Windows – How to record tv to network share with Windows Media Center

network-sharesrecordingtvwindows 7windows-media-center

Well, you would think that Windows 7's new MediaCenter would be up to the task of recording your TV to a network share/drive. Too bad, it looks like it's just not possible.

I have a windows 2008 R2 server, and a Windows 7 machine with a TV card.
Since my server has 2TB of storage, it would be nice to record directly to it's networked drive. (I mounted it as Z:).

I tried the following:

  1. Selecting it in Media Center Itself: Not working. Not available.
  2. Editing the registry: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording , setting RecordPath to Z:\TV. Not working.
  3. Editing the registry: setting RecordPath to \\server\TV. Not working.
  4. Creating a Symlink (mklink \D) to Z:\TV and \\server\TV and setting that in the registry as RecordPath.

Currently I am out of options. I could ofcourse Install Windows7 on my server, but I have no license for that, and my windows 2008 r2 is free from dreamspark.

Are there people that are succesfully recording to a networked drive/storage?

edit
I also need to mention that I need to be able to acces the stored files from other PC's, like my laptop. So iSCSI is great for recording, but it looks like you can't access iSCSI devices from multiple PC's.

Looks like sharing a iSCSI device is out of the question, so: Are there workarounds to get this thing recording to my network drive?

Best Answer

This isn't an exact solution, but at home I record to the local hard drive, then run a robocopy script every 6 hours that moves *.wtv files that are more than a day old to my server, which is also mapped as 'recorded tv' in win7.

this keeps the space on my media centre hdd down.

the reason i have the at least 1 day old rule is i don't want it moving / trying to move a file that is currently being recorded. I doubt i'll find a tv show that has to record for more than 24 hours :)

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