Using two laptops as clients to my HTPC?

[chupon]

Hi all,

I have been using WMC for quite awhile and until now I've never had a need to do the following...

I've looked around online and I can't seem to find an answer on whether this is possible or not, so here's what I would like to do.

I have an HTPC and an HDHR Prime. I also have a few Xbox 360s that I use as extenders. Everything works great and the new plans from SiliconDust sound exciting as an option to move off of WMC in the future. Until that's implemented however, I would also be curious on how best to integrate two other Windows 8 machines in to the mix. I have two laptops that I use from time to time and I'd like to get these access to the tuners and the recorded content.

What's the best way to have these two devices act as clients to my HTPC? I don't want them to also be WMC servers, I essentially want them to be clients/extenders of the HTPC. I would like to be able to launch WMC on these devices and use the tuners on the HDHR Prime as well as access the recorded content over the network instead of copying/moving the content locally to the machines. They are all networks and can talk to each other, but for copy protected content it restricts me in that I can only watch the content on displays (2 HDTVS) that are either connected to the 360s or the HTPC. I'd like to be able to watch say, a recorded episode of a show on HBO while outside or in a room without hogging the entire TV that someone else might want to use.

[mdavej]

You can of course share your Recorded TV folder and even install WMC on your other PCs and watch the unprotected ones from there or from Media Player or whatever. No need to copy/move anything. For liveTV, SD already has client software for that as do other DLNA apps. The only missing piece is protected recordings. That's not going to happen. Only a true extender like Xbox or Echo can do that. But in the case of HBO, Showtime, Max, etc. You can simply use HBO Go, Showtime Anytime, etc. They have pretty much everything, no recording required.

Personally, unless I'm on an airplane or stuck in a hotel room, I have no desire to watch anything on a small screen like that. Why not just pick up another TV and extender for your remote viewing?