This is an amazing demo, and one of the reasons that I purchased a Home Server the day it was available from HP. As usual, however, a bunch of other companies have determined that I am not allowed to use the content I have collected as I see fit.
Currently, DRM has broken my ability to stream media from one of my Media Center PC's through WebGuide (installed locally and on my WHS) because I use cable card. I would love to be able to create applications that allow me to stream my high definition recordings to me remotely, but it just can't be done. I suppose it is possible that one day the DRM features of Silverlight will allow me to tunnel all the way back to my Media Center, but thus far I have seen no information about this in any of the demos presented.
My job requires me to travel frequently and I have found myself scheduling recordings on my first media center (using SD analog capture cards) so that they will be available to me the next time I have a few hours to kill in a hotel room. My end goal is to consolidate all of my recorded TV and video library on a single dual cable card media center and have all of that content availabe to me anywhere I have internet access, but with the current state of DRM restirctions this is not possible. Are there plans for using DRM across Silverlight, or authorizing a group of machines joined to a Windows home server access to DRM'd content both locally and remotely? Using Windows Home server as the fulcrum against which all of my machines (desktops, laptops, Windows Mobile, Zune) could access this protected content would be a killer feature for me and could be translated into a major selling point for the entire Windws ecosystem.
I have invested in two Windows Media Center PC's, two laptops, a tablet PC, a desktop, two Windows Mobile 6.1 phones, an Xbox 360 and two Zunes, but I still can't transfer the latest episode "How I Met Your Mother" to any device as I see fit. What is holding up this simple scenario in a single platform ecosystem?
Tangential to this, I have to ask where the Live Mesh client for Zune is. I already purchase new music and synchronize wirelessly, why shouldn't I be able to use the Zune Marketplace as yet another point of entry to my mesh; synchronizing not only to my device, but back to my desktop so that my new music is waiting for me (to stream to my Xbox, of course) when I get home.
I continue to hold out hope for the Windows platform, but these are the kinds of connections that should be made available to me and my household by virtue of my using a common unified platform.
