Filed under: iLife, Software, iTunes
Stream iLife media to your Xbox 360
If you're
one of the Crazy Ones who fought their way through hordes of game-addicted line-dwellers at Best Buy to get their hands
on one of those swanky new Xbox 360s, this may interest you: Nullriver -- the same company that brought you Amaryllis and PSPWare -- has developed an app called Connect360 that actually lets you stream music and photos
from your Mac to your Xbox 360. It automatically indexes your media, which you can then access over the network via your
Xbox Dashboard. (But while it does index your iTunes library, I don't think it will play music purchased from the
iTMS.)You can download a trial of Connect360 from Nullriver's website -- or you could purchase it for a measely $10. Give it a try and let us know how it works, ok?
[via Gizmodo]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Adam said 7:20AM on 2-13-2006
Works very well, easer to setup than the PC, just open ports TCP: 9335 and UDB: 1900 on the mac firewall. I can now see all my iTunes library, and my iPhoto library.
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Bas said 7:29AM on 2-13-2006
Indeed,works perfect.
Now the only thing we need to do is wait for video support ;-)
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Jesse said 8:50AM on 2-13-2006
I am able to see the details of my libraries, but I can't play any songs or view any pictures. It's weird.
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Brian said 9:03AM on 2-13-2006
Hey, just wondering where the TUAW team picked up this story. The reason I ask is because I'm wondering if this is a situation where you find the info from one place, but then attribute the source to a fellow blogsmith blogger instead of where the story actually originated. Man, I can't believe you guys stoop to that crap!
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Ben Drawbaugh said 9:21AM on 2-13-2006
Works as expected $10 isn't bad either. It is nice to be able to listen to music while viewing your pictures. I haven 't tried to listen to my music while playing a game but that would be nice. The best thing is having your playlists and photo albums avaliable.
As for Video, I would be surprised if they get this working since Xbox360 video requries Windows MCE which would be hard to emulate. Not to mention the limited codec support (MPEG, MPEG2, WMV).
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portorikan said 9:45AM on 2-13-2006
Works good for me except that I import songs as aac files so not all my music shows up, although a few AAC imported albums do appear. Kinda weird.
About the video streaming, I was thinking, maybe someone could create a program that converts files on the fly to WMV and trick the xbox into thinking it's something else.
Otherwise, good program, but bummed that all my AAC files aren't showing or playable.
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Peter said 10:23AM on 2-13-2006
I might just be a complete noob, or maybe something on the network isn't talking right but how do you access these on the Xbox?
It says via the Dashboard but which part? Do I go for the computer option? If so, the Xbox 360 never finds a "Windows Computer" however the app does find my Xbox.
Any ideas?
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Apple-Discounts.com said 10:38AM on 2-13-2006
Downloaded it, tested it, LOVED IT, paid for it.
Please note the non-registered version limits you to 100 songs and 100 photos.
This application is great -- I've been waiting for something like this. BRILLIANT.
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Ipso Facto said 11:00AM on 2-13-2006
Great program. I bought the registered version too. You can choose your in game music from your itunes collection (non aac only so far) or watch a slide show from any of your iphoto albums. It's really great... at least until the mac mini media box comes out :-)
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Brandon Hays said 11:32AM on 2-13-2006
I love it too, just bought the registration. I'd pay for a "pro" version that could transcode my h.264 iPod video library for viewing over the network, too! There are PC tools out there already that can transcode to WMV on the fly for X360, I wonder how much work that would be to include in a future release?
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Michael said 11:41AM on 2-13-2006
Is there an equivalent app out there that will let us share iPhoto libraries with Windows boxes?
-M
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Lee said 11:55AM on 2-13-2006
Re Michael:
"Is there an equivalent app out there that will let us share iPhoto libraries with Windows boxes?"
Why would anyone want to do that? :-)
I don't do Windows.
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leo said 12:24PM on 2-13-2006
I agree with peter this doesn't work at all for me and it's been pi$$ing me off since last night trying to figure out why with null river tech support-
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Chad said 12:34PM on 2-13-2006
I can't get it to work either. I'm sure I don't have something set up right. Exactly what do I need to have turned on on both the computer and xBox? I don't have a firewall so there's no need to worry about that.
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Janson said 1:19PM on 2-13-2006
Tried it, loved it, bought it! My 360 has mangaed to pick up some of the AAC files on in my library, and refused to get some of the mp3's... I don't know what that's all about, but so far, it's made me very happy- and that's what counts, right?
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Dan Pourhadi said 3:10PM on 2-13-2006
Brian -- I found this on Gizmodo. And please note that Gizmodo is not affiliated with TUAW or Weblogs, Inc. So there's no funny business here -- just attributing the source I used.
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Joe Eversole said 5:09PM on 2-13-2006
Works beautifully. Downloaded, installed it, ran it, and turned on the XBox. Registered it, restarted it... huzzah!
It uses ffmpeg to convert your music on the fly to whatever format the XBox wants (I'm assuming Windows Media). I'm sure that these guys are working hard to get video streaming up. I'm sure it'll be something similar where they'll do real time transcoding before shipping it over to the XBox.
Some of the people who wrote XBMC (I think that's the acronym) for the original XBox developed a plugin to let you view Divx/Xvid files from a Windows MCE PC to your X360. I'm sure it's doing transcoding at the PC as well.
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Chameleon said 5:16PM on 2-13-2006
Janson...
I've read in other places that some aac & mp3 files will not always show up if the bit rate is high. (i.e. - 192+) But when you set the audio streaming to "Highest" all the songs showed up without any problems.
Hope that helps.
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JM said 7:34PM on 2-13-2006
Chameleon-
I think this might be the solution to my problem, but I've got no clue about how to change the audio streaming settings. Do are you talking about in iTunes? Or did you mean on the Xbox itself?
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Apple-Discounts.com said 7:48PM on 2-13-2006
JM, he's talking about a setting acccessible from the Connect360 preferences.
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