Operating System Win 7 Ultimate or WHS 2011 ??? (2 Viewers)

[porky996t]

Hi Guys,

I am in the process of getting the parts to build a dedicated file server that I can place out of the way in my basement. This will have 8 HDD's in it for OS, recording and file storage and back up. It will also have 3 x dual tuners in it and 16Gb of RAM for timeshifting using RAMDisk.

Which OS is best to do this? Win7 Ultimate or WHS 2011 - will the tuners and TV Server work with WHS 2011??

Anybody have any comments - I'd be grateful to hear others experience as I have never done this before.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Schicksal]

After WHS2 there will be no WHS anymore with a win8 kernel or higher.
WHS is after this version EOL so I wouldn't put any work in WHS anymore.
I liked WHS1 but there is no future for WHS

 

[Luca Brasi]

Although Schicksal is right about the future of whs I would go with it for your project. The license is about 45-50 Euros and you will get a system based on server 2008 for that. All the server features (file shares, backups) will be much easier to handle with the whs and you can us add-ons like lightsout for power management. Off course whs has it's quirks but what are the alternatives?

 

[porky996t]

Thanks for the info guys. Whilst Schicksal is correct, if I can get it working fine and doing what I want then it will be OK. I am aware that Win8 is imminent, but I am a believer in "If it ain't broke... don't fix it".

Will WHS2011 run MP TV Server OK, and will my TV Cards install OK? Would I use Win7 drivers, or Vista??

Thanks in advance.

 

[4Fred]

Thanks for the info guys. Whilst Schicksal is correct, if I can get it working fine and doing what I want then it will be OK. I am aware that Win8 is imminent, but I am a believer in "If it ain't broke... don't fix it".

Will WHS2011 run MP TV Server OK, and will my TV Cards install OK? Would I use Win7 drivers, or Vista??

Thanks in advance.

WHS is a server OS, most tv-cards and MePo are developed and intended for a client OS. It's unfortunate but it's the way it is.
There are ways of getting most tv-cards running on a server OS but it almost always involves some hacks and it's unnecessarily complicated.
I did run my tv-server on Windows Server 2003 and later on Windows Server 2008 R2 but no more, changed it all to Win7.

On my Win7 machine I run all kinds of stuff. Full MePo install with two tv cards and mpextended and blah blah (check System Specs if you are interested) but I also use it as my fileserver, dynamic dns updater, backup, using vmware workstation I have two virtual machines running on it, a small hack to allow two remote desktops and all kinds of stuff that I used to think I needed a server os to do... but after all problems I had getting the stuff to run OK on a server OS I reverted to Win7 over a year ago and have never looked back.

If you want really want to run your stuff on WHS I suggest running it on a trial license to make sure that what you can get your stuff running.

 

[porky996t]

Thanks for that 4Fred.

After your comments I think I will stick to Win7 for the server instead of WHS. It will be dedicated to MP TV Server primarily.

 

[4Fred]

I see that you will place it in basement, if you want to add even more use to it you could use it as a MePo client as well by using hdmi over ethernet to get hdmi from basement to any of your tvs
Good luck dude!

 

[Luca Brasi]

Hm, 4Fred is surely right about all that mp stuff, didn't think about these issues deeply enough... Right now I'm a little file-backup-server-minded as I just installed my new whs. For these requirements I still think whs is the better choice but if mp/tv-server is your priority you should go with 7 to avoid problems... There are a lot of guys running mp on whs or 2008 though but I never tested it, so I can't say anything about it.