I was really hoping that Vista was going to offer this feature. I've never owned a Tivo (still have my ReplayTV) but I'm pretty sure that a mult-Tivo household has this functions built in today.

Inexcusable that it isn't a function of VistaMCE in my opinion. It just tells me that the extender model is what MSFT wants us to use. And that's not a bad way to go with the upcoming Pica v2 extenders. So I won't get too worked up about it. I'll just plan on getting a very powerful VistaMCE "Server" that can handle say three simultaneous recordings, doling out 2 recordings and say music. Shouldn't be too bad really.

What really interests me right now is seeing the Dish Networks and DirecTV integrated offerings for MCE. Given that the likelyhook of DTbox working with CableCard, I'm putting my faith in a satellite solution now.

Randy at www.MacSeven.com

I don't think anyone has a model like this, MS has the best client/server experience that I've seen from any other vendor.  The problem is that if you want have multiple machines sharing a pool of content you have to use their "mainframe" model where all of the work is done in one location and the thin clients (extenders) just consume from the centralized location.

Using a distributed model where clients participate up to their capabilities, provides for a much more flexible (and scalable) solution.  With the rest of the computing world going to a distributed/p2p model (bit torrent for e.g.); I hope that MS does the same.

With the exception of full fidelity Live TV, it wouldn't be that difficult to build an application that did this, the problem is that it would replace WMC.

I don't know if I'm oversimplifying the problem, but is there a way to have a conflict on PC1 trigger a request to PC2 to schedule the show that won't be recorded?  If PC2 has no conflict, it will record.  

Obviously it would be ideal to either have one PC doing all the work or having multiple PCs doing the work with the "broker" doing all of the organizing and delegating. However, similar to the way that YAC can communicate from PC1 to PC2 and trigger a message box, can you remotely trigger a recording request (like RemoteRecord)?

Or, and I realize this is coming close to replacing WMC like you said, but creating a web-interface, or external schedule program that reads the guide from WMC but would read scheduled recordings from both PC1 and PC2.

For now, I have one PC doing all the work, but it would be nice to be able to add another and have some sort of integration.  Very interesting concept.

The short answer is, I don't see why not...

The hardest thing (I don't know how to do this yet) will be detecting conflicts programmatically.  Once you have a conflict creating the click-to-record xml document and sending it to all of the machines in your environment until one gives a positive response wouldn't be complex at all.  Building in reschedule logic if the priority show can be recorded on a different box (it's on a local or basic cable channel) and the conflict can on the PC with a STB, would be more complex.  I need to do more research into the transactional capabilities of click-to-record.

Right now I'm just thinking [out loud] about how I want to approach this problem, but I do plan to try to address it when I get some time.

Random thought: When I see these things, I'm constantly amazed out how far ahead ReplayTV was in its day.  Commercial Skipping, remote recording and conflict resolution/brokering was built-in. Of course the implementation was not as sophisticated as what has been created with ShowAnalyzer/Dtb or are describing here.  But then again, this was done with 64mb. :)

I think you're onto a great idea.  Are you planning on pitching this idea to someone on the MCE team at MSFT, or perhaps building it yourself?

I'm going to try to build the recording conflict brokering when I get some time.  

The bigger picture stuff would be a waste of time for anyone other than MS to build, unless they release the source for softsled.

MythTV does this, although it's a slightly different approach.  There are a number of different roles each PC can play, including Master Backend (tuner, and PC controls it and tuners on other PCs), "Slave" Backend (tuner, but PC doesn't control what is recorded), and Frontend (this is what makes the requests).  So, the frontend and backend are separate, and the backend can be centralized or distributed.

If the broker is built, then you could "share recorded TV" to get really close to your origional vision.  The 360 would still only connect to one machine, however, you would at least see all your recorded shows on every machine.

The only real "problems" left would be live TV, you would still be sharing one tuner with the 360 and one machine, while the other machine has a tuner to itself.  The other problem is the shows that are still recoding on the "non-360" machine wouldn't show up in the list until they have finished recording (I haven't tried this with Vista, but with MCE2005 that's how it worked).

Everything but Live TV can be built today, but it's kludgey because each PC needs to maintain it's own index of the content.  

http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/archive/2007/02/27/Recording-Broker-_2D00_-Automated-Recording-Conflict-Resolution.aspx