Stream music to your Xbox 360 (from any computer)

My Xbox 360 monitoring script worked, and I got a Platinum system from Circuit City. I've had it for about a week now, and I think I've spent as much time playing with the dashboard and media capabilities as I have playing games.

I don't have a Media Center PC (yet), but it turns out I don't need one in order to stream music to my Xbox 360. All you need is a media server that the Xbox thinks is a Media Center PC. I'm using a server called TwonkyMusic from Twonky Vision. I'm running it on a G5 iMac in my kitchen, and it streams music to my Xbox 360 over a 802.11g wireless network perfectly. The server automatically starts when I log in, and indexes all the MP3 files in the /User directory. It even runs a little web server on port 9000 that you can use to administer the music server from inside or outside your network. The TwonkyMedia server will stream photos, as well, but I'm only interested in music since all my photos are on Flickr (who I hope is working on some sort of media streaming solution of their own).

The one issue I've had with the server is that I ended up having to shut off the firewall on my iMac (but not the firewall between me and the outside world). I tried opening all the ports that TwokyMusic claims to uses, and that let me connect to the server from my Xbox, but not browse music for some reason. I have to look into that further, but otherwise, it's been working great, and my Xbox 360 has been playing music just about nonstop ever since.

The Twonky server products are available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, and will allow you to stream music to about 34 different devices. I'll still probably end up getting either a Media Center PC, or whatever Apple announces in a couple weeks, but in the meantime, this is a great solution.

Related notes:

• I keep all my music on the iMac in my kitchen. I play music in my kitchen directly from that computer, in my living room through my Xbox 360 using a media server, in my office by sharing through iTunes, and in my bedroom through an Airport Express.
• The best games I've played for the Xbox 360 so far are Call of Duty and Project Gotham Racing. I'd stay away from Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. Haven't tried Perfect Dark Zero yet.

Comments

[Paul Arce]

Christian-
I've been streaming music to my 360 with my media center PC over a wireless g network. I have to admit it's pretty cool to have access to the video archive from MTV overdrive running through the 360. Pretty painless to install.

I've spent a lot of time in the Live marketplace to play the arcade games. Best of all is being able to play Geometry Wars and Smash TV.

I've played all of the launch titles and I have to say my favorites are Call of Duty and DOA4.

Gamertag: IchiRogue

[Anon]

You don't need a Media Centre Ed PC to stream music, just videos. Both music and photos can be streamed from a bog standard PC with Windows XP, You just need to make sure you have Windows Media Connect installed, which if you have upgraded to SP2, you will.

[snoopy1alpha]

You can use this software to stream Media from a Linux Mashine but Videos don't seem to work because you have to update your media-center-pc to enable video streaming and since no such a PC is present, this won't work.

For those who are just interested in streaming music can use the music-only version of this software.

[leigh]

im currently streaming music from my windows based PC to my 360 with media connect, but everytime i add new songs to my music file that's being shared wit the 360, the 360 doesnt pick up the new songs, i've tried disconnection the connection and connection it again, but it still doesnt seem to pick them up, i've reset both and turnt both on, but still nothin, can any one help me wit that please?

[J]

Hi, Does anyone know if there's something similar to Connect360 for the PC? Basically, I have itunes on my PC and want to stream to my 360 from itunes (ie access the itunes file structure from the 360 and stream). I think connect 360 does this for the Mac, but i dont know of any PC equivalent.

[Bcuzz_I_Got_High]

Hey I just got the xbox 360 alittle while ago and I just started using the music functions. First off, I streamed all music from Zune to my 360, I can see all my songs, but none of them will play. All those songs came from limewire (I payed for all those songs, wink wink) so i dont think i have to worry about the whole iTunes problem. Second I got fed up with trying to fix the streaming problem so I put those songs on to a cd and try to put them on my 360 but only 3 out of the 14 went on and the rest wouldn't download on to the xbox. The thing is though that they will play. They just wont download onto it.
All I need is one of those two things work. Can anyone help?

[mojocoops]

You can share files between your PC and an Xbox 360 via Windows Media Player 11. You can stream audio and video from your PC.

[Zeegamer]

I downloaded zune to put music on my 360 but when i try to run zune it dosent open at all any advice????

[Derek Mayne]

I have a cd that will not rip onto my computer, but onto my 360. Is there any way to get it to my computer, not streaming, but ripping to my PC?

[Sherwin]

um how do u make ur 360 play music threw the zune software on ur cpu. I hooked every thing up correctly but when i hit select music on the 360 dashboard it only shows the 360 playlist. So can u help me out pls?

[standshort]

i am running on xp professional and running
itunes on it. i installed the zune software
and all of my music, with the exception of the
tunes i bought off of itunes, import right in. as well as photos and video stuff. as long as you set your options in zune to "share"
go to Options::Library::Media Sharing::
I would encourage you to select your xbox and it gives you the option to select music,
photos, video. You also have to remember to select the folders that are appropriate to where your files are located.
Once you to go your xbox and select music
it gives you the option, hard drive, computer.. and so on. click on your computer and it should to go the folders you selected to retrieve your music.

[Brad]

If you want to share from a Linux machine, you can install uShare which will stream audio and video to the Xbox360

[Luke]

Some of the music on my computer is not visible when I connect wirelessly with my XBOX360, I'm assuming because it is copyright protected. Does anyone know how to get around this so that I can play all of my music through my XBOX360?

[Joe MCLEOD]

I am interested in purchasing Twonky Apple, but don't know where to buy it. If I can't buy it, how do I get it off my computer and can you recommend something so I can access my imac through my Xbox360?

[tversity]

try tversity it streams nearly any video format and on top of that it also makes it easy to stream pics and music. I am not affiliated I just didn't want to put my info.

[Justin Buser]

I think all of you people need to learn the difference between streaming and and serving, a stream would be controllable on the server side allowing you to change what's playing on the XBox from the PC, which is what I was looking for when I came across this post. Serving is simply the ability to access content from a server (the PC) on the client (the XBox 360).

[Maarten426]

I cant get it to work on my xbox... Is it becaus i have windows 7? caus i can stream music from my parents laptop to my xbox. i just cant figure out what it is...