One of the few features missing from Windows 7 Media Center but available in most modern DVR setups is the ability to remotely schedule recordings. This much touted feature of commercial DVR systems such as Direct TV have been sorely missed by many media center enthusiasts who are frequently away from home. Luckily, a third party program from FatAttidtude has been released to address the problem and add support for the feature to your existing Windows 7 Media Center setup. Remote Potato installs a server on the media center system enabling a web based interface for remotely scheduling new recordings, browsing the TV guide and more.

Even more importantly, this third party program requires very little configuration to get setup and working on your home media center system. Most users will find the most complicated portions of the setup to be forwarding the ports of their home router and setup of the xmltv files. Upon first launching Remote Potato you’ll receive a window letting you know that the server has been started along with a windows dialog to allow the program appropriate rights to the firewall (provided you are using the built-in Windows 7 firewall). Once you’ve allowed access to the program you’ll notice a Show Settings button on the main window. Pressing this will reveal the options and setup portions of the program.

For those just getting started with Remote Potato the main settings that need to be set are going to be the TV Guide and the options found under the General tab. In order for the program to obtain a listing of channels and programs you’ll need to have an xmltv file. To get one of these handy files for your system you can simply follow this guide here on Hack7MC to using MC2XML. Of course this file will need to be updated regularly (every few days is recommended). Doing this automatically is simple enough using Windows 7’s built-in Task Scheduler.

Open Task Scheduler from the start menu by entering “Task Scheduler” into the search box and hit enter (crazy, right?). Then on the right hand side you’ll notice a number of actions that can be performed. Select Create Basic Task and go through the simple wizard setting a name for the event, choosing Daily (which can actually be set to run every X number of days) and then selecting the shortcut created in the MC2XML guide as the program to run.

Once you’ve setup your xmltv guide file open the TV guide section of Remote Potato’s options and set the “Get EPG Data from” option to  “a locally stored XML file”. Next locate the file created by MC2XML in the XMLTV file dialog box and once the program has finished the initial loading of the file contents set the import option to re-import data for approximately the same number of days as you set in the Task Scheduler.

Next, under the General options tab most users will want to set the program to automatically start with windows and do so minimized. Simply check the box for both these options and the program should be all set to go. Now provided you’ve setup proper access from your router to access the port on the media center system you can now access the Remote Potato guide from a remote system.

Simply open your favorite web browser and navigate to the media center’s ip address followed by the port set under Remote Potato’s general options (ex, 55.55.55.555:9080) If you are having trouble accessing the machine remotely be sure to check from the actual machine itself using localhost:port.

The web based interface is fairly intuitive and the program even provides a Silverlight version, which can be enabled under the Silverlight tab in the options. Users can easily browse, search and manage recordings from anywhere with internet access including moblie devices such as a PDA or cellphone.

Thanks to FatAttitude for putting out this great application and making it so easy to setup and use as well. This handy utility is sure to fill the gap for many Windows 7 Media Center users that are consistently on the go but don’t want to miss out on recording their favorite shows and new series.