Comments on: Add-In Review: WebGuide for Windows Home Server

By: James Williams

James Williams — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 01:04:37 +0000

I am a new WHS user and I am looking for Webguide. Can someone tell me where I can get it?

By: Rosalinda

Rosalinda — Tue, 10 May 2011 08:05:45 +0000

Thanks for srihang. Always good to find a real expert.

By: cga

cga — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:29:03 +0000

I have it installed but I can't use it.

For you to use webguide you need to create a user account and enable remote connection for the user so that user can log to the server.

When user connect to server to access webguide unfortunately user get access to all albums you have in HP Photo Viewer created by other users and he can delete all of them even if he hasn’t created them, there are not restrictions for HP photo users

It would be useful if webguide has a logging link in the window home server page just to get access to webguide stuff

By: John

John — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 16:44:44 +0000

Okay, just added webguide to my acer aspire H340 last night. Playing with it today. It basically seems to work, but as Kevin mentioned, it's a bit clunky… For example, there's no playlist support, no search capability, and some of the album covers are completely wrong. Streaming works okay for audio, but video stutters (I have FIOS, which as a 5mbps upstream). I guess the slick version of this will be coming with the next iteration of WHS (version 2.0 – sometime in 2010?). In the meantime, I'll check out some of the alternatives mentioned above and also shoutcast + winamp.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:49:11 +0000

I love this addin, but it is a bit clunky and the streaming never seems to work. I am very hopeful that these guys are at work on a good update, because I’ve always considered that (if done right) something like Webguide could be one of those “killer apps” for the WHS.

By: IceFX

IceFX — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 14:31:34 +0000

The Webguide add-in works great. I installed it the other day and,like others, had some difficulty getting it working. After an hour though, it was smooth sailing. Here are three tips that should make the install painless:

1. Install Cyberlink powerdvd 7 trial to get the video codecs installed. Choose this codec from the configuration screen.
2. Install the AC3 filter pack for the audio codec. Make sure to select it from the config screen.
3. Install 2 GB of Ram in the server. Using the 512MB that shipped with my EX470 just wouldn’t work for video streaming.

This is a great add-in and even though I have only been using it for two days, I really enjoy it.

By: Paul J Roberts

Paul J Roberts — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:08:04 +0000

I tried this waaaaay back when it came out and this is the same version. Very nice edition to WHS. BUT, it is plagued with problems and installation is a pain. The photo and music option worked good for me, but the video would not work. Not to mention the load it puts on the server to encode any video you try to stream, but that is to be expected with software encoding.

Nice program, just needs fine tuned some more. As others stated, the author has been tied up with MS doing other projects. Maybe someday this will be updated…

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:41:57 +0000

I’ve tried WebGuide, but I just couldn’t seem to get it to work reliably through my company firewall. I’ve since found 2 options for streaming music that work flawlessly with my WHS (HP EX470). The first is jukefly (www.jukefly.com). You install a small (1MB ish) efficient server program on the WHS. It scans the media on your computer and uploads your library info (most likely XML data) to your jukefly account. Then you can log in to http://www.jukefly.com from anywhere, which even works through my company firewall because I can customize the firewall port and jukefly has its own proxy server. Interface for the site is impressive.

The other I’ve been using is subsonic. Same idea with this one–install the server program and log in through a website. This one was a little more difficult to set up in my opinion, but offers a lot more flexibility–comes with transcoders to stream almost any type of music formats you have (including flac), or if needed and you know anything about it, you can provide your own transcoder. Subsonic has been slightly more reliable for me, but I like the interface of jukefly just a little bit more.

I hope that helps someone out.

By: JohnCz

JohnCz — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 19:15:04 +0000

I’m fairly convinced that we will see some variant of this integrated into WHS/Live Mesh in the future. At PDC, they demo’d a WebGuide type app using Live Mesh. My chief complaint with WebGuide is that the WHS version does not support Live TV and the user interface just adds to the existing Media Center/XBox/Zune interfaces we see everyday. In my opinion, these can be remedied. Already, we are seeing Microsoft put effort into bridging XBox/Zune interfaces. Windows 7 – Media Center – Music seems to have Zune’s MixView. Hopefully Microsoft will continue down this path of interface unification. Now, Live TV is more technically challenging and one that hasn’t much attention at all. You will often see the Media Center community raise the issue of software based extender for PCs. Basically, they want to use that beautiful laptop they just bought as an extender to watch Live TV around the home. You can’t do that today..while products like BeyondTV and SageTV do. My gut tells me that we will see Media Center ported to WHS in 2010 (v2 WHS Premium) so WHS will serve hardware extenders, PCs and mobile devices. Keep your fingers crossed and be patient.

By: Nige

Nige — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:27:24 +0000

In theory this is a great add-in. However as mentioned setup is incredibly troublesome, but I finally got my video working after weeks of tinkering and was very happy. However due to lack of development on this add-in and the excellent ORB (see wiki installation tutorial) I changed my streaming application and have never looked back. Needs a lot of work to be ready for use out of the box which it doesn’t look like getting any time soon.

By: M Freitas

M Freitas — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 18:15:48 +0000

I see WebGuide WHS hasn’t changed much since its early days. Still not working properly…

By: Jim Clark

Jim Clark — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 17:34:10 +0000

MS must keep their programmer busy. Between Doug and Brendan Grant, they seem to have pretty much disappeared from the WHS add-in scene.

It has a lot of nice features. And it works, for the most part. Perhaps when we get a good look at Windows 7 Media Center, we will see some of Doug’s work there.