Once you have installed iTunes, you should configure it for use with iHomeServer™.  You can configure iTunes as you wish, however, this section includes some information about how iHomeServer interacts with iTunes and some key decisions that may make your iTunes and iHomeServer experience even better.  Note that this section is mainly applicable to those users who want to manage iHomeServer on a Windows Server and leverage iHomeServer's Watch Folder features to automatically import their server media.  If you are solely interested in iHomeServer's Web Access and DLNA streaming feature, then you may want to skip this chapter.

 

Note that iHomeServer provides an interface to perform a lot of the every day iTunes management functions.  iHomeServer, however, is not a replacement for the iTunes GUI and most iTunes configuration tasks should be performed within iTunes when iHomeServer is not running.  This configuration can be done by running iTunes interactively.

 

On a server, this either means logging into the server's console, or by using Remote Desktop Connection to connect to the desktop of your server.  Most of the steps in the following section assume you are already logged in to the server's desktop.

 

If you have already installed iHomeServer as a Windows Service and are running iTunes under its control, please ensure you have stopped iTunes from running under iHomeServer prior to attempting to launch iTunes interactively through the desktop, otherwise you will receive an error indicating that iTunes is already running. Alternatively, use the iHomeServer Tray Icon to switch to running iTunes on your desktop.

 

Important Note

It is very important to understand how your existing media is arranged, how iTunes manages media and how iHomeServer interacts with iTunes to get the best value out of iHomeServer and running iTunes on your server.  We cover quite a lot of this background detail in this section, however if you are in a rush, we recommend you at least read the following sections: iTunes User Account and  The Key Decisions.