Recording Broker - Automated Recording Conflict Resolution over Network | I wouldn’t expect anything other than greatness from the man who bought us DVRMSToolbox, and Recording Broker is no exception.  It is a very neat utility for those of us with more than one Media Center PC.  No longer do you need your single Media Center PC to have six tuners, now you can share the love!

Recording Broker is a simple application and service that runs on your Media Center PC’s.  When you have a recording conflict, it pings the other Media Center PC’s on your network and asks them to resolve it for you.  This means that you can schedule four shows to record on a PC with three tuners, and it forwards the forth recording request to your other Media Center PC, which might have two tuners.

I’ve been playing with it and it works amazing well.  I’ve got a Media Center PC with three tuners, and a second one with two tuners.  An Xbox connects to the Media Center PC with three tuners, and all is happy.  However, there is every so often when you want to record four things at night.  Sure, I could walk to the other PC and schedule it, share the recorded TV folder, and etc.  But, with Recording Broker I just schedule away via the Xbox Extender and Recording Broker distributes the load between the two Media Center PC’s (you still would want to share the Recorded TV folder though).

Free download from Andy’s Blog, but you know with something this cool you want to donate a few bucks to Andy.     Versions for both MCE 2005 and Vista.

Don’t forget to also check out DVRMSToolbox with Automatic Commercial Skip.

var dc_UnitID = 14; var dc_PublisherID = 11967; var dc_AdLinkColor = '6699cc'; var dc_adprod='ADL'; Cross Posted from Chris Lanier's Blog at http://msmvps.com/blogs/chrisl/