Jamcast

Hey Scott, I refrained from responding too soon... figured you were still recovering from that bug! Sorry that I jinxed you!
Anyway I wanted to wish you a Happy Turkey Day anyway and hoped you were feeling better. So you released a minor rev, version 49 up from 44. Seems like a major update to me! I could not believe how long it took to update my machine with the new code. It took forever, SLOW!! mostly something about building images... took awhile. Then once the service was back up and running... it took at least twice as long on each Vista and Windows 7 boxes to finally come up. Actually Windows 7 came up first and I almost thought that the Vista was broken as bad as the XP Clients but it finally came up. (I could not even see the Vista Client in the neighboorhood like I did before.) In any case it still did not cause a pop-up on any XP Client. I even stopped and started UPNP and SSDP services several times on the XP Clients. And of course Windows Media Player still does not see JamCast either and so won't add it as an available library. I have not gone in and started opening more ports in my clients Firewall settings.. I would assume that just running UPNP and the SSDP services that it would open the proper default ports.. perhaps not?? Any advice on anything to try? I'm stumped because as I have mentioned almost every other Media Serving product out there.. I have not had this issue on XP machines... as soon as the service is started... thier notification areas light up like Christmas trees! I'm almost afraid I have had you make changes as a result of my issues.. and all your hard work has resulted in almost hurting the product as a whole and certainly have not improved or resolved the issues. I would definitely recommend someone stay at the .44 level for now... I think it's much more responsive and stable... not sure why?! But you are the expert so I will leave it in your more than capable hands... I just wanted you to update you. Later!

Ed Rauch
Greenville, SC

Well Like I said Scott - your the expert! I guess I am wondering how other similiar products like TVersity deal with this? They seem to work? Maybe I didn't play with them enough to discover that they had this same issue. I didn't notice it, but perhaps they did?! First, I need to change my earlier report. I am indeed getting notification on my XP boxes of the JamCast server on version .49, as well as my UPNP enabled router. It just took awhile to occur... something I saw noted on some other site... evidently it can take up to 20 minutes. I don't know how long it took, but at least an hour later all of my XP systems knew about the JamCast Server... but as you mentioned there doesn't seem to be an obvious method of accessing it, once it is seen. You can click on it, and get a nice JamCast splash screen, but that's about it. Windows Media definitely doesn't seem to look for the "available shared library" like it does for Vista and Windows 7. I too, like you saw information in several places regarding the inability to use sharing libraries in Windows Media Player 11 on XP as it was implemented in Vista. But then again I saw information that this was somehow changed or modified following SP2 for the OS? Anyway.. I think there is an answer... but it may just take some digging to figure out. Microsoft's own site says it's possible but the remote libraries per say must be "monitored folders". It's evidently a 5 step process to get it to work. Here is the quote from MS's website. " On the computer that contains the library you are sharing, (which would be my Jamcast Server I presume) you must grant users permission to access remote folders, modify registry key values, and monitor the shared folders located on the remote computer." It looks like you have to institute sharing and make them accessible for Permissions using Anonymous Logon. Once again the key is this has to be post SP2. Supposedly thier are other methods for other XP versions. I may have this all wrong? This link has all the pertinent data and additional links and information but you probably already know about it, or have already been there. But here it is: http://www.microsoft.com...player/faq/sharing.mspx
I will keep playing and let you know what I find... I may even go install TVersity again to see if it worked with them or how it was implemented. One of the products I tried I do vaguely remember it actually stating a dialog box calling for a monitored file location... which may be how they are dealing with it... actually performing this 5 step process?

EdR