astro11,

With hope given by sonik, I undertook trying to get recording to a network share working.  It took a combination of things to get it working correctly.  Here's my final setup:

Server: 2.8 GHz P4, 500GB RAID 5 array, Windows Server 2003, Domain Controller
Work Station: 2.4 Celeron, 40 GB ATA, Windows MCE 2005, Workgroup Member
Network: Switched 100Mb full duplex through a Lynksys BEFW11S4

After spending quite a few hours getting tinkering with MCE I discovered that all disk access for recording shows is handled by the Media Center Scheduler Service (ehSched).  When the service starts it checks to see it it cans access all the recording location specified at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Cneter\Service\Recording\RecrdPath (String Value).  If it can't get to the location specified it resets the recording location to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Recorded TV. 

Realizing that the service was doing the check I decided to create a service account.  I created an account named MCE with a password of 12345678.  I then made the account an administrator of the local MCE PC.  Next I opened the local security policy for the MCE PC (it's located in Administrative Tools).

Under Security Settings\Local Policies\User Rights Assignments I added the MCE account to the following:

Act as part of the operating system (I didn't test if this is necessary.)
Log on as a service (I know this is required.)

Next I took advantage of a NT authentication flaw that has been around for years.  If you try to connect a PC that is not on a domain to one that is, the domain PC will authenticate the user as long as the username and password match.  So, I created an account of the domain controller named MCE and gave it the same password of 12345678.

Next I shared the folder I wanted and gave Everyone full access at both the share and file levels of security.  (I used everyone instead of specifying the MCE account for reasons I'll get to shortly).

Finally, I set both MCE services to log on as the MCE account. And then I restarted the services. With all of this done, the services will start and not change the path. 

Unfortunately, we're not done yet.  Apparently parts of MCE will try to access the path with out passing the credentials for the service account it is running as.  To over come this, edit the security policy on the server.  Change Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Network access: Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users to Enabled.  This is why we set the permissions to everyone earlier.

Now, you can record to the network.  No batch files or scripts required.  If the server is ever unreachable, MCE will default back to the local recording path.

I hope this helps,
-bj