Welp.. I finally surrendered.. I swore id never buy a gaming console and yet ive just bought my first one ever. Since i wanted a console that could play the games i usually play on a PC, i had the choice between the lesser of 2 evils. Sony vs. Microsoft.
After carefully weighing the proof against both companies, i decided that Sony was a bit more evil than MS, so i went with the XBOX 360. :)
One of the things i was looking forward to, was streaming video to the XBOX from my PC. Imagine my disappointment when the XBOX menu told me i needed a Windows PC with Windows Media Player 11.. No way in hell!.
So last night i finally got my Linux Laptop to stream vid to the XBOX. It turns out, that Microsofts mysterious “proprietary protocol” for streaming is (as usual) a standard protocol, just modified enough that standard tools cant use it. Why MS ALWAYS have to do this, boggles my mind. Its called a “standard” for a reason, dammit!.
The protocol in question is nothing more than UPnP.
AFAIK, the only difference from standard UPnP, is that the XBOX requires the UPnP server to identify it self as “Windows Media Connect” and it requires a specific directory layout.
“Fuppes” is a small UPnP server that lets you configure all this and even have guides on how to do it in their Wiki.
So now i have it working, and i have to admit that the XBOX media-player is not half bad (with the newest firmware upgrades). It does quite a decent job. Nothing fancy or cool, but works nicely.
- Dan