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Let Xbox Entertain You? Sure: 360 Console Doubles As a Media Center, With a Little Finagling

Posted on: Saturday, 17 December 2005, 15:00 CST

By Victor Godinez, The Dallas Morning News, The Dallas Morning News

Dec. 17--While Microsoft has touted its new Xbox 360 video game console as mostly that, the system also has the potential to be a superb home entertainment jukebox.

You can store digital music, video and photos on your PC and stream them to your console to watch on your TV or listen to on your surround-sound system.

Provided, of course, you have the right equipment and a little technical know-how.

Here's what you need: an Xbox 360, a PC equipped with Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 software, and a home network.

Once you've got all of the above assembled and operational with the PC and Xbox 360 on the same network, you need to download some free software from Microsoft to your PC.

Once setup is complete, click on the media center button in the Xbox 360's dashboard and the same Media Center interface you see on your PC pops up on your console.

If you have a TV tuner card in your PC, you can use your PC as a digital video recorder like a TiVo and stream those videos to your Xbox 360.

If you have a high-definition television, you can even stream HD video from your PC to your Xbox 360.

You can only stream media files saved in certain file formats, though.

For example, the Media Center doesn't recognize songs or videos purchased and downloaded through Apple's iTunes service.

There are ways around that.

To listen to iTunes songs, for example, you can copy the songs to a CD, then rip them back to your hard drive as regular MP3 files, and the Media Center will recognize them.

With videos, things are slightly trickier.

For example, let's say I wanted to download some videos off the Internet, store them on my PC and watch them on my TV through my Xbox 360.

I downloaded a show I wanted to see, but the video was stored in a format known as AVI, which Media Center doesn't recognize.

So I then downloaded a free converter program called Videora Xbox360 Converter, to convert the AVI file into something Media Center could digest.

Once the video was downloaded and converted, I fired up my Xbox 360, opened the media center file and checked the video folder. There was my show.

Unfortunately, there are still very few movies and TV shows that you can just download online and plop right into the Media Center.

You're going to have to either get special software to copy your DVD movies or use programs like Videora to convert videos you've downloaded off the Internet.

For most people, that's just too much hassle.

And Windows XP Media Center only ships pre-installed on new computers. You can't upgrade your regular copy of Windows XP, although you can stream music and photos from regular XP machines to your console, just not video.

What Microsoft really needs to do â€" and the company's recent deal with MTV suggests something like this is imminent â€" is create a massive online music and video store accessible from either your PC or your Xbox 360.

Then you could buy and download all your media from a single source, and the files would already be stored in Media Center-friendly formats.

Until then, the Media Center Extender for Xbox 360 service will reward only the most dedicated digital entertainment fans.

Pros: This is the most user-friendly method so far for sending movies and music from your PC to your TV. If you already have a Media Center PC and Xbox 360, you don't need to buy any additional hardware or software.

Cons: Converting your media files to formats that Media Center recognizes is a pain.

Bottom line: Storing all your digital media on a hard drive and having it all accessible at the touch of a button is the future of home entertainment. Microsoft is close to perfecting the model.

E-mail vgodinez@dallasnews.com

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Dallas Morning News

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Source: The Dallas Morning News

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