Server running

The home server is up and running for a couple of weeks now, so time for an update. I use Windows Home Server as the operating system. It's easy to use and helps with a couple of server essentials. The nice thing about WHS is that it manages the available harddisk space as a single large network drive. As a user you only see one network drive, regardless of how many physical drives the server has. Then for each individual share folder, you can set WHS up to duplicate the folder. The folders with this setting can always be recovered after a harddisk crash. Apart from that, WHS takes care of various types of remote access functionality. Unfortunately, my pc's with Windows XP Home edition can't be controlled remotely.

MediaPortal TV server is running and I have a working client on my desktop. Unfortunately the analogue cable signal appears to be too weak after the extensions I had to make to reach the home server, so I'll have to do some tweaking there. As a webinterface for the tv guide and scheduling of recordings, I use For the Record.
The server is running a couple of other web services. Whiist is taking care of the pictures and the links on the homeserver front page. Whiist has a very simple user interface and makes setting up a photo webpage incredibly simple.
For downloading goodies I gave up torrents and moved to usenet. The client I use is SABnzbd. It runs on the server and also provides a great webinterface, so I can manage my downloads from anywhere. It can even move the downloads to the proper folder based on the type of content.
WebGuide makes the full MP3 collection available through the internet. It offers streaming as well as downloads and has a very flashy user interface. As a minor hurdle, it's based completely off the Windows Media Player library, which isn't very easy to maintain.