VMWare ESXi and video

[tribunal88]

I'm thinking of replacing several of my test servers at home with virtualized boxes using ESXi and new hardware. In addition to the existing servers, I was toying with the idea of creating a Windows guest server with the purpose of running PlayOn on it, a service which transcodes video to the PS3 (among other devices). This would get me NetFlix and Hulu on the PS3 which would be very useful because Time-Warner's VOD is pretty bad and I don't want to buy primo channels when I already have a NetFlix subscription.

I know that guest Windows OS's use VMWare SVGA II as their display driver. My question was whether this would cause an issue with my plans. Windows Media Player 9 is required for PlayOn to work correctly, and if WMP9 won't run on a Windows guest server sitting on top of ESXi, then I won't be able to use the VM box in this capacity.

Thanks!

 

[Dahak]

there really should not be any reason why it would not work. as far as windows is concerned it like everything other machine. the only thing that you would miss is if there is any video card acceleration to the transcoding.

 

[tomt4535]

I have PlayOn installed on my WHS box and it doesn't even have a video card installed in it. I see no reason why it wouldn't work inside a VM.

 

[tribunal88]

thanks guys. Now all I need to do is decide how much horsepower to put in this thing to accommodate the # of boxes I want to create inside it.

 

[VinylxScratches]

If you do do this, could you please post the motherboard you used and what works and doesn't I can't find a budget motherboard that works 100%.