We are big fans of My Movies here at UWHS, and while we are awaiting the iOS and Android updates which should be out today, Brian has posted an article on how WHS 2011 works with My Movies for iPad, iPhone and Android 1.80.
This is what Brian just posted:
Question:
How does the movie download option from My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011 function in My Movies for iPad, iPhone and Android?
Answer:
The download function allows your iPad, iPhone or Android to connect to My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011 either in-house, or out of the house.
Requirements:
- My Movies for iPhone, iPad or Android, running at least version 1.80.
- My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011, running at least version 2.11.
- Remote Web Access must be enabled on the Windows Home Server, which is done through the Dashboard, the “Server Settings” button, and the “Remote Web Access” link on the left side of the settings screen.
- The movies must be pre-converted to MP4 format using the Video Converter function in My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011. You can read more about the video converter here: http://kb.mymovies.dk/KnowledgebaseArticle50053.aspx
- A wireless network connection is required to avoid high bandwidth usage on mobile plans. This wireless network can be either on your home network, when connected in-house, or a wireless network in another location when connected out of the house. Be aware that the sizes of the converted videos will require a fast internet connection when connecting to a wireless network out of the house.
Steps:
Follow the below steps to prepare your movies for download from your Windows Home Server 2011 to your mobile device.Ensure that you are running at least version 1.80 of My Movies for iPhone, iPad or Android. This information is available in the bottom of the applications settings area.
Ensure that you are running at least version 2.11 of My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011. This information is available in the dashboard, under the “Add-ins” tab – the version must show 2.1.1.X or higher. Notice! The 2.11 version is currently in Pre Release, but is expected to be available as a final release soon.
Ensure that “Remote Web Access” is enabled on your Windows Home Server. You can find this option in the dashboard, under the “Server settings” button, and the “Remote Web Access” area.
Ensure that you are logged in with the My Movies user account you use on mobile device on the Windows Home Server. You can find this in the dashboard, under the “My Movies” tab, and the “Settings” link in here, on the opening “General” page.
Configure the video converter in My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011 to your preferences. You can find this in the dashboard, under the “My Movies” tab, and the “Settings” link here, on the “Video Converter” page. You can configure the video converter to convert either one universal format for both iPad or iPhone, which equals Android devices with high or low resolution screens, or you can configure it to convert one format for iPad, and another for iPhone. If you set the video converter to convert two formats, it is important that the primary format is the highest quality (iPad profile) and the secondary format is the lowest quality (iPhone profile), as this allows the mobile device to pick the higest quality video that the device supports for downloading.
Depending on your preference, you can configure the video converter, to automatically add disc copied with the fully automated disc copier to the video converter queue, or you can select from the disc copier tab, or the monitoring tab to add a movie to the queue manually. You can also in the “Video Converter” tab select to add all movies in your library for conversion. Notice!
The video converter puts a high pressure on the CPU in your server, and conversion on Atom or other low-spec CPU’s servers will take a long time. We recommend to take this into account when purchasing your Windows Home Server.
In My Movies for iPhone, iPad or Android, open the “Settings” page, and click the “Connect to My Movies for WHS 2011” option. You can here provide the IP address of your Windows Home Server on the internal network, or on Android, the name of the server, and you can provide the external address for your server as a secondary option. You can choose to only add or change only the internal or the external address, leaving the other as it is – as an example, depending on your router configuration, you may not be able to connect to the external address of your home server on your internal network. Notice! For users on iPad or iPhone, we recommend configuring a fixed IP adress for your server in your router configuration, avoid that it changes the stores IP address.
Having connected to your Windows Home Server, you will see a “Downloads” tab on your device, which on iPhone or iPad will be hidden behind the “… More” tab icon (you can use the Edit button to drag preferred tabs to the main screen). From the movie details screen, by clicking the “Actions” button, you will now have a “Download” button, which starts the download from the server – the download will be placed under the “Downloads” tab.
Movies downloaded will in the “Actions” button on the movie details page have a “Play” button, or you can click the movie in the list in the “Downloads” section to play it. Be aware that movies on iPhone or iPad is stored in the applications internal memory, and therefore is not available in the “Videos” section on your device, due to access limitations on the platform. Therefore, we recommend that you delete movies that you do not need, to avoid it taking up space on your device.Plans:The next version of My Movies for iPad and iPhone will contain an option to add items to the video converter, and view the progress of disc copies and video conversions directly a mobile device connected to the Windows Home Server. This option is planned for the Android version as well, but we do not yet know the time frame for Android. The functionality for iPad and iPhone is planned for April 2012.
The download option is currently only available in My Movies for Windows Home Server 2011. Users of My Movies Collection Management and My Movies for Windows Media Center will unfortunately have to wait for My Movies 5 before the functionality will be available in a standard Windows installation, where My Movies 5 will bring both the Video Converter and the download back-end option to the Windows release. It is not planned to add the functionality to My Movies for Windows Home Server V1, which is for future development considered deprecated.
Due to the fact that our software for Mac OS X does not have the fully automated disc copy functionality and video converter functionality available in our Windows Home Server software, the functionality is currently not planned for Mac OS X.
While our priorities have been on bringing a download option that places the movies on the devices prior to playback, we are working on adding direct streaming options as well, allowing the device to stream the movies from the server without the requirement of downloading the file to the device. The reason we found the download option to be of a higher importance is that once the movie is downloaded to the device, you can watch it in locations where a stable network connection is not available, where a direct streaming option often would not function due to internet connection speed or stability.
So watch out later today for the update!
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