I hope Tranquil get some of the extra custom… they've come out today to state categorically that they'll be continuing their line of Home Server and they make some fantastic units.

Microsoft really dropped the ball on WHS.

As much as I would love a WHS appliance, it fundamentally fails for me because it cannot replace the HTPC that lives under my TV

Why would you want it to?

Logically, it complements an HTPC, it doesn't replace one.

My HTPC is always on and at the moment I have a sub-optimal backup regime from my main PC to it

WHS with WMC + TV Tuner support is very frequently requested functionality

Ah okay, you want to combine an HTPC and server into the same unit? I guess I can see some benefit in that, since hardware requirements should be similar, although personally I'd always want to keep them separate.

Separate is my preference, until you have to explain to the mrs why both devices need to be on draining power, and then you start to fight a losing battle ;-)

My HTPC is silent, x64 capable and fairly low power without going to extremes. All it needs is a different OS :)

Horses for courses, IMHO.

Ideally, my requirements for a home server would, normally, be low power draw, and fairly low power, enough CPU/RAM to do what it needs to do and no more, since it's on 24/7. And in that regard, no video circuitry, headless, and remote admin works fine. For a HTPC, though, the hardware requirements would be much more demanding. But as soon as you need both, it's likely to be cheaper to get one box doing both, than two units doing a dedicated job.

Of course, as I work from home, my ‘home’ servers are a bit more heavily specified than that, especially on the disk side of things, but still low power on the CPU ‘cos I don’t need monster processing power in a server, and they don't need fancy video because they aren't games or TV machines.

Meanwhile, this move from HP is disappointing, but hardly surprising. WHS generally doesn't seem to have caught on as I'd hoped it would and as I feel it deserves.

Would your HTPC not run WHS in some sort of VM, could work…?

toolsong
My HTPC is always on and at the moment I have a sub-optimal backup regime from my main PC to it

WHS with WMC + TV Tuner support is very frequently requested functionality

Well whether is will remain in the next release of WHS is another matter, but Vail has the BDA sub system and TV cards do work in it. There are a few over on the MediaPortal forums running WHS boxes as their TV server. You used to need to hack in MediaPlayer and the BDA system, but DVB cards work out of the box with standard W7 drivers in Vail.

The thought was that the xbox, Zune and WP7 would be able to connect to your WHS and stream TV natively eventually. Whether this will actually happen is anyone's guess.