Looks like there’s a ton of WHS news trickling out of WinHEC. New OEMs that were announced include Gateway, Acer, LaCie, and Medion. It looks like the licensing plans are firming up to include a System Builder option (Like OEM licenses for MCE) but that there will not be a retail SKU.
Lots of Software partner announcements as well. The most interesting in my opinion is the SageTV integration. Basically you can pump all your media to your Home Server, including PVR functionality, and use simple extenders to deliver your content anywhere. I’m not sure if SageTV allows for live tv watching, but it’d be awesome to move to a model where the only TV tuners in the home were connected to the Home Server, and all your channels and saved content were available to any TV, PC, or portable device.
Microsoft also announced a coding contest to encourage innovative add-in / add-ons for Windows Home Server. I’ve seen many Microsoft coding contests get very few entries in the past. So if you’ve got some spare time on your hands, it might be worth pulling something together to submit. They have some pretty decent prizes in the mix.
One Man Shouting 