Review For: Hathor Media Server Site Link: http://www.twistedflute.com/  Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server License: Freeware Date Reviewed: May 2, 2004 Written By: Webmaster Christopher Beley Rating:

     The perfect way to share all your cough...legal music..cough with your friends...

Setting It Up
Setting it up was relatively simple.  After installation, the program automatically starts up.  There are about 7 different tabs with all sorts of options that  you can choose from.  After setting all your options you simply press Start Server under the Status Tab, and Wa La!  Your server is up and running.  To view your server, take note of your outside IP under the status tab, open up your favorite browser, and then type http://your_IP_here.

Features
     First of all, it comes ready with a template, so you won't have to create one yourself, however you can edit the template if you want.  Another neat thing is that you can password protect your "site".  So when someone goes to your site with all your music, they will have to enter in a password and username.  Additionally, you can have as many passwords and usernames as you want!

     This may not be considered a feature, but this program is very easy to use.  For example, to import all your music, you simply go to the Media tab, click add, select a folder, and wait a few seconds.  All the pages for your website are generated automatically.

     The last feature I will mention (you can check out the site for this program to get a detailed list of all the features) is the encoding options. As long as you enable it on the Advance Tab (check "allow Transcodding"), anyone who goes to your site will be able to stream music at a lower bit rate.  This means, for people on dial-up who want to stream from your site, they can select a lower bit rate so they can stream music faster without having pauses in the music.

Dial-Up Users...Beware!
     The program itself works great, but running the server off dial up is not a good idea.  In testing with dial up, we experienced blank pages, and extremely low upload times.  If you have high speed then this is a great program, but if you have dial-up...beware.

     In conclusion, this is one great program to access your music from anywhere in the world, and I highly recommend it.

Special Thanks to Setheronie12 (Old DH Admin AKA: Admin of my host) and IceHammer (Old DH Forum Support) for helping me test this program.