Posted by Jed Lewison on Thu May 3, 2007 at 11:35 PM Pacific

You CAN share recorded TV with Windows Media Center and Vista Home Premium

A few days ago, I posted that you can't share recorded TV between Media Centers using Windows Vista Home Premium because the genius product planners at Microsoft decided to remove gpedit.msc (the group policy editor) from the Home Premium sku. A Microsoft program manager hinted that I was wrong, but since it was an unsupported feature, she said she couldn't help me.

Well, I've finally figured out what you need to do to be able to share recorded TV using Media Center on Vista Home Premium. Here's the scoop:

  • FIRST: Share your recorded TV folder with anonymous login permissions. Here's instructions for how to do that. Return to this page once you get to the step requiring gpedit.msc.
  • SECOND: Next, you need to make changes to your computer's local policies to allow other machines to see recorded TV. To do this, you'll need to be familiar with regedit. Be careful with regedit if you've never used it before. I'll assume that you have, though. So after opening regedit:
  • First, make sure that anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts is turned off. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa and find the restrictanonymoussam REG_DWORD. Sit this to 0.
  • Second, you need to allow anonymous access to your recorded TV share. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters. If there is a NullSessionShares REG_MULTI_SZ, add the name of your share. Don't add the path! Just the name of the share, like "Recorded TV". If NullSessionShares doesn't exist, create a new multi-string value, name it NullSessionShares, and put the name of the share in.
  • If you don't use passwords, you _might_ need to find the "LimitBlankPasswordUse" DWORD at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa and set it to 0. I don't think you need to change this unless you're having problems, though.

Now you're done with step 2!

  • THIRD: Now you need need to enable the Media Center you want to watch the shared TV on to be able to see the newly shared TV folder. On the machine that you want to watch TV on (not the one sharing it!), find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording. If there isn't a REG_MULTI_SZ called "WatchedFolders", create it. Now type in the UNC path to the share (like \\htpc-tv\recorded tv). Uses spaces if there are spaces. (Note that this also works with XP Media Center.)

You're done! Recorded TV should be up and working. Thanks to JackLuminous at The Green Button who pointed me in the right direction.

You CAN share recorded TV with Windows Media Center and Vista Home Premium

A few days ago, I posted that you can't share recorded TV between Media Centers using Windows Vista Home Premium because the genius product planners at Microsoft decided to remove gpedit.msc (the group policy editor) from the Home Premium sku. A Microsoft program manager hinted that I was wrong, but since it was an unsupported feature, she said she couldn't help me.

Well, I've finally figured out what you need to do to be able to share recorded TV using Media Center on Vista Home Premium. Here's the scoop:

  • FIRST: Share your recorded TV folder with anonymous login permissions. Here's instructions for how to do that. Return to this page once you get to the step requiring gpedit.msc.
  • SECOND: Next, you need to make changes to your computer's local policies to allow other machines to see recorded TV. To do this, you'll need to be familiar with regedit. Be careful with regedit if you've never used it before. I'll assume that you have, though. So after opening regedit:
  • First, make sure that anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts is turned off. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa and find the restrictanonymoussam REG_DWORD. Sit this to 0.
  • Second, you need to allow anonymous access to your recorded TV share. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters. If there is a NullSessionShares REG_MULTI_SZ, add the name of your share. Don't add the path! Just the name of the share, like "Recorded TV". If NullSessionShares doesn't exist, create a new multi-string value, name it NullSessionShares, and put the name of the share in.
  • If you don't use passwords, you _might_ need to find the "LimitBlankPasswordUse" DWORD at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa and set it to 0. I don't think you need to change this unless you're having problems, though.

Now you're done with step 2!

  • THIRD: Now you need need to enable the Media Center you want to watch the shared TV on to be able to see the newly shared TV folder. On the machine that you want to watch TV on (not the one sharing it!), find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service\Recording. If there isn't a REG_MULTI_SZ called "WatchedFolders", create it. Now type in the UNC path to the share (like \\htpc-tv\recorded tv). Uses spaces if there are spaces. (Note that this also works with XP Media Center.)

You're done! Recorded TV should be up and working. Thanks to JackLuminous at The Green Button who pointed me in the right direction.

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