JUNE 2004 MAXIMUMPC 73
How-To
STEP 5
Putting it together
Now it’s time to pull together everything we’ve
done. Connect your cable or satellite receiver’s
video and audio outputs to the video and audio
inputs of your TV tuner card. Then, connect
your IR blaster—you can get one that works
with most cable and satellite receivers from
SnapStream’s web site—to your PC. Start the
Beyond TV configuration wizard, and answer
each question. The only potential problem you
might have is that you could select the wrong
audio input during the install process. You’ll
know you selected the wrong input if your
recorded video files have images, but no sound.
To fix it, go into the Beyond TV control panel,
and try different audio inputs until Beyond TV
successfully records video with sound.
Once the PVR software is installed and run-
ning, you need to connect your streaming devic-
es to the network, install whatever software the
streaming boxes need on the server, and config-
ure it to display the appropriate directories.
Once you’ve connected your streaming devic-
es to the server, you’re ready to sit back and
enjoy your new media server! nSTEP 4 continued
To set permissions for a
new user, all you need
to do is add them to the
appropriate groups. We
recommend creating a
group for MP3, DVD, and
TV access. That way you’ll
be able to specify which
media types each user
has access to.
Of course, you still need
to add your new groups
to the Permission list for
each of your directories.
Give the MP3 group Read
access to the MP3 direc-
tory, the DVD group Read
access to the DVD direc-
tory, and the PVR group
Read access to the PVR
directory. Any user who
is in one of those groups
will be able to browse the
appropriate directories
from the network. If they’re
not in the network, they
can’t browse.When creating user accounts, you can con-
trol the level of access each user has to any
directory on your system by adjusting this
Security tab.5
STREAM MUSIC TO YOURSELF AT
WORK You can install Slim Devices’
Slimserver software on your server,
even if you don’t have a Squeezebox.
Once installed, you can use it to stream
tunes to any computer on the Internet.
Just point Winamp , or another stream-
ing client, to http:// your.IP.address.here :
9000/stream.mp3. You’ll be able to set upplaylists and change songs using your
web browser. Go to http://www.slimdevices.com
to get it.SHARE PHOTOS By creating a photo
directory that’s shared over the net-
work, you can make all your digital
photos accessible to every PC and
streaming device in your house. Make
a new directory on the same drive as
your music and ripped DVDs, create a
Photo user group, assign it the proper
permissions, and add the appropriate
people to the group. It’s that simple!SET UP A PERSONAL WEB SERVER
Now that you have a machine that
runs uninterrupted 24/7, you really have
no reason not to have a personal web
server. Either use Microsoft’s IIS server
that’s included with Windows XP Pro and
Windows Server 2003, or download the
free Apache web server (www.apache.org).
Combine a basic web server with a
dynamic DNS service—like the one pro-vided by DynDNS.org—and you can even
host a domain on your home page.CREATE A PRIVATE MUSIC-
SHARING NETWORK With all your
MP3 files in a central location connected
to a high-speed, always-on Internet
connection, your machine could form
the backbone of a private peer-to-peer
network. The new Waste client supports
über-high shared-key encryption—up
to 4,096 bits—and you can control who
has access to the network. Get it at http:
//waste.sourceforge.net.STREAM LIVE TV TO YOURSELF—
ANYWHERE! If you properly configure
the Beyond TV software, your system can
transcode recorded and live video on the
fly to just about any format. This means
that, as long as you have an Internet con-
nection, you need never miss your favor-
ite shows. You can connect to Beyond TV
and watch whatever you want, whether
it’s live TV or last night’s Giants game.USES FOR YOUR NEW MEDIA SERVER