There is a little addition to the Windows Media Center setup. It is a hidden gem that makes life so much easier.

In our home, we have a Windows Home Server. Thoughtfully named SERVER, it is small and sits quietly near the broadband connection.

After Media Center record TV shows on one PC, I generally like to store the results safely for later viewing.

The *.dvr-ms files created by Windows Media Center, especially on Digital TV transmissions, can be quite large.

So, to fix both of these issues I have installed MCEBuddy

A tool that quietly lives in the background of your PC, it watches the Recorded TV directory. When a show has completed recording, MCEBuddy compresses the show into something smaller (for instance: WMV or even MP4 for iPods!) and transfers automagically to our Windows Home Server.

I highly recommend this little utility.