone else have problems like this with recording to WHS and sleep interacting?  I suspect I could bandaid over it with some setup to restart ehrec or whatever upon resume, but it doesn't seem like that should be necessary.

 

I've been using a method similar to calypso cowboy for a long time: changing the logon account of the Media Center services so that I can record to / stream from a network share. This works fine with no need for batch files or for shares with no passwords.

I do have one possible draw back though. It seems to cause problems with getting guide listings. I've just spent a week trying to get guide listings downloading with many wipes and re-installs of media centre and I think that changing the log on account of these services is the culprit.

Does anyone know why this would be the case?

Many Thanks

Richard and all,
I will spare you all the historical-details but I have struggled with this for a while now, and I just can't get this working properly on my HP Z556 MCE 2005.
I have now got so far that I can see (and play) all the shows that I have copied over to my WHS in the "Recorded TV" folder.

But.....I can't record TV.
I get an empty (0 length) file in on the WHS and an event in the Event Viewer on the MCE (under "Media Center") stating:
"xxxx was not recorded.  A tuner failure occurred and no other tuners were available at the time of recording."
Since Live TV works fine, I think this a red-herring.
Under "Applications" I get a cryptic error at the same time:
"The description for Event ID ( 0 ) in Source ( Media Center Scheduler ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this description; see Help and Support for details. The following information is part of the event: Failed to set file name for recording.."

In the byte-dump I can see:
" Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} ....e.h.R.e.c.O.b.j.:.R.e.c.o.r.d.i.n.g.T.i.m.e.r.H.a.n.d.l.e.r.:.Q.u.e.u.e.P.r.o.c.:...S.y.s.t.e.m...U.n.a.u.t.h.o.r.i.z.e.d.A.c.c.e.s.s.E.x.c.e.p.t.i.o.n.:..A.c.c.e.s.s. .i.s. .d.e.n.i.e.d........ .
.a.t..e.h.i.P.r.o.x.y...I.R.e.c.o.r.d.e.r...S.e.t.C.o.n.t.e.n.t.R.e.c.o.r.d.N.a.m.r.i.n.g.V.i.d.S.f.e.r.R.e.c.o.r.d.i.n.g.C.o.n.t.r.o.l.&..p.p.R.e.c.o.r.d.i.n.g.I.U.n.k.n.o.w.n.)..... "
This tells me there is still some access problem, e.g. the Media Center Scheduler still does not have the correct access on the WHS.

All accesses permissions are set according to numerous posts here ....though I have to un-check the "Inherent from parent the permission...." check-box in the Advanced Security Settings for the Recorded TV folder.
I run the following BAT file on the WHS as a Scheduled Task after re-boot (logged in as Administrator):
@ECHO OFF
"C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\sleep.exe" 240
net share "Recorded TV" /Delete
net share "Recorded TV"="D:\Shares\Recorded TV" /GRANT:Everyone,FULL /GRANT:"Anonymous logon",FULL
ECHO Y| cacls "D:\shares\Recorded TV" /G "Anonymous logon":F "Everyone":F /T /C

I just can't figure it out....
Can someone PLEASE help me unlock the potential of my MCE and WHS :)

Cheers/ Carl

I am having the setup multiple (3) Vista MC machines to both record to and look for recordings from a Recorded TV share on WHS last night.  On the WHS today it is showing that I have file conflicts in the TempRec directory.

Just wondering how to fix this.

Steve  

Steve,

My guess is that the problem stems from the fact that the live TV buffer files are also placed in the same directory that the recorded TV is.  If you have 3 machines using the same directory, they will likely try to use the same files in that directory for the live TV buffer.  I would try to use 3 different shares and point each machine to one of them as the record path and then point each machine to the other 2 shares as "other locations" to find the recordings made by the other 2 VMC boxes.

Scott

Richard A Miller:

erwien:

I am able to make it work, thank you very much.

I have one problem, though, Vista Media Center do not display thumbnail preview for several shows that are located in my Windows Home Server. I was able to delete show that are located in WHS, so I know it is not a permission issue.

Is there any extra step to show thumnail preview?

Thanks!

No extra step needed to show thumbnail preview, the thumbnail artwork will come back in time.

When you say they will come back in time, how long should that take? I have a weird situation where my thumbnails were showing up fine and now all of the sudden they aren't anymore. If I move a file back to the PC it shows up fine, once I move it back to WHS it is gone. I moved over approximately 74 recorded programs and now I have no thumbnails for any of them. Any suggestions?

I know this is quite an old post but thought I'd answer anyway in case in helps someone.

I'd had this problem and fixed it. The most likely cause is that VMC tried to create the thumbnails while the permissions on the share/folder/files were incorrect. If this happens it seems that, even if you correct the permissions, VMC will not refresh the thumbnails (might happen in weeks/months but no time soon).

To correct the problem do the following.

On the WHS

1. Check Share permissions are set to Everyone, Full Control and Anonymous Logon, Full Control.

2. Check Folder permissions are set to Everyone, Full Control and Anonymous Logon, Full Control.

3. Check that each file in the Folder has the same permissions. If not, open the folder security properties, click advanced then tick the "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects" option and apply.

4. Check that all files now have the correct permissions.

As an aside, Richards batch file will set the share and folder permissions on reboot but does not propagate them to the files. I'll come on to how you overcome this at the end of the post.

On the VMC PC

1. Make sure Media Center is closed then navigate to c:\Users\All Users\Microsoft\ehome\thmb. In here you'll find a file called TVThumb.db. Delete it. If the system can't delete the file because it's in use, reboot the PC and try again. Shouldn't need to boot into safe mode but if you still have problems deleting after the reboot that's the next option.

2. Launch Media Center, go to Recorded TV and watch your Thumbnails get recreated :)

3. If the problem persists, create a sub-folder in your Recorded TV share, move all your recordings to the new folder and perform the above steps again.

 

I mentioned above about the batch file which sets the permissions when you login to the system not setting permissions on the files. You can overcome this by adding a "/T" option on the end of the "cacls" line as follows

ECHO Y| cacls "D:\shares\Recorded TV" /G "Anonymous logon":F "Everyone":F /T

While we're on the topic of adjustments to the batch file I would also add a "/Y" to the end of the "net share delete" line as follows

net share "Recorded TV" /Delete /y

I've done this because I noticed that sometimes when the batch file runs this command requires you to answer yes or no to continue (usually if there's a user connectied to the share). The "/y" automatically parses the "yes" option.

I've also made a few more changes which may be useful to people. Instead of having the batch file in the startup group so it runs when you login to the WHS I actually have it run as an automatic service which runs on reboot. This means there's no need to login and logout for the permissions to be applied on reboot. If anyone is interested in how this is done let me know and I'll post full instructions. Also, don't know if anyone else has noticed this but it isn't just reboots which can mess up the permissions. Doing any user maintenance through the Home Server Console will also reset the permissions on your share so remember to run the batch file again afterwards.

Oh, one final thing. On the VMC PC I also don't add addition "WatchedFolders" to the registry. Instead I create a "symbolic link" to the share within the existing "Recorded TV" folder. Seems to be a bit quicker. I'm only using WHS to store TV programs and not Recording directly to it ATM but for those who are, creating a symbolic link and pointing the "RecordPath" in the registry to it instead of to the share directly, may have some advantages.

Hope this helps someone.

Wo0zy

Does this procedure simplify now with the new Power Pack 2 support? It would seem like "Recorded TV" is added automatically now, I assume it needs additional permissions to allow recording to it.

From my understanding, it does simplify playing back the files. It doesn't give us the ability to record to the server without hacking it.

With PP2 you do not need any hacks to play Recorded TV from WHS to MCE.

Ben