We recently moved into a new apartment and only had to wait a day before we got our cable/Internet/TV transferred. One good thing about this is I switched to a new cable pack that took almost $40 dollars off my cable bill and should stay in effect for the next 24 months.
At first I just had a standard DVR and a second hook up (non-DVR) but this pack included two Maestro DVRs. They have built in streaming capabilities and are linked together in a way that I'm not sure if it's better or not. When we first moved out the cable guy came the day after and I didn't have everything straightened away in my room. I asked him to put a few feet of extra wire on so I could weave the wire around the furniture after.
When I went to do just that, I unhooked one of the cable wires because I could not get it to go around my room as I intended. When I reconnected the cable wire after, I couldn't get any reception on either TV. I had to get in touch with tech support and they instructed me to unplug power from my main cable box and wait 10 seconds and then plug it back in.
That worked. But for a couple of days after I would just lose my connection on my TV in the room with the error message that it couldn't find the Media Server. The TV connection on the second set remained on but I again had to resort to unplugging the cable box to fix it. I got in touch with tech support who reset my cable box but it still has happened a couple more times since then.
It was during one of these blackouts (I shall call them) that I discovered that I could access and watch movies and even view photos on my computer. I was going to the menu when I had one of these blackouts and trying to find the Network settings. I was looking for a way to refresh or reset the settings from the cable book without having to unplug it all the time. I did find an option to refresh, but it did nothing.
I found the option to search for Media Gateway and noticed my main PC is listed as TERRY-PC: Terry: in the Home Network section. That really didn't bother me considering the networking built into the system. What bothered me was that I could navigate to My Pictures folder and My Videos folder on my hard drive and it didn't request any password even tough I do have a password set up on my account on my computer. That is not acceptable.
So my first priority was to disable the streaming media. I assumed it was in the Network settings on my system so I went to the Network and Sharing Center on my computer(win7).
Either type Network and Sharing Center in the search bar, right click on the Network icon, by the clock and then click on Open Network and Sharing Center, or go to Control Panel. Start, Control Panel, Network and Sharing Center.
Then on the left hand menu, find and click on Change advanced sharing settings.
In the list of settings that come up scroll down and find the Media streaming section. It should indicate if Media streaming is off or on. To disable, click on the blue Choose media streaming options... (you can turn it on this way as well)
If it's on and you want to just disable it, just click on the Block All button and that's it. If it's already off just click on the Turn on media streaming button and you'll get taken to the same screen as where to block it.
Until I can figure out what makes it tick I'm leaving it disabled. On the plus side I've been trying to figure out a way to watch movies from my computer to my TV for awhile now. And yes I know I can just hook them together but between all the hookups and connections I already have going on and not enough plugin options to spear, except for swapping cords in and out which I hate doing...and I don't like the lack of password option.
Then I discovered another issue. If you keep streaming enabled, Maestro keeps showing a list of videos and pictures that I already deleted from my computer. My question was how do I clear that list?
I couldn't find any setting on the cable box to clear out the list and Windows explorer was showing the folders, in question, where empty. So I had to go to tech support to figure out how to delete this list.
This is basically what they told me:
If you are still seeing these videos and pictures would still be on the computer some where. If you are 100% sure they are completely off the computer you will need to unpair the computer from the system and then repair it.
Access Setting on one of the media players and select Media Player Then select “Remove All Devices” it should take about 30 seconds for that screen to clear.
I checked VLC and found no such settings then I opened Windows Media Player. On the menu on the left hand side of the player I noticed the name of my cable box and right clicked and chose the option to Remove the device (sorry - no screen shot available). It was to take about 30 seconds to work but much later the list was still there.
Just by clicking around on the menu in Movie Player I discovered what to do. In the menu in the left hand side I clicked on Videos - sure enough I saw all the movies listed that where showing on the list on my cable box. Right clicking on them gives me the option to delete them. A small window then opens giving me the option to delete just from the library or delete from the library and the computer.
Deleting them from here removes them from the listing on my cable box. Works for both Pictures, Videos and probably Music.
Note: Deleting from the library is like deleting a shortcut to a file but not the file itself.