can anyone tell me about the media interface on the 360. is it always like the media center interface or is thatonly when it's used as a media extender?

I have media center on my laptop which is running vista premium but my external hardrive that has my music in wma lossless format is on my desktop which is running xp. I am interested in using the 360 as media streamer for my living room setup and if it works out add another to my dedicated theater setup replacing my roku. right now to stream music to my living room theater via connecting my laptop to my receiver via a creative external usb 5.1 sound card and using windows media center for the interface.

I not sure how the media extender works but I like the media interface, while it's not terribly important I kinda hoping that will be able to use it. I know I could possibly use the media extender feature of the 360 through my media center on my laptop but the laptop is wirelessly connected to my network and I am not sure if wireless is entirely reliable. Plus wouldn't that mean that I would have to have my laptop on everytime I used the media extender?

Ideally I would like to just plug the 360 in my network and have it see the hard drive that's connected to my xp destop with and stream music that way.

One non xbox question, where i can I learn about networked hardrives, they seem to have some different features and I am not sure what's right for me. The desktop is quite often and sometimes I get some interuptions when listening to music. I would like to have all my computers stream from a central always on devices, including my roku(althought I think it will always have to stream using one of the computer's wma library).

I have an extra old computer running xp-pro, but it's pretty crappy with 980mhz processor, 128mb of ram, and a situation with that the hardrives, where the operating system only boots if I have both of the hardrives connected(a 4 gig and a 30 gig). For the life of me i can't figure out why it works that way but that's only way I can get to boot up. however the operating system is on the operating system in on the 4 gig and there is not much space free after that. I can't do much on it without it freezing up from time to time. I have been successful in the past using it to stream music to it, so I thought maybe I can stream music from it, in a situation where it just sits and is always on and has very few programs on it. But it only has usb 1.1 and I don't if that will affect the streaming process, so that's why I am looking at networked hardrives.

yes, you should even be able to plug your usb harddrive to the 360 also. i had problems streaming wireless content to a wired 360 thus my reasoning to have a dedicated lan pc for media. 360 can browses computers on the network if you allow them to connect (not as a media extender though)

you just need a pc to serve the music. the specs on your old machine would handle it (i would increse the memory though) i would install a different, big harddrive and reinstall windows. do you have a recovery disc or winxp install disc?

what about looking in to a new pc...great entry level pc to do what you want can cost your about 300 bucks at which point, i would put it right in the living to host and have right on the tv (s-viedo, hdmi, vga)

i have yet to try a network drive so i can't respond on that

Yes I have a win xp professional install disc, I may have to buy a new hardrive for what ever reason the hardrives can't be seen unless they are both connected with the 4 gig being the master and the 30 gig being slave. and the os would only install on the 4 gig. I just started trying again and it looks as it's installing on the bigger drive which a I would only use just to connect the external drives with the music and stream from it with no nead to other things just the occasional need to go on the internet. I agree with the upgrading the memory although I am not sure what are the guidelines for adding memory. I know that you are using dimms then you should use dimms. I looked at the memory slots and there are three of them with only one being used. The memory is 128 mb sdram and I think pc1300 or something else. I don't know if the pcxxxx has any importance to it. The computer was built by my uncle and I would ask him what's what, except he just died last week taking all his knowledge with him. I am also hoping to have some luck with my older laptop. It had xp home with 1 gig of ram, 60 gig hardrive, 1gig processor, 1.1 usb ports but i can get a usb 2.0 pci card easily. One morning it would not turn on but i think that it maybe just the power pack. So i am planning to buy a new one. If it works then I could upgrade to the Vista home, wired it up to the lan by cable then I will be able to use the media extender.

best thread title EVER!

I guess

Okay, first of all, the 360 has *two* different media streamining clients built-in.
- The Media Center Extender client uses the MCE interface and you can configure the 360 so that it starts up directly into that interface so you need never see the default Dashboard interface if you have no interest in gaming or video downloads. But you'd be missing a lot of fun. ;-) This client lets you completely control *everything* on the remote PC so you watch live or recorded TV, access plugins like home control apps or online media services like Napster, Netflix, etc. In other words, its for everything Media Center can do, not just streaming.
- The second, simpler, media client app works off the 360 Dashboard interface (blades and panes) and the local Media Player. Its pretty intuitive except for the button to toggle shuffle mode on/off (the icon on the button represents the mode you can switch *to*, not the current mode). It plays video, music, and photos from the local Drive, any USB-connected drive or DAP, or any networked remote computer or NAS that supports UPnP/AV streaming; any XP PC running Windows Media Connect (deprecated, these days), WMP11, Zune, Tversity, and other server apps; Macintoshes running Connect360; and even LINUX boxes running one of several UPnP server apps. So if you have the expertise, you can install Linux on your old box or reinstall XP as you see fit and either way it will happily stream files it is incapable of playing locally (I've streamed WMV 1080p videos off a Celeron 1.7MHz with nary a glitch).
-The absolute simplest way to play music or videos is via an external USB hard drive. That's what I did for my mother; got her a 360 and an external hard drive that I filled up with her music and scanned family photos. No networking needed, no remote computer, no nothing.
Whichever way you go, it should work nicely for you.
Two notes:
1- If you're using a networking approach, beware PC firewall issues. Make sure you only have one firewall active.
2- If you have the 360 hooked up to a surround sound receiver via optical, do connect the RCA stereo outputs to an unused port on the receiver. Some folks prefer a stereo connection to listen to ripped music.
Good luck!