connecting through media center on 360..

smokey982

SatelliteGuys Pro
Original poster
Sep 7, 2005
2,050
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Cleveland, TN (Chattanooga Market)
Has anyone had any luck connecting their 360 to a PC without media center. I was told by tech support that it could be done but after trying many times, I still have not had any luck. Tech support tried several things but we never got it working.
 
I have my 360 connected through my router to my home computer. I have looked at photos stored on my pc. I haven't tried music yet. I just followed the directions from the 360 menu to set it up. I did have to download Zune software to my pc.
 
Is the Zune software free? Can it be downloaded from the web? Is that what's needed if my PC is not a media center PC?

And I guess my first question should have been, what does the Zune software do?
Thanks.
 
You need Windows Media Player 11 or Media Connect, both of which can be downloaded from microsoft.

You need to configure one or the other program above to share files with your 360, and you will need to allow the 360 to access

With the latest software version on the 360, you can play .WMV movies, music (not 100% sure if all audio formats are supported), and look at pictures that are on your Windows XP Home or Professional computer.

With Media Center PC, you can do the same except the 360 actually has Media Center on it and it comes up and you can play movies, music and look at pictures (can't play .AVI files though).

I have one computer that is Media Center, one computer that is just XP Home, and of course one 360.

Don't know what Zune is, I guess maybe I haven't unlocked everything my 360 can do yet. But I could do all of that without Zune.
 
Actually there is a free program called transcode360 that when installed on your media center PC allows you to stream .AVI files to your 360.
 
I use a tool called ImTOO MPEG Encoder to convert my AVI's to MPEGs. Works quite well. Wasnt a free tool but I do like it. Its very fast and easy to use.
 
Mine works using media connect installed on a laptop. It works when the laptop is wired or wireless. I haven't looked at pictures but the music streaming has worked pretty well. I am running Win Xp Pro on the laptop.
 
Just downloaded the newest version of Transcode360 and it now allows AC3 support, VIDEO TS and DVD ISO streaming. All are transcoded in better than real time to your 360! Sweet!
 
I'd been wondering how to get avi files to play through my 360 as only wmv and mpgs were working.

Thanks for heads-up about Transcode 360.
 
Yeah, I know you can get programs to stream .AVI movies to your 360, I use VLC360 which works pretty good (though I'll have to check out transcode360), but for simplicity I didn't mention this to the OP because that can be kind of confusing.
 
Upgrade to Windows Media 11 and it offered to convert to allow my XBox360 to share media. Very cool....
 
I upgraded to Windws Media 11 and it still does not recognize my 360. I have a DSL modem and I'm sharing my connection with a Linksys router.

My internet connection on my computer works fine and my 360 online works fine, but my 360 does not show up when trying to conect to media center. I have turned off my firewall. Any ideas??
 
Smokey,
Know this sounds kind of dumb, but make sure 360 is on and connected to network when trying to recognize 360. When I did it on my XP HOME computer, it found my 360 with no problems. But since I had a connection already in 360 for my computer through media connect, I had to reconnect to my computer on my 360 by starting over with looking for computer.

You could do a network test on your 360 and get the IP address of your 360, then go to START menu on your computer, click RUN, and type "cmd". When dos prompt comes up type "ping XXX.XXX.X.X" replacing X's with IP address that your 360 has. If you get no errors then you can be pretty sure that your network is communicating.

If you get errors, then you have a network configuration problem. Now, while still in command prompt type "ipconfig", you should be able to see what your IP address is on your computer, compare to the IP address on your 360. (You can still have internet access on both, but if the first 3 sets of numbers in their IP addresses are not the same they won't communicate with each other. I.E. 192.168.0.5 and 192.168.1.6 won't be able to see each other.

There is a start, report back what you find if you want.
 
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Upgrade to Windows Media 11 and it offered to convert to allow my XBox360 to share media. Very cool....


When I set mine up on XP home, it listed all kinds of file types for videos, .wmv, .avi, .mpeg, .mov, etc. but the only file type my 360 would see on my computer would be .wmv, even though I said all video types should be shared with my 360, and I had multiple different files in same folder (i.e. .avi, .mpeg, etc. but it would only find the .WMV files).
 
did you open the ports on your router

Opening ports on a router is for external connections not internal ones. A software firewall would be the culprit blocking LAN connections. Windows has its own firewall which might also be turned on. You can check from Control Panel->Windows Firewall.
 
Opening ports on a router is for external connections not internal ones. A software firewall would be the culprit blocking LAN connections. Windows has its own firewall which might also be turned on. You can check from Control Panel->Windows Firewall.

Well, in my apartment, I had to forward severl ports and then mine started working fine. I did not have to do this at my actual home over christmas break, but at college I did.
 

Microsoft/Toshiba ahead?

PS 3 wifi?

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