Got an Xbox 360? Then there's no need to buy
yourself a separate media streamer. It's not just a games console you
know.
While the Xbox 360 might have enjoyed phenomenal
success as a games console, it has some other rather nifty tricks up
its sleeve. Although the Xbox 360 has no built-in wireless, it does
have an Ethernet connection, and there's a wireless adaptor available,
although it does only use the 802.11g standard.
The Xbox 360 is designed to connect to a PC
running Windows Media Center, and if you have a PC running that (either
Vista, or Windows XP MCE) then the system works very well. The Xbox's
interface is pretty much the same as Media Center and it is slick and
easy to use. If you don't have a PC running any form of media center,
then you can use Windows Media Player 11 instead.
Once sharing has been setup, the Xbox is able to
connect and browse the folders in much the same way as any other media
streamer. It's not nearly as good as the Media Center Interface, and it
has a nasty habit of failing to connect to our shared library, but when
it works, it's pretty good. Since Microsoft updated the firmware, the
Xbox is able to play Xvid and DivX content, but cannot play some other
file formats. In this case, you can use a program called Tversity
(www.tversity.com) which can transcode incompatible file formats on the
fly, into ones the Xbox can play.
Using Tversity, the Xbox can even stream live
video feeds, which is a pretty unique feature. An alternative is to use
Orb (www.orb.com), which enables you to view almost any content you
wish to share, by using folder sharing. You may not think that the Xbox
is a natural contender for streaming audio and video to your TV and
stereo, but after testing a large number of media streamers, we have to
say the Xbox is actually one of the best devices we've ever used,
especially when you decide to use it with Media Center.
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