A Pleasant Surprise

I recently got one of the DirecTV HR-20 "HD DVR" set top boxes at home. It has an Ethernet port on it, but I didn't bother to plug it into my home network until a few days ago.

Tonight I was watching TV and I noticed a new menu item in the set top box UI I had not seen before:  "Music & Photos"

I clicked and a screen popped up saying that Intel & DirecTV had collaborated on this and it could connect to a PC etc... etc... And it was a "beta".

The menu listed:

My Computers

  SERVER: 1

Hmmm... that's my Windows Home Server!  This DirecTV set top box is a Windows Media Connect media client!

Sure enough, clicking on "SERVER: 1" took me to a menu system that let me listen to and play all my music and view all my photos just as I can on my XBox360 and my Roku SoundBridge (but in even more places in my house). 

It just worked.

-cek