6DVBLink 4.5 & Server 2012 media server

In the last 6 weeks 2 major updates have totally changed the media serv­er land­scape.  DVBLink serv­er 4.5 and Microsoft Win­dows Serv­er 2012 in com­bin­a­tion look to offer an ideal win­dows-plat­form for a home media server.

Firstly lets address DVBLink.  This suite of products have enabled net­work shar­ing of live and recor­ded TV for some time.  The biggest piece miss­ing from the puzzle has been cent­ral­ised record­ing.  With the release of DVBLink 4.5 at the start of July this has finally been addressed by the inclu­sion of a nat­ive recor­ded built-in to dvblink serv­er which cent­ral­ises all record­ing.  Until now it was neces­sary to run DVBLink on a win­dows 7 PC, so that Media Cen­ter could be used as a record­er on the serv­er, but the intro­duc­tion of the nat­ive record­er has opened the door to run­ning a full serv­er OS which has advant­ages, includ­ing being free to stu­dents via dream­s­park.  Serv­er 2012, whist includ­ing the [int­link id=“2543” type=“post”]awful new UI[/intlink] from Win­dows 8 does have some excel­lent new fea­tures, in par­tic­u­lar [int­link id=“2283” type=“post”]storage spaces[/intlink].  As a serv­er the UI does­n’t tend to mat­ter as much as it is rarely used, and there are [int­link id=“2862” type=“post”]ways to restore a more usable UI[/intlink] any­way.  All in all, these 2 products look to provide an ideal com­bin­a­tion for a media serv­er.  Once Serv­er 2012 is avail­able from dream­s­park we’ll pub­lish a full setup guide.