Turn your Windows Home Server V1 in to a VPN server

I was looking on the Internet for an easy to follow guide to be able to setup a WHS to act as a VPN server. However the guide I found on a popular WHS website didn’t seem to work for me. So I did it a way I knew would work using Routing and Remote Access which is part of Windows Server 2003.

Why would you want to do this? If you are away from your home and you want full LAN access to your home network then VPN on WHS is ideal for this. I’m sure most of you will have used VPN’s to connect to your companies corporate networks before when you are remote working, its the same kind of deal.

To setup your WHS as a VPN server you can follow these steps.

Remotely connect to your WHS using RDP.

To use Routing and Remote Access you first need to disable the Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service.

Go to the Start Menu –> Run and enter Services.msc then press OK.

Scroll down and find Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) right click it and select services. Stop the service then set the startup type to disabled on the General tab.

Now open Routing and Remote Access

Start –> All Programs -> Administrative Tools -> Routing and Remote Access.

Right click the server name and select Configure and Enable Routing and Remote Access

You will then see the Setup Wizard, click Next.

Select Custom Configuration and click Next.

Select VPN Access and click Next

Click Finish

Click Yes to start the Routing and Remote Access service.

Now we have to tell Routing and Remote Access which device on our network is doing DHCP?

Expand IP Routing and right click DHCP Relay Agent and click Properties.

Enter the IP address of your DHCP service. Normally your broadband router / gateway. In my case this is 192.168.1.1

Click OK.

Now we need to specify which users on the WHS will have VPN access. Go to the Start Menu and right click Computer and select Manage.

In the Computer Management console, select the Local Users and Groups and then Users from tree on the left.

On the right hand side right click the user account you want to enable for VPN access and select Properties.

On the Dial-in tab select Allow access under Remote Access Permission (Dial-in or VPN) and click OK.

You now need to configure your router to allow inbound the VPN ports to your WHS.

These ports are:

• 1723 TCP
• 47 TCP

How you do this will depend on the make and model of your broadband router. But basically we need to use NAT to port forward requests coming from the Internet (WAN) to the Windows Home Server on the LAN.

My test router was a D-Link DSL-2542B and I had to select Advanced Setup –> NAT

Its also sometimes called Virtual Server on some routers.

You might be able to see on this screen shot that I have TCP ports 1723 and 47 port forwarded to the internal IP of the WHS which is our case is 192.168.1.6

That’s it, you just need to setup a Windows Client VPN connection on your PC or Laptop and point it to the WHS domain name for your server and login with the user account you enabled for VPN access earlier.

Windows 7 PPTP Client VPN connection.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , WHS , VPN

Facebook photos on your Media Center - Photato

I heard about the Photato Media Center plug-in awhile ago now, but I stumbled on their website again today, so I thought I’d install the plug-in and give it a look.

What is Photato?

If you are an avid Facebook fan and use it for sharing and viewing photos then Photato is a 'must have'. Built using the Facebook Platform and designed to run within Microsoft Windows 7 and Vista Media Center, Photato will enable you to view and interact with your Facebook photos through your TV.

Features

• View all your Facebook photos
• Browse your own and your friends' albums
• Flick through tagged photos
• Enjoy a full-screen slideshow
• Designed for your TV
• Runs in Windows 7/Vista Media Center

The first thing you notice about this plug-in during the Media Center setup is that the animations are great! The yellow post-it notes pan in and move around.

Media Center setup – Login to Facebook

Synchronizing with Facebook

Photato – Home menu

Friends photo albums

Selected friends photo album

Using the menu on the right hand side you can then start a slideshow of your friends photo album.

Slide show: it doesn’t seem to pan like the native Media Center slideshow, but the photos zoom in towards the viewer of the screen.

Back on the friends photo albums page you can also filter the photo albums using the options on the left:

• Modified Date
• Created Date
• Album Title
• No. of Photos

Photato is still in beta. I’m not sure if the development is still active or not? The plug-in did crash on me once whilst I was using it. However this plug-in is very good, especially if you are a Facebook addict and like to view your family and friends Facebook photo albums. Photato is visually stunning the animations are extremely well done.

I need to use Photato some more at home to really get a feel for it, but I am now wondering why I didn’t install this great Media Center plug-in before now?

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Media Center , Facebook , Photos , Photato

Media Center updates break custom menus

I’m sure most Windows Media Center users who customize their menus, are now aware that something is up with the menus in Media Center!

I use Media Center Studio which is a fantastic 3rd party utility developed by Advent. With Media Center Studio you can create custom menu strips and move icons around to different menus strips and customize your Media Center to suit your needs.

However recent updates from Microsoft for the updated online content services: MSN Video Player / Netflix HD have broken Media Center Studio and custom menus in general.

If your like me and you use My Movies you probably hide the native Movies menu strip. I also never use the Sports menu strip so like to hide this as well. I also like to add icons for 3rd party plug-ins such as TunerFree MCE to the native TV menu strip etc. After these recent updates all of my menus and everyone else’s were messed up and I had the native Movies and Sports menus visible again on my Media Center, also the order in which the menus appear had changed.

There is a thread on the Green Button here discussing these frustrations. Fortunately there is some relief in the form of “Hide Media Center Menu Strips” a little utility from one of our favorite Media Center developers Mikinho.

With the aid of this utility I was able to quickly and easily re-hide the native Movies and Sports menu strips in Media Center, which has helped to improve my situation some what.

However unfortunately custom menu strips and placement of 3rd party plug-in icons on native menu strips and re-ordering menus are still broken until Media Center Studio hopefully gets fixed.

There has been no official word from Microsoft that I am aware of regarding this issue. But customizing Media Center menus is a “hack” so I wouldn’t expect one any time soon if at all.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Media Center , Media Center Studio , Menus

What’s on the workbench today? iTX Mini HTPC!

On the workbench today we have an iTX Mini PC, using an Antec ISK 310-150 Mini iTX Case.

I quite like this case, it is sturdy, however I’m not keen on the quite flimsy silver plastic front especially the thin DVD opening cover.

There are plenty of vents for cooling however and room to fit two full size fans on the right hand side, no in-built IR which could be an issue.

What’s inside:

Minix 785G-SP128M, this little motherboard has the AMD 785G chipset. I’ve used regular micro ATX motherboards from Gigabyte before for other HTPC builds with the same 785G chipset, which isn’t too bad for HTPC’s so it’s all familiar stuff.

Motherboard Key Features Highlight:

1. Integrated ATI Radeon™ HD 4200 Graphics
2. Supports DirectX^® 10.1 3D graphics, Windows 7 Ready

3. Supports AMD^® Phenom™ II x4/ Athlon™ II x4 processors (up to 65W max.)

4. Built-in 128 MB Local Frame Buffer (Side-port memory)

5. Supports ATI Avivo™ HD technology and built-in Universal Video Decoder 2.0 (UVD2) which leverages CPU consumption when play HD movie, hence power-saving

6. Designed with 100% high quality solid capacitors and components to ensure high performance and great longevity

7. One PCI-Express Gen.2 slot for expansion

8. Two DDR2 SO-DIMM slots for extensible upgrade

9. 7.1+2 Channel High-Performance HDA Codec with Content Protection (Realtek ALC885)

Specs:

• Motherboard: Minix 785G-SP128M
• CPU: AMD Phenom AM3 x3 Processor 2.3 GHZ
• CPU Cooler: Glacial Tech PLA08025S12L
• RAM: Kingston DDR2 RAM 2GB (Notebook)
• HDD: Seagate 160GB (Notebook)
• DVD: Sony CRX890S (Slim)
• PSU: Antec FP-150-8 150 Watt

Software:

• Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
• My Movies Client 3.13
• Heatwave 1.3
• RadioTime MCE
• SilverLight
• Flash Player
• AutoHotKey
• Media Center Studio
• Shark 007 Codec Pack 2.4.8

Windows Experience Index Score: 4.1

I installed the latest drivers from AMD / ATI / Realtek. I also installed the Shark 007 codec pack for Windows 7.

With the default settings in the Shark007 pack unchanged I played a High Definition MKV movie, in the screenshots below you can see the CPU usage.

I don’t think hardware acceleration is on. I tried a few different settings in the codec pack but the CPU usage remained about the same, should be more like 10-15% when accelerated.

I only ever seem to be able to get hardware acceleration working on the Asrock Nettop’s which have Nvidia graphics and CUDA. Perhaps someone can tell me how to get this working with the ATI graphics?

Conclusion:

Overall not a bad little machine and has more power and grunt than a Nettop. I need to test it some more, but so far so good.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , MediaCenter , iTX Mini PC

Phaze1 Digital

7MC Music Library re-building bug – Hotfix now out!

Well it’s been a long time coming but I’ve just spotted on my thread on The Green Button that Microsoft have now released a hotfix to an issue that I and many others raised, I wrote about this issue back in February on my blog here.

KB Article number 981770 You can get the hotfix from this link

Hopefully we won’t be seeing any more videos like this one again!

Thanks to the folks at Microsoft for listening to our concerns and getting this hotfix out of the door at Redmond, fingers crossed its resolved the issues.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , MediaCenter , Hotfix

Phaze1 Digital

Intel DH55TC motherboard – True-HD & DTS-HD audio as standard!

I’ve been testing out a new HTPC platform recently, based around the Intel DH55TC motherboard and an Intel i3-530 Clarkdale processor.

I’ve not had much time to really grill this machine fully, but my initial thoughts are its pretty good. MKV and Blu-ray playback is nice and smooth in Windows Media Center / PowerDVD 9 and for the first time I am now able to bit-stream True-HD and DTS-HD audio to the AVR in this case an Onkyo TX SR606.

The whole computer feels faster and more responsive, My Movies Collection Manager is certainly quicker and the Media Center user interface also feels a bit snappier.

There was one main setting I had to change in PowerDVD 9 for the bit-streaming of True-HD and DTS-HD audio to kick in. I am also using the latest version of the Shark007 codec pack (2.4.8) with FFDShow DXVA settings, I might cover my latest shark configuration in more details in another blog post, however I did touch on it here

I had to turn on this setting in PowerDVD9 within MCE - “Non-decoded high definition audio to external device”

I tested two Blu-ray movies which were ripped ISO images on the hard drive, Total Recall which has a DTS-HD soundtrack and The Dark Knight which has a Dolby True-HD soundtrack. I am using Virtual Clone Drive beta 5.4.4.0 which My Movies (3.13) uses to mount the Blu-ray disc images.

Screen shots from PowerDVD 9 – Show Information.

Now this is what I always like to see on the AVR displays!

I definitely need to do some more testing with this new HTPC build and let it bed in a bit, but I think this new Intel platform has really impressed me so far.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , MediaCenter , Intel , Clarkdale , True-HD , DTS-HD , bitstreaming

Phaze1 Digital

MKV’s with Subtitles and now with DXVA aka hardware acceleration!

Last time I tried to get some MKV movie files playing with subtitles on an AsRock ION 330HT Nettop PC if failed. I lost the hardware acceleration and the video playback became choppy to say the least, mainly because the CPU was ramped up to 80-90% usage.

With subtitles turned off and using the default Microsoft codec for H.264 the CPU usage is about 10-15% and video playback is nice and smooth.

So I forgot about this issue and put it on the back burner, then I saw a post on the Green Button recently that sparked my interest again regarding using FFDShow and the newish support for DXVA.

I installed the latest Shark Codec Pack version 2.4.8 and had a look at the new settings, on the H.264 tab there is now an option: Use FFDShow DXVA codec. I turned this on.

On the Config tab, the regular Subtitle Control options didn’t seem to take any affect. For example if I selected No Subtitles the subtitles would still be displayed. Instead click the FFDShow DVXA button.

Here is the control check box for turning subtitles on and off and also other settings for text and font.

I played a few MKV movies and the subtitles were displayed and the CPU usage was about 30-40% This is higher than with no subtitles obviously but not as high as 80-90% as I was seeing before, when I last tried to play MKVs with subtitles on the AsRock Nettop! At 30-40% CPU usage the video playback is still smooth.

One of the movies I played had an external .srt file for the subtitles.

Another movie had no .srt file present at all, but I was still seeing subtitles. This threw me for a few seconds until I just assumed that there must be some embedded subtitles in this particular MKV file.

A closer look using MediaInfo revealed that an English text stream was indeed present within the file.

Now if only I could turn subtitles on and off from within Media Center any suggestions other than the Media Control plug-in??

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , MediaCenter , MKV , Subtitles , FFDSHOW , DXVA

Phaze1 Digital

Speed up your Harmony remote control with MCE

I always found the Logitech Harmony remote controls slow and pretty unresponsive with Media Center no matter which Harmony model I tried. After reading more about the problem I think I have found a solution that actually seems to work.

I changed some settings in the Harmony software for a 550 model I was working on and these changes definitely made the remote control work much better in Media Center, before I had to press the buttons for longer and slowly move around the UI after these changes the remote was more responsive and less frustrating to use and the button presses felt and behaved more like the standard MCE remote.

Here’s what I did:

On the Devices tab I selected Troubleshoot on the Media Center Device.

I did change a couple of settings but I believe the main one that made a difference was by selecting:

“Media Center PC responds to some commands either too many times or only occasionally”

Ramping this setting up to 4 or 5 is recommended.

I then selected: “When commands are sent one after the other, the device receives some commands but not others.”

“My Media Center PC needs the following time to pass before it is ready to receive another command:”

I also changed this setting from 500ms to 0ms not totally sure if I really need to change this setting.

However have a play around with these troubleshoot options and see if you can also increase the responsiveness of your Harmony remote with Media Center!

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , MediaCenter , How-to , Logitech , Harmony , Speed

Phaze1 Digital

Windows 7 Media Center, Music Library re-building problem.

I am seeing some very strange happenings with the 7MC Music Library and with music files stored on Windows Home Server machines. This is not just an isolated issue as I have seen the same problem at several different sites on different WHS servers / networks etc.

I posted a thread here on the Green Button and this is how I described this problem.

“I saw this in the beta's / RC and still see it now. When entering the 7MC music library (Albums) view the library looks like its rebuilding itself.

The number of albums is increasing slowly, the covers aren't visible and the default icons appear and then disappear, flashing, it eventually gets to the correct numbers of albums count, but becomes unresponsive you have to exit and go back in to the Music library several times before it finally settles down again and you then see all your albums with the covers.”

It seems others are reporting similar problems with 7MC as well.

I’ve got an official support incident logged with Microsoft, I just hope they have a solution for us?

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse , Story , Media Center

Phaze1 Digital