Run Mediaportal from a server

[Operations]

Hi guys, still great to see so many people using and enjoying their mediaportal

Before i will post my question first my situation.

I've got 3 differents pc's running mediaportal at the moment, livingroom+workroom+bedroom. They al run the movies and tv series from the fileserver. This works fine, but i do have to have 3 pretty recent pc's for my HD movies. Plus i have to keep up 3 different mediaportal installations.

My Questions is:

Is it possible to install Mediaportal on my server (windows 2003) en run mediaportal.exe trough my GB network? This way i have only 1 installation to keep up plus i can use mediaportal on all my pc's.

Please feel free to ask any questions.

[bigrider]

No Problem

[milhouse]

Allow me to post a slightly more helpful response.

I don't actually know the answer to your question, but unless the hardware is identical it might be a problem. Plus, it gives you more flexibility to have different configurations per PC - such as if one is on an HDTV and the others are SD.

What you CAN do, though, is use a shared database, so when you add music or movies to one, it updates the shared database so you don't have to make the additions on all three. See this wiki article:
UserGuides/CentralisedDatabases - MediaPortal Wiki Documentation

For you original question - give it a try, and let us know how it works.

Milhouse

[Operations]

Originally Posted by milhouse

Allow me to post a slightly more helpful response.

I don't actually know the answer to your question, but unless the hardware is identical it might be a problem. Plus, it gives you more flexibility to have different configurations per PC - such as if one is on an HDTV and the others are SD.

What you CAN do, though, is use a shared database, so when you add music or movies to one, it updates the shared database so you don't have to make the additions on all three. See this wiki article:
UserGuides/CentralisedDatabases - MediaPortal Wiki Documentation

For you original question - give it a try, and let us know how it works.

Milhouse

I have tried it, but the mediaportal.exe crashes then. but maybe their is a trick to make it work. Shared database is an option but doesnt really cover the full load of my question if you know what i mean.

[Guzzi]

I am also interested in such a solution - saving the time to update all MP installations everywhere. I woul dbe willing to male the HW the same, if it would be required. I tried the "centralized" databases already - but it wasn't too stable - especially I had the situation, that one crashing pc made databases unusable for all others. might be a limitation of the databaseengines!?

[Gixxer]

Originally Posted by Guzzi

I am also interested in such a solution - saving the time to update all MP installations everywhere. I woul dbe willing to male the HW the same, if it would be required. I tried the "centralized" databases already - but it wasn't too stable - especially I had the situation, that one crashing pc made databases unusable for all others. might be a limitation of the databaseengines!?

i guess that if u have same hardware configuration u can always config one of the pc to your needs and then create an image and mount it in the rest of the computers.

using that + shared database will save lots of time.

[gxtracker]

Originally Posted by Operations

Is it possible to install Mediaportal on my server (windows 2003) en run mediaportal.exe trough my GB network? This way i have only 1 installation to keep up plus i can use mediaportal on all my pc's.

Not easily. In fact, it would probably be easier to keep managing your 3 seperate systems then it would be to migrate to a client/server infrastructure like the one you're proprosing.

Even if you did accomplish this, you would still have to configure your shares and databases on each system.

My suggestion, is to maintain a home server that keeps all of your movies, music, videos, etc... and mount shares on each HTPC you have. Let the OS do the file system work for you, and have MP do the database upkeep and playback. This way you can add and remove content and it will still be accessable on all three system.

[Mouch.net]

Just to prove it is working:
My HTPC is at the same time my Virtual Machine Host.

I'm running MP on Windows Server 2k8 x64.
Database is my shared SQL Server 2005 that also hosts some 2 Web sites and some of my tools.

It is a little bit tricky to get everything running but its working very stable at all.
Here are the files you need to get it running on 2k8