Xbox | Glenn Ward

Media Streaming, MacBook Pro, PS3, Xbox 360, MediaLink, iTunes Part 2

Ok, I didn’t manage to get this to work completely but as I think it might be down to the network I am going to post it anyway. I almost managed to stream the music from my MacBook Pro (iTunes) through the Xbox 360. The idea of this is to have all music in one central location to avoid duplication of songs and double handling when it comes to updates.

Also, if you don’t have your mac set up to run a Windows environment or need to improve your Bootcamp set up follow my blog post that talked about an easy installation of VM Fusion using your Bootcamp partitioned drive. I did need to import the Bootcamp Partition in order to mirror the music folder in OSX and Windows.

I didn’t use the medialink streaming server software, instead I opened up VMFusion and loaded Windows Media Player. In the VMFusion Setting found under Virtual Machine I then turned on folder sharing and mirrored the music folder where the iTunes Media folder resides. By doing this I was able to use the Add to Media Library under File In Windows media player in order list all my music without actually copying anything over into this environment.

Next, make sure all you media sharing is turned on in the windows environment (I’m using Vista) you can do this via Library > Media Sharing > Share my media to: in Windows Media Player, the Xbox 360 icon should appear in the box below, or choose Control Panel > Classic View > Networking and sharing > Media Sharing > Change.

With everything on, turn on your XBox 360. Go to My Xbox > Music Library and select your computer, you should see your playlists…. problem is, mine won’t play!!

If anyone can get ths working please expand in the comments area?

See how I got this to work on the PS3

VM Fusion – Easily boot Windows from your partitioned Bootcamp drive.

The other night I finally grew tired of rebooting my Macbook to use windows programs, saving work to hard drives and rebooting back in Mac OS X.

I downloaded the latest trial version of VM Fusion fully prepared to delete the drive partition and re install all of my software (that would have taken hours) but VMWare luckily had thought of that.

I installed the virtual desktop and fired it up. To my surprise the first option on the list of windows choices was to boot from Bootcamps partitioned drive. Without hesitating I went for it. It does some stuff at the beginning which takes a minute or so but then I was in. Fusion needed to install VM Tools in order to get full functionality and for some reason went through installing device drivers again.

I did get the blue screen of death at one point but I think this was down to installing too many drivers and updates at the same time, but this lead me to start it up again in the old fashioned Bootcamp way and fix it so that still works too.

Very pleased! Took a little time to get fully functional but saved me a lot of time and will save me a in the future!

This might solve the media streaming to the Xbox issue, watch this space.