The MediaSmart Server LX195 is HP’s most affordable home server and is a lot more approachable than its larger line of home servers. The LX195 is designed to make it easy to backup all of your multimedia content and access it from anywhere.

At $400, the LX195 is much more affordable than the MediaSmart EX487 ($749) and MediaSmart EX485 ($599). THe LX195 has a smaller footprint at just 4″W x 8″H x 8″D.

I highly recommend HP MediaSmart servers to those who are serious about backing up multiple notebooks.

The MediaSmart Server LX195 comes with a 640GB intenal hard drive and four USB ports so you can add external hard drives as your storage needs grow.

Setting up HP MediaSmart Servers take a little patience, but they can really streamline your digital life. The LX195 can automatically back up both PCs and Macs, aggregate your multimedia libraries and stream them to local and remote devices.

I have an HP MediaSmart EX487 at the heart of my home network. I’ve loaded it with four Seagate Barracuda drives and an external Seagate FreeAgent Xtreme drive for a total of 6TB of storage capacity.

The EX487 It backs up four of my PC notebooks and two MacBooks. It allows me to access my media library from my PS3 and iPhone 3G. I really like how the server consolidates photos from all of my PC notebooks into a single folder.

The LX195 can do almost everything that the EX-series servers can, except stream video to remote devices and stream content to iPhones via HP’s iStream application. If you’ve only got a notebook or two to backup and don’t care about streaming video remotely the LX195 will do just fine.

The MediaSmart LX195 runs on an Intel Atom processor and 1GB of RAM.

HP MediaSmart Server LX195 is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

HP’s next MediaSmart Server software update will enable automatic video conversion and mobile streaming. This means users will be able to playback their movies from any device in full resolution on their home network or at HP is also releasing an iPhone application so MediaSmart EX485 and EX487 owners can access their entire photo, music and video libraries from anywhere.

The new software will convert most popular videos into MPEG4 H.264. Full resolution version MPEG4 videos will be available for playback on users’ home networks, while lower resolution versions will be created for remote streaming. AVI (DivX, Xvid, MJPEG), MOV (MJPEG), DVR-MS (MPEG-2), MP4 (MPEG4), WMV and

unprotected DVD VOB. DVD chapters will be stitched together into a single video file.

iStream will make it easy to access terabytes of your multimedia content from your iPhone. The smaller version converted MPEG4 videos are compact enough to stream smoothly over the iPhone’s 3G connection.

Video conversion is processor intensive, but HP reps explained that the video conversion tool is set to a low priority to make sure it will not get in the way of other tasks, such as backup a and file sharing.

The HP MediaSmart servers will receive the update at the end of April.

HP Announces Video Streaming for MediaSmart Servers to Stream Video, iStream App for iPhone is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.

The HP MediaSmart Server ex485 and ex487 are now Mac compatible, which means they play nice with Time Machine, OSX’s backup utility. The new MediaSmart Servers appear identical to the previous models on the outside, but they have larger hard drives, quadruple the RAM (2GB vs. 512MB) and an Intel Celeron processor.

I just bought an HP MediaSmart home server on Black Friday and this announcement makes it obsolete, but I’m looking forward to an upgrade since I have a multi-OS household. According to an HP spokesperson there will be a software upgrade for existing MediaSmart users that will enable Mac Time Machine backups.

The new generation of MediaSmart home servers also have improved media sharing and off-site backup capabilities. The new tools allow you to easily upload albums to Google Picasa and SnapFish. There’s also a tool for uploading folders to Amazon’s S3 servers.

These upgrades are welcome and I plan on checking out one of them in the near future. I’m hoping that HP will delve deeper into Mac functionality than just Time Machine.

Here’s the full release from HP:

HP Launches New Home Server for PCs and Macs

HP MediaSmart Server centralizes digital media and files for backup, remote access, sharing and uploading to social media sites

PALO ALTO, Calif., Dec. 29, 2008 HP today launched a home server designed for use with both Windows and Mac computers.

Based on the Microsoft Windows® Home Server platform, the HP MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487 is a central repository for automatically backing up and accessing digital music, videos, photos and documents from multiple computers on a home network.(1)

The MediaSmart Server automatically organizes files across all PCs, streams media across a home network and the Internet,(2) and publishes photos to popular social networking and photo sharing sites.

A growing number of digital-savvy households have both Windows and Mac computers, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of media files and documents scattered across these devices,” said Jason Zajac, vice president of strategy, Worldwide Attach Group, HP. The HP MediaSmart Server protects, stores and organizes this content from anywhere on a network so consumers can access and share it any place they are connected.”

HP continues to innovate on the Windows Home Server platform giving consumers even more options to enjoy and protect their precious memories and valuable data,” said Charlie Kindel, general manager, Windows Server Solutions, Microsoft. We believe consumers will embrace the new MediaSmart Server as one of the most exciting computing products for the home.”

MediaSmart Server ex485/ex487 features include:

· HP Media Collector: conveniently schedules the MediaSmart Server to copy and centralize digital files and libraries from networked PCs

· Media Streaming: remotely streams photos and music to any Internet-connected PC or Mac

· Server for iTunes: centralizes iTunes music libraries on the server for playback to any networked Mac or PC running iTunes

· HP Photo Publisher: easily upload photos to Facebook, Picasa Web Albums and Snapfish

· HP Photo Viewer: allows easy sharing of photos with friends and family

· PC Hard Drive Backup: backs up networked PCs via the Windows Home Server backup feature

· Mac Hard Drive Backup: backs up Macs running Leopard using Apple Time Machine software

· Server Backup: duplicates designated shared folders to a separate hard disk drive

· Online Backup: duplicates designated folders to Amazon’s S3 online backup service for an additional layer of protection

· Smart Power Management: can schedule times for server to go to ”sleep” and ”wake up,” saving on energy costs

· Processor: Intel® Celeron®, 2.0 GHz 64-bit. Two gigabytes (GB) of 800-MHz DDR2 DRAM now standard on MediaSmart Server

· Expandability: additional drives can be added for up to 9 terabytes (TB)

“Customers are always looking for the right mix of features and ease-of-use when choosing digital home products,” said Danielle Levitas, group vice president, consumer, broadband and digital marketplace at IDC. “HP’s focus and investment in software allows it to deliver a home server with compelling features for Mac and PC users while offering a great customer experience that helps simplify the complexity of the connected home. This unique offering will help expand the home server market.”

New HP Home Servers Get Upgrade, Mac Functionality is a post by Xavier Lanier from Notebooks.com.