Sharing Recorded TV

[CuriousGeorge]

I've been trying to share recorded tv on two MCE machines for a few weeks.
I've tried various documented solutions, one of which was the
ShareRecordedTV shareware app from The Green Button. None of them worked.
I'm not idiot and all the documented solutions are pretty simple to follow
so I assume there is something with my configuration that is different and
causes it to not work.

Anyway, after trying the other solutions and trying to understand what they
were really doing it occurred to me what the basic problem was. The process
that discovers recorded tv is a Windows Service that is running as the local
System account. Well it's simple as pie to change the account a Windows
Service uses to logon. So I went in search of the culprit and I believe I
have found it. The service is the 'Media Center Scheduler Service' and I
was able to share recorded tv between my two MCE boxes very easily by
following the steps below. I have not seen this technique documented
anywhere, if it is then please pardon me for repeating. I document it here
to save others the time it took me to figure out:

Follow these steps, where the MCE Server is the machine that contains the
recorded tv content (dvr-ms files) and the MCE Client is the MCE machine you
want to view them on:

1) Make sure you have an account on both machines with the same username and
password.
The account should have administrative permissions.
2) On the MCE Server setup a share that gives full permissions to the
username above (or everyone).
This share should contain all of the dvr-ms files you want to share.
3) On the MCE client add the UNC to the servers share to the watched folders
registry key.
Either use TweakMCE or manually edit the following registry key:
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media
Center\Service\Recording\WatchedFolders
4) On the MCE Client right click on My Computer and choose Manage.
5) Expand 'Service And Applications' then 'Services'.
6) Scroll down to 'Media Center Scheduler Service', right click and choose
Stop.
7) Double click on 'Media Center Scheduler Service' and choose the LogOn
tab.
8) Click the 'This Account' radio button and enter the Username and password
from above.
Then click OK to exit the dialog.
9) Right click on 'Media Center Scheduler Service' and choose Start.
10) Restart Media Center (there should be no need to reboot)

[CuriousGeorge]

Well harumph.

It was all working perfectly until I tried to use the MCE Extender features
of the Xbox 360. I get disconnect errors before I get anywhere. Reverting
the service back to using the local system account makes the Xbox 360 work
again. A serious dissapointment.

Doesn't anyone else have this problem? It seems like such a basic thing to
want to share Recorded TV content from other machines...

-Brett-

"CuriousGeorge" <brettro...@newsgroup.nospam> wrote in message
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