Purchasing for Multiple Tablets/Phones/PCs

[daveprice]

I have various WMC PCs in the house; a few are dedicated old Win7 PCs connected to TVs, a few are are just PCs that sometimes use WMC. One of the dedicated PCs does all of the TV recording and storing movies, the others just have the network share for the master added to their libraries. Using an HDHomeRun Prime to share tuners between the various computers. I'm guessing from reading the product page that this arrangement is compatible with My Media Center?

Down to my real question. It looks like the only purchasing option is through the various store for each OS version of the app. I have a MS-Surface, Kindle Fire HD, Android phone and an iPad, my wife has a Win8 Tablet, Android phone and and iPad.. My daughter has an Android phone, an iPad and a Win8 laptop. So if I wanted my family to switch to using My Media Center and have it available on all of our various devices; I'm in for at least $45. I know I'm cheap moaning about $45, but I just can't bring myself to buy one piece of software nine times just because my devices happen to span various operating systems and accounts. If I had 30 iPads on my account, it would only cost me $5 to put it on all of them. So I'm paying a "variety tax". The other part is that I can do most of this and more (streaming) with other apps I already have - some free, some paid. The only "neat" thing about this app is that it's available on all OSes for a less confusing experience for my family.

Is this rigid pricing the only option for me? I don't want to just get this for one or two devices - I'd still be stuck in the "you have to do it this way on this device, and that way on that device" quagmire I'm trying to get out of.

[Motz]

So in your setup you would want to install the my media center services on each PC on it. That way you could start playback on that specific PC. When you select a show or movie to watch it will pop up a box asking if you want to start playback on the PC or any connected extenders, but since you do no have extenders you would want to basically just add multiple PCs into the app if that makes sense... so when you hit play it only start playback on the PC that you are browsing.

For purchasing options this is the only option available however there are some ways to optimize this.

Android:
a.) Add a "family" account on to each device so you buy it once under that account in Google Play and then download it on each device
b.) Download the amazon app store on each device and log in with your amazon account and purchase it on there

Option b will also tie to your Kindle Fire HD... so for $5 you would get 4 of your devices covered.

iOS:
You can install paid apps on 5 Device, if those device are all using the same iTunes account. Per 5 device you will only have to pay once for the app. I believe you can log in/out of itunes store on iOS devices. http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-574 ... s-devices/

Windows 8:
There isn't too much you can do here unless you add the same user on each device and then use that user to install the app, up to 5 devices i believe as well... for instance at home I have a work account and a personal account on all my windows 8 machines and I have paid for the app on my personal account so I log into that account for the app when I need to use it.