Comments on: Building a Network Attached Storage Device for (XBox 360) Media Streaming

By: Dagggerdan

Dagggerdan — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:04:58 +0000

The xbox 360 can play divx, xvid and wmv movies since late 2007 NARBS. Dont play them through the windows media extender tab, play them through the video tab. WME doesnt support divx which is weird. heres a good review http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/xbox-360-divx%5Cxvid-test/xbox-360-divxxvid-playback-tested-verdict-its-almost-perfect-329769.php

By: Riyad Kalla

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:42:22 +0000

Chris, nice job dude.

the Media Center editions of Windows as I understand it are special editions/installs of Windows… so I don’t think it’s just some app you can pick up and install.

By: Chris Griffiths

Chris Griffiths — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 20:29:42 +0000

Well I’ve now returned from working in Norway to give this a go and all seems to be working fine, my xbox can now see my entire media library and how mighty fine it looks………….something has worked for me for once……….Is it possible to get media centre as a standalone program?????

By: Riyad Kalla

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:00:35 +0000

Nice find and followup Chris, keep us posted if you get it working!

By: Chris Griffiths

Chris Griffiths — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:13:59 +0000

Thanks for the info,

I made some adjustments to sharing settings last night and had to edit an entry in the registry using some info i found here : http://www.edn.com/blog/400000040/post/780012278.html

Going to try this asap.

The xbox has no problem streaming my formats as long as they are on the laptop hd or a shared usb hd, the only problem is trying to play the files from the NAS drive.
Seems like there are a few people who have this problem and i’m sure it will become more common as the price of NAS comes down and down. Microsoft are aware of it and claim they are trying to come to an agreement for some sort of industry standard.

Thanks again.

By: Riyad Kalla

Riyad Kalla — Mon, 12 May 2008 15:57:44 +0000

Chris,
I’m not familiar with the MyBook drive *But* if you can see all the content in your Windows Media Player library that’s a great start.

I think the trick is to make sure that Media Player is properly broadcasting your media library to the network so the 360 can find it. You want to go under Tools > Options > Library > Configure Sharing and I believe those are the settings you are looking for.

I have actually streamed stuff from MP 11 to my Xbox before so I know it’s possible.

As far as using Twonky, you shouldn’t need to.

ALSO you need to make sure that the media files you are sharing are in a format that the Xbox understands… for example I don’t think the 360 can stream DivX/XviD media.

The easiest solution would be to just forget MP11 and install TVersity (it’s free), it will transcode the media on the fly to whatever format your device needs. So you just point it over at your files on the NAS and boom, they will be exposed to the network.

By: Chris Griffiths

Chris Griffiths — Mon, 12 May 2008 00:38:00 +0000

Hi I know this topic may be dead as it is a year old now but I was wondering if you could help.

I have a 1TB WD mybook NAS Drive, My xbox cannot see any of the content on this drive, I am using Windows media player 11 to stream the content.
Will simply switching to twonky as the strwaming program solve this? It is strange because all the content appears in my media livbary in wmp 11. One of the reasons i got the 360 was to use it as a media center and so far all i can do is stream things from my Laptop hd. Hope you can help. Thanks

By: The “Break it Down” Blog » Blog Archive » PS3 1.80 Firmware Update - AWESOME

Wed, 23 May 2007 16:03:43 +0000

[...] personal NAS servers on the market. It looked like the XBox 360 might be able to do it, but after further investigation it seems Microsoft not only locks the XBox 360 to the WMV format, but it also implements a [...]

By: Riyad Kalla

Riyad Kalla — Wed, 23 May 2007 15:20:56 +0000

Anthony, it should continue to work fine. IIRC the Spring update added support for MPEG4 didn’t it? I imagine that just loosens the restrictions on formats that the XBox will understand, which is always a good thing.

By: Anthony Yates

Anthony Yates — Wed, 23 May 2007 12:12:46 +0000

Does anybody know if this still works since the Spring 2007 update on the 360?

By: Riyad Kalla

Riyad Kalla — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 14:42:20 +0000

No problem, it’s a really hot topic and if you are interested the ReadyNAS forums are actually pretty active with a lot of folks using the NV+ exactly for this type of thing, lots of info to be had:
http://www.infrant.com/forum/

By: jason

jason — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 11:56:57 +0000

thank you for this info