Interesting News

Sorry if this is the wrong forum. But to be honest this is an interesting change for home. Also this affects us all (torrent, ares, limewire) and seems to affect all topics.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/07/microsoft-announces-hp-mediasmart-server-powered-by-windows-home/

Okay. Here's the interesting factor. A home server, controlled by you. That's essentially a giant hard drive for your home to store and distribute media across the home computers. It would then seem reasonable to expect that any security feature placed to prevent theft or illegal distribution could be circumvented. Thus open access to data to other users such a friend with a laptop could allow for more rapid and larger data transfer. It wouldn't surprise me to expect that the media companies will scream theft once this begins to take hold. I mean the ability to exchange data among home computers and then store it in a single vault and access it anytime for any reason. I dunno I maybe wrong, but what do you think?

Further this has some more legit features. Integration into the home stereo or TV or both so that party music and movies can be controlled by a couple of clicks. Record TV shows, send it to the server, watch it on the bigscreen downstairs. I know some have been doing this for a while, but many people do not know how to make their own server so the first real commercial application and production of it seems a bit in the step of the direction of home integration with various electronics.

 

coolness but I have been using a Netware server for, well, forever...but this is cool because it looks to make it all simple for the avg home to setup and run with.

Nice find!!

 

Awesome, and about time! I have been thinking this very idea over in my head for a while. As a neat solution to managing all those storage devices (e.g. flash, internal, external devices) this will reduce time and resources dedicated to each device. Central storage means that "father" that Ripley refered to in Alien films to control the ship and access its data banks. What do others think?

 

I guess I'm not sure I see the benefits of this, just sounds like a network file store which if you already have multiple PC's sitting around you either will have forked out money for, or not, either which way this is just that isn't it?

What am I missing here?

 

And the system has so much DRM in it that it'll be next to useless for doing anything except watching it on approved devices, at approved times and locations. Screw that.

 

Approved devices obviously being those that Micro$oft makes...

Not that Micro$oft would EVER do something like that...