CES: HP MediaSmart Server now supports Mac

HP Launches New Home Server for PCs and Macs

January 11th, 2009 -- by Tony Buckingham
Source: AVGuide

The MediaSmart server from HP has been around for a while, but the latest release unveiled at CES includes some notable updates to both the hardware and the software.

One of the new features, “Media Collector”, gathers up all new images, music and video from any PC connected to the server. In other words, it constantly monitors your household’s PC’s to detect and new media you put on those machines. With HP "Photo Publisher", you can now also upload your media to popular services like Facebook, Flickr, Snapfish and Picasa. This process is automated making it easier to do than using the online software provided by those services.

The OS is still based on Windows Home Server which will eventually allow the user to backup their media via “Live Mesh” backup cloud, but in the meantime, HP has made it own application compatible with Amazon’s S3 service. The server now also shows up as an available target for use with OS X’s “Time Machine.”

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HP Launches New Home Server for PCs and Macs

HP MediaSmart Server centralizes digital media and files for backup, remote access, sharing and uploading to social media sites

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 29, 2008 – HP today launched a home server designed for use with both Windows and Mac computers.

Based on the Microsoft Windows® Home Server platform, the HP MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487 is a central repository for automatically backing up and accessing digital music, videos, photos and documents from multiple computers on a home network.(1)

The MediaSmart Server automatically organizes files across all PCs, streams media across a home network and the Internet,(2) and publishes photos to popular social networking and photo sharing sites.

“A growing number of digital-savvy households have both Windows and Mac computers, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of media files and documents scattered across these devices,” said Jason Zajac, vice president of strategy, Worldwide Attach Group, HP. “The HP MediaSmart Server protects, stores and organizes this content from anywhere on a network so consumers can access and share it any place they are connected.”

“HP continues to innovate on the Windows Home Server platform giving consumers even more options to enjoy and protect their precious memories and valuable data,” said Charlie Kindel, general manager, Windows Server Solutions, Microsoft. “We believe consumers will embrace the new MediaSmart Server as one of the most exciting computing products for the home.”

MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487 features include:

· HP Media Collector: conveniently schedules the MediaSmart Server to copy and centralize digital files and libraries from networked PCs
· Media Streaming: remotely streams photos and music to any Internet-connected PC or Mac
· Server for iTunes: centralizes iTunes music libraries on the server for playback to any networked Mac or PC running iTunes
· HP Photo Publisher: easily upload photos to Facebook®, PicasaTM Web Albums and Snapfish(3)
· HP Photo Viewer: allows easy sharing of photos with friends and family
· PC Hard Drive Backup: backs up networked PCs via the Windows Home Server backup feature
· Mac Hard Drive Backup: backs up Macs running Leopard using Apple Time Machine software
· Server Backup: duplicates designated shared folders to a separate hard disk drive
· Online Backup: duplicates designated folders to Amazon’s S3 online backup service for an additional layer of protection
· Smart Power Management: can schedule times for server to go to ”sleep” and ”wake up,” saving on energy costs
· Processor: Intel® Celeron®, 2.0 GHz 64-bit. Two gigabytes (GB) of 800-MHz DDR2 DRAM now standard on MediaSmart Server
· Expandability: additional drives can be added for up to 9 terabytes (TB)

“Customers are always looking for the right mix of features and ease-of-use when choosing digital home products,” said Danielle Levitas, group vice president, consumer, broadband and digital marketplace at IDC. “HP’s focus and investment in software allows it to deliver a home server with compelling features for Mac and PC users while offering a great customer experience that helps simplify the complexity of the connected home. This unique offering will help expand the home server market.”

Comments

ImaDingBat (not verified) -- Sun, 02/22/2009 - 11:03

Last week we got our first HP ex485 WHS unit. We had it on back order for a few months and were very pleased to get one of the first units that our distributor received in stock. Over those same waiting months, we also accumulated four (4) Seagate 7200.11, 1.5 TB hard drives (the ones with the corrected firmware), and wanted to see what that new unit would do with a gross of 6.0 TB of drive storage. We were pleased to see that the OEM hard drive in the new ex485 was, in fact, a Seagate 7200.11 drive (750 GB), so we figured the 1.5 TB drives would work. We were correct in that assumption.
Initially we replaced only the original OEM drive with a 1.5 TB drive and restored the entire WHS system with the restore CD-ROM that was provided with the ex485 unit. The restore went flawlessly and completely installed all the HP WHS software, just as it had come from the factory. Once we initialized the ex485 and got it functioning correctly (which was a very easy task), we sequentially added each additional hard drive to the array, until all four drive bays were humming along with 1.5 TB of storage in each slot.
That was a week ago, and the ex485 hasn't skipped a beat since then. The HP tweaks to the original WHS software suite are also quite nice and very useful. I must honestly say that it will be hard to beat this new ex485 with a home built WHS unit (and I've built many of those during the past year). I'm damn impressed with this little shiny black box, and its awesome storage capacity of 6.0 TB. Try one, you'll love it!
Best regards to everyone. Ima DingBat