The XBOX 360 as a Media Center Extender

Number one son has been playing with an XBOX 360 as a Media Centre extender. He's also been using the latest version of Vista. Lucky fellow.

Anyhoo, turns out that an XBOX makes a very good extender. And it worked with Vista right out of the box. The experience is pretty much as if you were sat at the real computer, picking music, looking at pictures and watching live or recorded TV.

The network lights up like a christmas tree when you use it (although we are using a slow old style yellow wire one for some bits) but the pictures that come out of the other end are pretty darned good.

However, this is not helping my case to get a Media PC downstairs in the living room.....

Comments

[Willeth]

Grr. I'm stuck with the WMP11 beta to emulate that, and the 360 doesn't have the Dashboard update to allow video streaming through Media Connect (as opposed to Media Center).

Yet.

[MattJ]

Sony's delay of the PS3 is clearly a sign from the heavens that says 'You NEED a 360 from Christmas MAtt, especially with that 32" HDTV int eh front room...."

MY Colleague Niok has a Media Centre PC in his front room Rob, and it works brilliantly with his Cable TV, DVD player, Audio Setup and XBox. it's completely seemless and he has a cool windows media remote and a Gyroscopic mouse too. the 44" TV helps too ;)

[Rob]

Neat. I've always fancied a gyroscopic mouse.

Does it come with a piece of string that you wrap round it and then pull to start it going?

[Andy]

Is Vista Media Centre fully UK compatible with UK programming etc..?

[Rob]

Seems to be. We just installed it and gave it our postcode. It went and found the nearest transmitter and then grabbed all the signals.

The program guide populates OK and we've done a few timed recordings.

[MattJ]

Media centre also allows you to record programs based on series. This means that if you want to record all Little Britains, it will search throught the TV guide and record all episodes across channels. You can set it to not include repeats and all sorts of clever things.

Alos it acts like TV on demand cos you can rewind and pause live TV, it really is very swish!

[Willeth]

Apparently WMP11 doesn't allow video on 360 any more. I am disappointed.