Sep 12
XBox 360 Streaming Media
Before getting my XBox 360, one of the things that really excited me about the system was its ability to stream media.
At first I thought that you needed a Windows Media Center PC to do this, but after researching the subject for 5 minutes, I found this was not the case.
So if you’d like, come with me and see how easily (or not) it will prove to be to stream a BitTorrented episode of The Shield to my Xbox 360.
My Setup
So just so we’re all on the same page here at the start of this little project here’s my setup: My 360 and Desktop with XP are both connected via a hardline to my router. Currently, the video file I’m looking to stream is sitting in a folder on my computer (c:\To Stream\the_shield.avi) and is ALREADY part of my WMP Library! Okay! Let’s get to work!
Where Do I Start?
Since I’ve never tried to do this on a console before, I really didn’t know where to begin. As such I pulled a move very uncharacteristic for myself, I went to the instruction book. (Man, I could barely write that!) Unfortunately, the section in the book titled “Share Media From Your PC” is a bit scant and I really felt like I should do a second of extra research before preceding. Thankfully, I stumbled onto a post on Joystiq which would become a great accompaniment for the stuff in the instruction book.
Windows Media Connect
Now according to the Xbox 360 instruction book, something called Windows Media Connect is required to make this whole thing work. After reading up a bit on that, I found this little page on M$’s site about it. If you don’t care to click over the important thing is that apparently, Windows Media Connect functionality is now built into Windows Media Player 11 which I most certainly have on my computer! So now I’m thinking that it should only be a function of me setting that up correctly to get everything working!
Setting Up Windows Media Player 11
Once again, a little searching on the Internet can yield tremendous dividends which is how I discovered this page on Xbox’s website with steps to set up WMP 11. First on the list is setting up Windows Media Player to share content with the Xbox 360 by Setting the “Media Sharing” properties in the Library Tab.
Uh-oh! But what’s this? My 360 isn’t there! Maybe I should turn it on.
To the 360!
Okay, on the 360 I now have to Navigate to the Media tab and select the “Video” button.
After this screen, I’m asked where where the video is coming from and I select “Computer”, it finds the file and booyah I’m good to…oh crap.
Admitedly the whole no likely of AVI files did trip me up for a second. But other than that, I have to say things went pretty smooth. Up until now, I’ve left my computer next to my entertainment system for streaming reasons, but this was simple enough that I may seriously consider cutting it out.Oh and sorry this post was so ungodly long. I wanted to split it into pages but besides making the pages myself, I just don’t know how to do it through Wordpress. Anyway, hope this was helpful to somebody out there!
September 12th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
I stumbled onto this from my Google Alerts set up, and pretty good tutorial. Got links and Relevant Pictures more than we could ask for.
September 12th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
@Core – Hey, thanks for the finding my site! BTW – What the devil is Google Alerts?!
September 12th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Great article, buddy. I did some researching on this a while back after I got my 360 and planned to eventually set it up th same way. Of course I never got around to it…lol. I think I’ll give it another try after reading this.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
@Mike – Yeah, you definitely should. Since I have the 360 all setup now, I’m debating whether or not to take my PC out of the equation. (Especially now since I have a laptop for last minute presentations and showing random YouTube videos and the like).
However, I’m not looking forward to converting a whole season’s videos from AVI to WMV. (#):(
September 12th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
OMG! This post reminded me that we are not friends on Xbox Live. Next time I boot up my Xbox 360 I will add you as a friend. Or, if you want to ad me, my gamertag is ‘apexrs’
September 12th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
@Apex – Hey man, thanks a lot! I will add you two next time I boot it up. (But with my wife running constantly around, who knows when that’ll be (#);D)
September 13th, 2007 at 11:38 am
I’m not too excited about having to convert everything to WMV either…lol. That’s the one thing that really turned me off when I did all the researching a few weeks ago.
I’ll add you to my friends list the next time I hop onto Live. Do you still play Halo 2 online? I love playing it. I’m not very good at it yet, but I’m working on it.
September 13th, 2007 at 11:58 am
@Mike – Halo 2? Haaaaaa ha ha! Get this, one of my friends is having a decathalon against another one of my friends. The events consist of Beer Pong, 1 on 1 Basketball, Chess, Guitar Hero 2, CS, and Halo amongst others.
I think I was supposed to be helping him train but think his girl has got him on lockdown at the moment. Ha ha. But yeah, I DO play, but it’s been a while. (Like since before the big rank update [if you know what I'm talkin' about])
September 13th, 2007 at 3:06 pm
So THAT is your Gamertag! Friend request sent
September 13th, 2007 at 7:10 pm
I love The Shield!
September 13th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
@Pete – Thanks Pete, I’ll approve that soon (right after some Castlevania: SOTN)!
@Tish – And that’s why we’re friends. (#):)
September 15th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Alright, I was finally able to get some time, and remembered to add you as a friend. I also followed this tutorial too and I now streaming some stuff to my 360! cool!
September 15th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
@Apex – Just accepted man thanks! And I’m glad that my tutorial helped you out a bit. *nod*
September 16th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
[...] Stream media from Windows XP to your Xbox360 – My good pal Bush outlines how you can go about streaming your favorite videos from your PC to your Xbox360 using Media Player 11. Now if only Microsoft would upgrade the 360 to allow divx playback so you don’t have to transcode to WMV. I guess that’ll probably never happen though. [...]