I recently got one of the DirecTV HR-20 "HD DVR" set top boxes at home. It has an Ethernet port on it, but I didn't bother to plug it into my home network until a few days ago.
Tonight I was watching TV and I noticed a new menu item in the set top box UI I had not seen before: "Music & Photos"
I clicked and a screen popped up saying that Intel & DirecTV had collaborated on this and it could connect to a PC etc... etc... And it was a "beta".
The menu listed:
My Computers
SERVER: 1
Hmmm... that's my Windows Home Server! This DirecTV set top box is a Windows Media Connect media client!
Sure enough, clicking on "SERVER: 1" took me to a menu system that let me listen to and play all my music and view all my photos just as I can on my XBox360 and my Roku SoundBridge (but in even more places in my house).
It just worked.
-cek
Any chance you could get with the Windows Media Connect people and get a list of whoise set-top boxes do this?
I have Verizon FiOS, and the set-top boxes are already TCP/IP clients on the LAN, but I put an internal firewall between them and the rest of my network. Don't trust them, but I might reconsider if there were some reason.
I saw that ethernet port and was too chicken to plug in. Directtv doing something right.. Very happy to hear it just works... I have 2 HR-20's and so happens I have already run the Cat 6 to their locations...
Thanks for the info! I am a big fan of the blog and the new Home Server!!!
You're lucking the HR20 didn't crash or freeze when you were doing that. The last three times I checked out that menu option it screwed my receiver up royally. Had to reboot it.
The feature is nice but it's still considered beta.
DirecTV is rolling out an update this week to support Video On Demand for the HR20-700.
I posted a comment yesterday but it never showed up...
It is nice WHS works with media players, but I have had no luck at all with Windows Media Player 11 on Windows Vista...
Is there any trick in getting this to work? I'm running Windows Home server, copied some music and photos in and also enabled Media Sharing. I set my HR20 with a static IP, verified internet connectivity, but no extra menu is appearing.