Run Windows MCE Applications on Xbox 360

BlueMoon writes "A user of the GA-forum found out the Media Extender on the Xbox 360 allows to stream Windows MediaCenter applications over network on your Xbox 360 console. While the applications themselves will run on the MCE PC, it'll stream the interface/input to the Xbox360/PC. Simple MCE apps like those modified browsers to pull down news stories, stock quotes, sports scores etc., as well as several internet radio clients worked fine. Mini-games like a Tetris clone and some card game crashed, but then again ... that seems to be a normal behaviour for the 360."

Comments

HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[dada21]

I'm a big MCE supporter. Yes, I have tried MythTV (5 different installs) and Sage and every other variety over the years. MCE passes the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor), crashed only once in the past 4 months, and can handle nearly unlimited tuners. No, there is no hardcore cable HDTV support (except for unencrypted channels which is all I get anyway). The third party support is awesome and all my add-ons are bulletproof.

I will be buying an X360 to replace my Xboxes which currently run as extenders. I have less than 10 games (most bought used). If MS is losing money on every X360, then they'll lose 3x that with my units.

I am more interested in HDTV support and multichannel sound on the X360 extenders, as well as how well the actual video quality is. My Xbox extender's output is pretty bad (noise, gamma modifications and other weird issues). I'm waiting for the rush of X360's to purchase them used if possible, as I did with my Xboxes.

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[onion2k]

I will be buying an X360 to replace my Xboxes which currently run as extenders. I have less than 10 games (most bought used). If MS is losing money on every X360, then they'll lose 3x that with my units.

I imagine Microsoft can afford the loss. What they gain from your purchase is perceived market share. Of all the consoles sold there'll be 3 360s and no PS3s as a result of your purchase. As Microsoft are desperate to show their stockholders that the cash they're burning through to grab as large a chunk of the games industry as they can they won't be too bothered that they've lost a bit of money. Money is easy to get. World domination is all in the statistics.

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[CastrTroy]

You're a little off. If he doesn't buy one, then they don't have to produce it. If they lose $160 on every box they sell, then they lose that much when he buys it. If he buys 10, they lose $1600. If he doesn't buy any, then they don't need to produce any, and therefore don't lose any money. The only time they would be losing money, from him not buying, is if they couldn't sell the unit at all. Which doesn't seem to be the case.

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[dada21]

True. I'm no Microsoft basher (I see more wealthy people in my age group because of Microsoft than any other company).

World domination of one person or cabal is scary, but world domination from a corporation owned by millions (billions?) of people isn't something I think we need to fear, especially if that domination is likely to be ended by some other company (Google, etc).

I know MS doesn't care if I lose money -- I just wanted to make note to the geeks who care that there is a use for the X360 other than gaming!

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[whitehatlurker]

If he doesn't buy any, then they don't need to produce any, and therefore don't lose any money.

OMG - you mean by not buying an XBox ... I'm helping the enemy!?

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[badriram]

Well, I have been using my 360 as MCE extender. And everything works fine for me.... But my problem is that when you have recorded tv that gets streched out to 720p it looks sooo terrible. Once i bumbed up the video quality, it seems better. My other problem is that I usually like my usual 4:3 channels to strech on tv, and cannot seem to find a way to do that.

However I find it funny that the submission blames MS/360 for a crash in some third party product.... And I have not had any issues with my 360.

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[brjndr]

I am also a big Windows Media Center fan, but there is one huge problem I have encountered. No HBO. I get HBO as part of my service (Dish Networks), but WMC won't let me watch or record it. It's puts up a blue 'Content Restricted' screen, which is apparently some implementation of the broadcast flag. It's not just preventing me from recording it, but from watching it at all. Well, I can turn to that channel and get about 10 seconds before the content protection screen comes up. This is seriously hurting the product. I had a Tivo, and wanted to switch to Media Center to avoid monthly fees, but if I can't record Rome or other HBO shows to watch later, than there is no real reason to stick with MCE.

If anyone knows of a fix for this I'd appreciate it. I've check out thegreenbutton.com, but I haven't found a solution yet.

I tried MythTV, but not being a Linux user I had no idea how to fix a lot of problems. Tivo was great, but I do like having one central machine where content can be instantly streamed to the extenders around the house, and I really like not paying a monthly fee.

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[Otter]

...especially if that domination is likely to be ended by some other company (Google, etc).

I'm amazed that we have yet to see a single story insisting that the Xbox is doomed in the face of the impending Google Video Game Console and its revolutionary AJAX-based games...

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[Chr0nik]

No, your just not participating.

If someone really wanted to hurt them(sony, nintendo, listen up).

They'd buy like 10,000 of these, and pay some heavies to get linux running on them. Then sell them on some auction site, or craigslist, "pre-hacked for your convenience." for $20 over retail a piece. In this way, profiting off an xbox console that can't be used to play the games microsoft is gambling on to make them their money. All that loss, no possibility of regaining it.

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[dada21]

The Xbox360 can't have market domination if Microsoft continues to not break a profit. Simple free market economics (Austrian School) show that the supply will eventually be more than demand, causing the prices to drop. Once a competitive product is released, this will cause demand to go down even further.

If Microsoft had a monopoly on video game systems, I believe it would be cause to worry. They don't, and they will never have a monopoly granted by the one group that can create a monopoly: government.

From what I can see, Microsoft's loss-leader on the Xbox360 IS a smart move to getting in the living room, yet there is much more to controlling the living room than the Xbox360 can handle. My MCE PC (>$2000) still won't do everything I want to see in a single-console computer.

Re:HDTV, and how I helped MS lose money

[fishbowl]

In other words, the belief is based on speculation. The actual manufacturing costs aren't disclosed. It's in the company's interest to make the consumer *believe* it's losing money, or that it's losses are higher per unit than other consumer devices in the bracket, but it might not even be true.

Or if it is true that the company takes a $126 loss per unit, does that actually mean what the typical consumer thinks it means?

What's the wholesale, pre-tax, pre-import-duty cost on the Xbox? What's it's insured value at the warehouse? Are the per-component, per-unit-labor, and per-unit packaging and transportation costs really disclosed to the public? Why would they be?

Who benefits from a widespread belief that you're "sticking it to Microsoft" if you buy an Xbox and not buying any games?

that seems to be a normal behaviour for the 360

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh....I have a 360 and nope no crashes, no problems, no inner need-to-bash-microsoft for the sake of it.

Re:that seems to be a normal behaviour for the 360

[Eddy Da KillaBee]

While the parent was modded as funny, in all seriousness I'm getting sick and tired of people bashing the 360 for "constantly crashing". You guys make it sound like ALL 360s are doing that. Look, the PS2 has had defects, the PSP had issues with dead pixels, and I'm sure other systems have had their fair share of defects. However, it does not mean that all systems are defective; so please, grow the hell up and stop making it sound like all 360s have issues!

Re:that seems to be a normal behaviour for the 360

[pnice]

I just wanted to add that my Xbox360 hasn't crashed on me yet. I feel the same way you do, no need to bash "just because". I don't doubt some people are having trouble but, as always, the people will trouble will speak out much more than the people with no trouble at all.

Show off ;)

[garcia]

My guess is that it will be difficult to get anything other than simple casual games to run in real time using the interface, due to lag in response times.

Sounds like a worthwhile application, no? I mean, nothing like spending $400+ on a dumb-terminal to play laggy Solitare on a huge TV (this guy was just showing off his Sony HD monitor) and have it crash after a bit.

But I would think getting something like a full web browser up and running should be achievable.

He means porn. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure what the advantages would be to having an unstable browser session open on a huge monitor.

Source missing

[-pms-mistletoe]

Where is this story "via"? I've only seen it on one blog today.. where's the credit..

Exploits lurking to execute unsigned code?

[flowerp]

So, quick, write some exploit to inject code into the xbox using some buffer
overflow in the remote desktop code. Does this sound feasible?

Hopefully this UI code does not run in a sandbox (for example as managed code) as some form of type/range checked byte code. That would pretty much spoil the fun.

Why?

[Voltageaav]

The TV out on my Media Center computer works just fine. No crashes at all. Why don't you just use that?

What is abnormal about a system working?

[FerretFrottage]

Agreed....in almost week of ownership, no crashes, artifacts or other "normal" behavior. Maybe I just jinxed myself or maybe I just have an abnormal box. Really out of all the 360's sold and in use today, how many are having problems? 5%, 10%, 50%, 100%!!!

Now I do have some beef about the how MCE and the 360 don't seem to work with mapped drives (this includes both Windows and linux/samba shared drives) or external drives connected to MCE. The 360 still has a lot to learn from XBMC.

Priorities

[nuintari]

Uhhh, show me that you can run an xbox 360 game on an xbox 360 and I'll be more impressed at this point....

Why not make a MCE Xbox360?

[griffindj]

Why do these machines have to be two different products? Most people buying MCE PCs are hooking them directly to their primary tv set and if not use an xbox as an extender to the primary tv. I understand that MCE PCs can do a lot more than just MCE applications (word processing, internet, chat) but how hard would it be to put a tv tuner card IN the xbox and have the same functionality?

I mean if they really want to get into peoples living rooms, an all in one solution is where they should start. Buying two seperate products and then buying an additional extender to me looks like they're trying to squeeze every last penny out of the consumer.

It's not a loss for MS

[Kirby-meister]

When you buy a console from MS, think of it from this perspective - they don't lose $126, but rather recoup $400 towards a $526 loss.

Although in the end they've already made their money from the retailers who stock up. But if nobody bought them off the retailers, the retailers wouldn't order more for their shelves.

Re:Interest Piqued

[UnknowingFool]

I have not special love for Microsoft but no special hatred either . . .

You must be new here.

How it works

[BillBrasky]

For those wondering, it's an extension on the RDP protocol used by Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection. Audio and Video are sent in sideband channels: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/medctrsdk/htm/mediacenterextenders. asp

My Experiences with HTPC stuff with the 360

[agressiv]

I have an MCE machine that I use as a gaming machine downstairs in my basement, and did not want to keep the PC in the living room. I don't use the TV tuners (I have an HD DirectTivo) so all the MCE box does is stream music and movies to my TV. I had my movies encoded to the Nero Digital format here which worked well. I could even get those files to play in MCE (although seeking did not work at all, much less chapter seeks) so I generally used the Nero player.

I was hoping I could do something, at least, with these files, on the XBOX 360. Well, needless to say, they aren't supported (it doesn't work) and pretty much the only thing I could get to work that I had was an WMV file. Heck, even a DVD, ripped to the hard drive, which worked in MCE, does NOT work on the XBOX360. Gave a message like "sorry, you can't do this over a remote desktop connection". Looks like its using the RDP protocol to stream sound and video.

Well, after some figiting, I got a movie encoded to WMV and it worked fine, once I mucked with the aspect ratio. Too bad the encoder is slow as heck, Nero's was much faster. Saw some interlacing problems with the final copy as well, but thats probably just pebkac.

agressiv

Re:about the unstableness..

[oscartheduck]

I used to repair VCRs. As soon as one came in, the first thing we did was verify it didn't work. If it didn't, the second thing we did was lift it six inches and drop it, turn it on and see if it worked now. If it did, that's an hour's work and an easy sixty bucks. If that didn't work, we opened them up and sprayed them with compressed air, tried to see if it came on. If it didn't, look for an obvious cause, if no obvious cause then you bill the manufacturer on the warranty for a new VCR and consider the matter settled.

Never underestimate how often a six inch drop will do the job.

Re:so let me get this straight

[ImaLamer]

Why put the MCE in the same room or TV? Most MCE PC's sold today actually don't have TV-OUT hookups (try your local big chain store).

Put the PC in the closet.

It'll come

[Namarrgon]

That would mean making a PowerPC-compatible version of Windows

What do you think the Xbox 360 is running right now?

If I want the MCE options I'll pay for them.

Indeed. I fully expect to see a USB2-connected tuner box (with matching styling) with a software disc (possibly installable) that allows local recording & playback. What better way to also sell larger add-on HDDs?

Doubt it'd record TV shows while you're playing games - but it would while you're watching TV of course. I can imagine it might be popular with college students or those with limited space.