Twonky and Windows 7 Media Center

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cmaskelyne
Posts:3
Joined:Tue May 03, 2011 11:56 am
AV Hardware:Windows Homeserver 2011, Twonky Server, Slimserver
Twonky and Windows 7 Media Center

Post by cmaskelyne » Tue May 03, 2011 12:08 pm

I have just joined the forum as I am looking to solve a specific problem before I purchase Twonky and want to be sure I can do this. I have searched the forums for the answer but without luck.

Basically I am running Windows Home Server 2011 on my network and have various devices attached that I need to stream to. My Sony TV and Playstation work great with Twonky but I also have a couple of Windows Media Center PC's that I want to connect up to Twonky.

I have tried to add the directory with the music in directly to Windows Media player and they share this but I end up with 40000+ tracks coming up as unknown. I know these are tagged OK as they are picked up fine by iTunes, Twonky and several other pieces of software.

I also can see how my Windows 7 machines can see the Twonky server in Windows Media Player but my problem is how the music will show up in Windows Media Center. I really want to use this interface as the main PC accessing this is a touchscreen in the main living room and this works really well with Media Center.

If I can get this working then I have a complete solution, otherwise I am going to have to try and find a way to retag these files so that Media player picks them up directly from the hard disk.

Thanks for any guidance anyone can give here.

Twonky_Rick
Posts:3816
Joined:Wed Nov 19, 2008 1:59 am
AV Hardware:Samsung 650 Series TV (2010), 4.5TB HP MediaSmart server with 100,000 songs, 5) AT&T U-Verse STB, CE form-factor Media Center PC and 6 other networked PCs running TwonkyManager, 2 Sonos ZP80, Sonos S5 speaker, Apple TV (running XBMC), Roku Soundbridge, X-Box 360, Sony PS3, Kodak 10" Wireless Photo Frame, iPhone with PlugPlayer software, Sonos CR-100.
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Re: Twonky and Windows 7 Media Center

Post by Twonky_Rick » Tue May 03, 2011 6:47 pm

As long as all of your music files have ID3 tags, both TwonkyServer and WMP should scan and display them correctly. Just don't make any metadata (or album art) changes in WMP. Those changes will only be visible on that local PC.

- Rick
Follow me on Twitter! mostlytech1
Checkout my blog: http://mostly-tech.com/

cmaskelyne
Posts:3
Joined:Tue May 03, 2011 11:56 am
AV Hardware:Windows Homeserver 2011, Twonky Server, Slimserver

Re: Twonky and Windows 7 Media Center

Post by cmaskelyne » Tue May 03, 2011 9:31 pm

Hi Rick,

Thanks for the reply but not sure if I have made myself clear enough on the problem.

If I scan my 56000 tracks using WMP12 40000+ do not have the correct tag information. If I scan with itunes, Twonky, Winamp, etc they all show up fine. Checking online this seems to be a bug in WMP and is well documented. There does not really appear to be a reliable fix so my thought was that I use Twonky as my main UPnP server.

Once set up I can see how I can access the library in WMP12 (under Other Libraries). If I fire up Windows Media Center I do not get any music showing up. I am guessing I need to direct Windows Media Center to read the Twonky Library by default but I can only seem to read music from a shared drive (which then means I get 40000+ unknown artists and unknown albums).

So the question is how to set Windows Media Center (not WMP) up to automatically access the Twonky Library not a shared folder.

Can you assist?

Many thanks.

Twonky_Rick
Posts:3816
Joined:Wed Nov 19, 2008 1:59 am
AV Hardware:Samsung 650 Series TV (2010), 4.5TB HP MediaSmart server with 100,000 songs, 5) AT&T U-Verse STB, CE form-factor Media Center PC and 6 other networked PCs running TwonkyManager, 2 Sonos ZP80, Sonos S5 speaker, Apple TV (running XBMC), Roku Soundbridge, X-Box 360, Sony PS3, Kodak 10" Wireless Photo Frame, iPhone with PlugPlayer software, Sonos CR-100.
Location:San Diego
Contact:

Re: Twonky and Windows 7 Media Center

Post by Twonky_Rick » Sat May 07, 2011 12:39 am

This seems like a Media Center question to me. I'm not currently using that software, but I'm sure there are others on this forum who are.

- Rick
Follow me on Twitter! mostlytech1
Checkout my blog: http://mostly-tech.com/

cmaskelyne
Posts:3
Joined:Tue May 03, 2011 11:56 am
AV Hardware:Windows Homeserver 2011, Twonky Server, Slimserver

Re: Twonky and Windows 7 Media Center

Post by cmaskelyne » Mon May 09, 2011 10:12 am

Yes I was hoping someone could help. I am pretty pleased with Twonky which is now operating my TV, PS3, iPhone and a couple of wireless internet radio's that I have but Media Center still has the best interface for watching/listening to photos and music together so I really wanted to get this to work. I think you are right that Media Center is the problem but I hoped someone might have found a way of getting this displayed.

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