Media Centre and the 360

Boysey

I'm not sure if this is the right home for this but...

Apparantly you can stream media from a MediaCentre PC via an XBox 360. Does anyone know if this would run across a normal 10/100Mbps LAN?

Also, can you run MediaCentre on top of XP, or does it have to be a totally separate OS? If so would Dual Booting be preferable to running a Virtual MediaCentre PC on XP (via MS Virtual PC or VMWare)?

Any thoughts appreciated,
Cheers
Boysey

ShiverinEskimo

Its a toally seperate OS afaik - however dont think you need to have media centre to stream stuff to an xbox360 - think this can be achieved through XP but not certain.

There's always linux...mate used a linux streaming server with a modded xbox - worked a dream.

Boysey

Just found the answer to my own question... Something called Windows Media Connect (think it got installed via Windows Update when I wasn't looking)... It allows for the streaming of media to Digital Media Receivers (the 360 being listed as compatible). If anyone's interested the lowdown on it is at...
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/devices/wmconnect/faq.aspx#5_1

FrankGrimes

Media Center is XP (Pro I believe), with Media Center running as an application on top of it. You can't install media center as an add on to an existing xp installation, but if you wipe and replace with MCE 2005 you can boot up as normal into XP and do all your everyday things, and then launch media center at the click of a button on mouse or remote.

Once you have Rollup2 update installed and the Xbox360 software you can use the xbox 360 asn an Extender over a wired or wireless network. It will then pretty much do almost everything you can do sitting at the PC. If you are in living room and press record on xbox remote it will record to the PC in the other room. You can then play this back in either room.

You will have your music and photo collections on the pc but can play them back through the xbox 360. Theres also loads of plugins like internet radio, internet tv, webcams, websites in the media center 10 foot UI.

If you have an xbox, pc with tv tuner, and a network my advice is to install media center 2005 and use the xbox as an extender.

wayne040576

I don't think you can officially buy Windows Media Centre Edition on its own. It only comes pre installed on Windows media pcs. You can get it on the net from various stores but legally the licence only allows you to install it if you are a hardware vendor. Usually when I have seen it on sale, there is some disclaimer about you having to state that you are a hardware vendor or sometimes they will send you a piece of "computer hardware" with the cds.

For normal XP installations, you can only use your PC to stream audio to the xbox 360. See this faq: http://www.videora.com/en-us/Converter/Xbox360/video.html

FrankGrimes

its OEM, which means it has to be sold with at least one piece of hardware. If you buy the remote control (which is essential for setting it up and is about €35) this is regarded as hardware and you can then buy MCE 2005 - all perfectly above board and fully legal.

fatherdougalmag

And it seems that you can run regular Windows apps on the 360 too (well some Windows apps) via the MCE functionality.