Heard of Media Server mania from friends, colleagues, blogs, but I never got into using it, even though I run Vista in my laptop and desktop, may be because I don’t watch TV or movies much. After seeing the media server features recently at a friends place I totally got hooked, he was running media server through PS3. But I don’t have a PS3, did gave some thought about buying it, but I am not into video games and buying a gaming console to use as media server seemed over kill. Long time back I read a blog post in life hacker about Boxee and thought would give a try. I am still kind of in the WOW!!! state, still discovering new things and playing around with it.
Here are simple steps to get your own media server going, with a old may be unused desktop or laptop.
1. Install Boxee http://www.boxee.tv/ on the desktop/laptop and register for an account
2. Hook up the desktop/laptop to TV, most new HDTV’s come with a RCA or HDMI ports, if old TV with no RCA or HDMI, you can use one of the cheap RCA to composite converters or may be if s-video port available then s-video to composite converter.
3. Run Boxee (this will run in full screen mode), make sure turn off the firewall or add exception for the port Boxee server is taking input on for the remote.
4. One can use any PC Remote or Microsoft Media Server Remote to control Boxee UI. In my case a old StreamZap PC Remote (http://www.streamzap.com/) worked great with no additional (actually none) settings or hacks.
5. Best of all, IPhone App (http://blog.boxee.tv/2009/03/15/boxee-iphone-remote-app-available-on-the-app-store/) for Boxee, it comes with minimum buttons but does great job, its real pleasure to sit with my IPhone and browse and view my local videos, pics, songs and online TV shows. Even better don’t have to point my Phone to any PC or TV as its all over Wifi I can sit any direction any where hold my IPhone how ever and control my media content.
6. If you don’t want to engage your Phone and miss playing on it while watching TV, then there is a Boxee Remote Control app, which was build for MAC OS but runs great on windows using Kludgets, here is the link to set it up on one of your laptops or Netbooks and enjoying watching all your media content on TV controlling from your laptop/netbook http://lot49.org/dev/
a. Download and Install Kludgets on your windows
b. Download the Boxee Remote Control widget from http://lot49.org/dev/ and copy the widget to the widgets folder under your Kludgets installation directory
c. Finally Right Click on Kludgets in your Tray and open the Boxee Widget Package.
I am still discovering new things as I enjoy watching my Media in a awesome way, will keep updating this post as I discover new things.
-- Kiran Bheemarti