Here’s a run through of what you’ll find in the new HP MediaSmart Server 2.5 update.
New Welcome Screen
The welcome screen has been revised to list the new features made available in the update, along with links to help files and more information on each. On the left hand side, you also see the new panel for the HP Video Converter.
iStream iPhone/iPod Touch Application
The iStream application for iPhone and iPod Touch allows you to stream your music, video and photos directly from your home server to the device. To do this, you have to download and install the application from Apple’s App Store (it’s free, by the way) and then configure it to work with your home server.
Simply enter your home server’s URL, along with your username and password and then you’ll have access to your Music, Video and Photos directly from the iPhone.
HP Video Converter
HP Video Converter allows your home server to automatically convert videos placed in you Video shared folder into mobile quality and high quality H.264 (MPEG-4) files, for playback on a wide range of mobile and other playback devices such as iPods, iPhones, digital media receivers and games consoles. It will not, however, transcode copy protected DVDs or videos with DRM security.
HP have the following definitions on video quality:
Full Resolution
Full resolution keeps the source video’s screen resolution, and basically just creates an output file with the new format for the provided input. Video and audio quality should be very similar to the source material for Full resolution videos. You may notice some differences between the original and Full resolution output, but these differences are minimal in most situations.
Mobile Resolution
The Mobile resolution creates a video that is suitable for mobile devices and remote video streaming (the video will be no larger than QVGA: 320w x 240h). This is to make support of mobile devices easier, and to provide videos suitable for remote media streaming Media streaming sends media—music, photos and video files—from the HP MediaSmart Server to other devices that can play the media. The HP MediaSmart Server includes functionality that allows media to stream to a Digital Media Adapter (DMA).
Switching on the Video Converter is done through the Windows Home Server Settings page. You can select which of your shared folders to monitor, and whether to convert videos to mobile or high quality, or both. Once initiated, video transcoding happens in the background.
A new shared folder, Converted Videos, will be created which is where you’ll find both mobile quality and high quality converted videos. For ease, they’re separated into “HQ” and “MQ” folders.
The files themselves have their filenames amended slightly with “_hq” or “_mq” added at the end – again, for ease of recognition.
Mobile quality files are sized to 320 x 240, and with the lower resolution, file sizes are dropped.I found that a 200Mb xvid encoded video dropped to around 100Mb using mobile quality transcoding. Conversion between different formats will provide differing results.
With regard file format support, here’s a list of supported and unsupported formats:
One rather baffling issue you’ll notice here is that whilst DVR-MS files are supported, WTV files are not. As many of you will know, DVR-MS was Windows Media Center’s Recorded TV file format up to the release of the TV Pack 2008, when it changed to the WTV format. Any TV recorded in Windows 7 and newly released Vista systems will therefore not be supported for Video Conversion. I made this point a number of times to HP a few weeks ago when we met to discuss the plans for the software update, so hopefully it will be fixed in a future update.
Remote Video Streaming
Whilst users have been able to stream music and photos remotely with the HP MediaSmart Server since the new models were released, Video Streaming was a glaring omission – one that has now been fixed with the 2.5 software update. The updated media streamer now offers Music, Video and Photos for remote streaming access.
By default, the Video section of the media streamer will show your mobile quality videos that have been converted by the HP Video Converter – but it’s easy to switch to their full quality equivalents if you have the bandwidth available. You can see the progress of the video being downloaded to your computer through a blue progress bar, and if needed, you can let the video fully download before watching, which gets around those horrible buffering issues.
You can view videos as a small thumbnail if you wish, but a full screen option is also available – depending on the video, the quality of full screen, mobile quality video varies from very blocky to less blocky, but it’s definitely viewable.
Media Collector Status
It’s not going to hit the headlines, but one major usability improvement in the software update is Media Collector Status. As you know, the HP Media Collector works in the background, checking your home computers for Music, Video and Photo files and copying them over to the home server. A great feature, but in the current version, the user was unable to see what the Media Collector had copied over to the home server – you basically just had to trust that it worked.
With the 2.5 update, a new Status panel is available which reports the Collector status for each of your home computers:
…as well as providing specific information on how many music, video and photo files have been copied across to the home server on each machine. A big improvement which does a lot to give me confidence in the quality of the Media Collector feature.
The 2.5 software update also fixes a number of issues with the original release, and includes some small scale improvements. They are as follows:
Public and private capabilities were added to HP Photo Viewer albums.
Made a number of improvements to the Mac Backup feature, including the ability to resize the backup disk.
Fixed a number of TwonkyMedia server issues, including the case where songs would not play all the way through.
Improved the HP Media Streamer interface, including adding support for streaming video files, column sort functionality, and new album art views.
Added streaming support for iPhone.
Added the HP Video Converter which transcodes common video formats to an H.264 video codec and AAC stereo audio code.
Improved Media Collector by displaying progress details, status information, and client connectivity to shared folders.
Improved The HP MediaSmart Server dashboard functionality.
The User’s Guide was updated to match HP MediaSmart Server software changes.
With regard to point 3 above, I’ve still experienced this issue using TwonkyMedia Server in the 2.5 update (not consistently, but it does happen) so I’m not sure whether it’s been truly nailed.
So, a pretty comprehensive mid-term update for the HP MediaSmart Server, with enhanced video and media streaming features, and a new iPhone app which looks very cool. Great to see the product continue to evolve and improve with each update.
