PC & XBox360 Interconnectivity

[Angel Tarragon]

I know that its possible to hook up a PC to an XBox360. I'm looking at updating my A/V experience, and pulling out all the stops. Of course, this would be for a medium sized bedroom. I don't want an XBox360 for the games but simply for PC connectivity.

Tell me, what exactly are all the features of this? If it isn't much, then I could very well just get myself a cheap laptop instead.

 

[John Crichton]

Basically, you can share all your media from PC > 360 with Media Center. It does pics, movies and music. I've done music and pics with no issues. Haven't really tried movies.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Exactly how much difficulty am I gonna have trying to get my PC to talk to the XBox if I don't want to shell out my money for Media Center?

 

[John Crichton]

What OS do you have now? It'll also work just fine with MWP10.

 

[trancejeremy]

I haven't tried it myself (since my 360 & PC are hooked up to the same monitor, making it a moot point), but you download a special program apparently. You just need SP2 of XP (or Vista)

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/pcsetup/alldownloads.htm


(Actually, if you just want PC stuff on your TV, why not get a video card with a TV output and a really long cable?)

 

[Ruined]

If you don't want to go the Zune route for sharing your media, there's a program called Orb that lets you share it to your 360.

http://www.orbnetworks.com/gamers/index.htm

 

[Arnwyn]

What OS do you have now? It'll also work just fine with MWP10.

How so? I thought you need 11 for this.

(Actually, if you just want PC stuff on your TV, why not get a video card with a TV output and a really long cable?)

And likely cheaper, too. (But the quality will suffer...)

 

[John Crichton]

How so? I thought you need 11 for this.

I have zero idea how it works, but I was able to share all my files from my old laptop running XP with WMP10. It didn't go through the 360's Media Center, just the normal share.

It was actually more trouble to set up the MC extender with Vista and the 360. But that's probably due more to user error than anything else.

 

[Arnwyn]

I have zero idea how it works, but I was able to share all my files from my old laptop running XP with WMP10. It didn't go through the 360's Media Center, just the normal share.

Huh. I'd like to know how you did that! (My HTPC [with XP, not XP Media Center] has WMP10, not 11, and I'm unsure about getting 11 if I don't have to...) So far, no sharing...

XP Media Center does it without WMP11.

 

[John Crichton]

Huh. I'd like to know how you did that!

I didn't actually do anything! I turned on the 360 one day, it read that the laptop could be connected to (through the setup menu) and it did so. Too bad just about all my media was on the other computer.

I just thought it did that normally being a MS product and all.

My PS3 can also read from my XP laptop (non-MC) no problem yet I can't get it to connect to my Vista PC.