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mControl for Windows Media Center

Storing or Recording Live TV to WHS

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This post has 159 Replies | 15 Followers

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Richard Miller:
On WHS "Recorded TV" folder go to the Security tab then Advanced (lower right). clear the "Inherit from parent the permission entries that apply to child objects.Include these with entries explicitly defined here" make sure that check box is uncheck .

 Richard,

 Thank you, Thank you... I have been going crazy with this for some days now. This one 'addition' to the process solved the whole problem. This is really a great addition to my system...

 O, there is one issue that is still open. One one of my VMCs, there is no WatchedFolders selection in the Registery. Any idea on how to create one? I have added watched folders for Media files, but its not getting to the 'recording' area in the registery.

 Again, thank you and all those who can make these things happen and pass them on!!

 Lanny

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DaHoServer:

Richard Miller:
On WHS "Recorded TV" folder go to the Security tab then Advanced (lower right). clear the "Inherit from parent the permission entries that apply to child objects.Include these with entries explicitly defined here" make sure that check box is uncheck .

 Richard,

 Thank you, Thank you... I have been going crazy with this for some days now. This one 'addition' to the process solved the whole problem. This is really a great addition to my system...

 O, there is one issue that is still open. One one of my VMCs, there is no WatchedFolders selection in the Registery. Any idea on how to create one? I have added watched folders for Media files, but its not getting to the 'recording' area in the registery.

 Again, thank you and all those who can make these things happen and pass them on!!

 Lanny

 Richard,

 I received your instructions a couple of weeks ago on how to setup the new Registry entry for the WatchedFolders and that all went well. I still cannot get access to my server Recorded TV shows from that VMC machine. I have rebooted the VMC with the Registry change and its not working. I still have access to the server recorded TV shows on the other VMC machine that I already had the WatchedFolders Registry entry to start with. I don't have any idea how to troubleshoot this issue at this point... When I select Recorded TV from the VMC main menu, it seems to take a longer period of time before the little round 'doing something' circle starts doing its thing - but from there its no different.

 Help...

 Lanny

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I can't seem to get this to work. I am trying to setup MyMovies to read my DVDs that are convert to MPEG2 that are located on WHS under the shared folders in a folder called DVDs. When I try to play them thorugh the 360 it says it can not find the path. I also did not have a "WatchedFolders" in the reg on my Vista box so I added one.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Here is also my bat file on my WHS.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Y| cacls "D:\shares\DVDs" /G "Anonymous logon":F "Everyone":F
net share "DVDs" /Delete
net share "DVDs"="D:\shares\DVDs" /GRANT:Everyone,FULL
end

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phenixdragon:

I can't seem to get this to work. I am trying to setup MyMovies to read my DVDs that are convert to MPEG2 that are located on WHS under the shared folders in a folder called DVDs. When I try to play them thorugh the 360 it says it can not find the path. I also did not have a "WatchedFolders" in the reg on my Vista box so I added one.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Here is also my bat file on my WHS.

@ECHO OFF
ECHO Y| cacls "D:\shares\DVDs" /G "Anonymous logon":F "Everyone":F
net share "DVDs" /Delete
net share "DVDs"="D:\shares\DVDs" /GRANT:Everyone,FULL
end

That bat file is for recorded TV only, you do not need it and you do not need all the Gpedit settings.

 

Just enable the Guest (Xbox360) read access or full access for your DVDs folder.

 

Go to WHS Console click on User Accounts tab, then right Guest and enable it with no password give your dvd folder "read" access or "full" access. 

Richard Miller MCE MVP

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Slyke; have you had any luck? I've got the EXACT same issue and it sounds like I want it solved for similiar reasons (all my MCE machines have old, low capacity HDD, and I'd like to centralize my storage in my large capicity WHS).

 I've tried kapone's symbolic link method, but i still get the same issue. http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/archive/index.php/t-935341.html

Let's keep each other informed if one of us figures this out. cheers

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Richard Miller:
The batch file will only run after logging on to WHS, so if WHS reboots you will have to logon then log off.

You can schedule the permissions batch file to run at system startup using Task Scheduler.  There's no need to create a service to make this work.  Also, I've found that using Group Policy to run a startup script as Boxerboys recommends does not seem to work as the script seems to hang, causing startup to pause until the script timeout is reached.

Taking Justin's lead, you will still need to add a line to the script to delay it until after WHS has reset the share permissions.  Otherwise you'll just lose your changes.  Additionally, I'm using "sleep.exe" from the Windows 2003 Resource Kit to pause my script.  Ping seemed to cause it to hang.

Here's what you need to do:

1. Download the Windows 2003 Resource Kit. Install it via Remote Desktop.

2. Update the batch file so that it looks like this:

@ECHO OFF
"C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\sleep.exe" 60
net share "Recorded TV" /Delete
net share "Recorded TV"="D:\Shares\Recorded TV" /GRANT:Everyone,FULL /GRANT:"Anonymous logon",FULL
ECHO Y| cacls "D:\shares\Recorded TV" /G "Anonymous logon":F "Everyone":F

3. Save the file to somewhere safe.  I like to use this folder (without the quotes): "C:\WINDOWS\system32\scripting".  The scripting folder doesn't exist, so you'll have to create it if you want to do like I did.

4. Open "Scheduled Tasks."  Go to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks.

5. Run the "Add Scheduled Task" wizard by double-clicking on the icon.

    a. Click Next.
    b. Browse to the batch file you saved in step #2 and then click Next.
    c. Enter a name for the task. I called it "Set security on Recorded TV share", then choose "When my computer starts" from the list and click Next.
    d. Enter in a username and password of an administrator on the WHS box. I just use the built in Administrator account. Click Next.
    e. Click Finish.

That's it!  When you reboot, you should no longer have to log into the WHS box to set the permissions.

Thanks for the info, Ian and Richard.  It was very helpful!

Update: Some people are having trouble, so I've updated the script. See my other post in this thread.

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Hi Brad

Thanks for the info, I have had no time to try this do you have it working on WHS?

Richard Miller MCE MVP

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I do.  It's running on my WHS now and working like a charm.  I've rebooted the machine a few times in the past couple of days and the share permissions have held up without requiring any action from me.
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Brad I will give this a try at the weekend, thanks again .

Richard Miller MCE MVP

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The batch file running at startup is working perfectly for me. In fact, as soon as I thought I had cracked this whole issue I noticed the following:

 After my machine has been in the S3 sleep state I recieve the following message: TV tuner not installed. If I return the Recorded TV folder to a local disk, the message goes away. Strange but true...

 I have a Hauppauge Nova-T-500 (euro dual DVT tuner) and, if no others are having this problem, I might purchase a different card.

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Hi Brad77

 

I have tried your program, but I still got to untick permission every time I reboot my WHS . .Have you left something out of the batch file

 

Please help

 

Cheers 

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Jacks5000:

Hi Brad77

 

I have tried your program, but I still got to untick permission every time I reboot my WHS . .Have you left something out of the batch file

 

Please help

 

Cheers 

I also have this issue. I reported it a while back but no one was ever able to figure out why.... if you are able to figure it out I would love to hear how to resolve it.
Eric
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Jacks5000:
I have tried your program, but I still got to untick permission every time I reboot my WHS . .Have you left something out of the batch file

I've noticed this behavior as well, but it seemed to happen inconsistently. I noticed that while the share permissions were correct, the files in the share still had the original permissions set by WHS.  I had unchecked the "allow inheritable permissions..." box, but I still had periodic problems.

My best guess is that the process resetting the share permissions upon boot is resetting this flag. To deal with this, I added two additional flags to the cacls command.  The first, "/T" re-propagates the Everyone/Anonymous permissions to all of the files in the share.  The second, "/C" tells the cacls command to keep going even if it runs into an access denied error (this could happen if a file is in use).

I also found that the 60 second delay wasn't always long enough, so I increased the delay to 120 seconds.  Here's the complete updated script (changes are in bold):

@ECHO OFF
"C:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\sleep.exe" 120
net share "Recorded TV" /Delete
net share "Recorded TV"="D:\Shares\Recorded TV" /GRANT:Everyone,FULL /GRANT:"Anonymous logon",FULL
ECHO Y| cacls "D:\shares\Recorded TV" /G "Anonymous logon":F "Everyone":F /T /C

Please note that this should only be used on the "Recorded TV" share.  Since the command now resets the permissions on all the files in the share, this could take quite a long time on a share that has a lot of files in it.

Also, it may be worth noting that I am not recording directly to the WHS.  My Media Center is recording to a local disk, and those files are being moved over to my WHS periodically by the "Recorded TV Manager" WHS Add-in from Drasch Computer Software. You have to sort out your permissions on the Media Center to allow the WHS to access its shares, but I found that to be a good solution for me.  The software is $25, and well worth it IMO.

Hopefully this will sort things out on your system.

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Bard good work.

Looks like its working after WHS reboot, I had to push the time out to 4 minutes (240) on the sleep.

 

Richard Miller MCE MVP

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Thanks for a great thread. I've followed the instructions and have recording working directly from my Vista MCE to WHS.

The one problem I'm having is that MCE shows my "Recorder Storage" as 149GB  and "Record on Drive" as "C: (149GB)". My first few scheduled recordings are OK but the later recordings are soon marked as "not enough space for recording".

My WHS has a 500GB and 750GB drive pair with only 8% used and 1012GB free.

I've tried increasing the 149 from the UI but the + button is greyed out. I've then set the following in the Vista registry (I'm comfortable working in regedit):

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoSettings
DiskLimit=300000000000

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Media Center\Service\Recording\
Quota=300000000000

(I'd like to set these to 1TB but have started at 300GB to try and get it working). I reboot Vista and MCE still shows my recorder storage size as 149GB.

Any help appreciated.

Olli 

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