TODO: Xbox 360 Streaming From Amarok
I haven’t written this yet. But I’ve been googling for information, and I’m stuck. So here’s an appeal to the wider community.
Xbox 360 can accept streams from Windows Media Center Edition. But I don’t have that, does anyone? So I want to stream from Amarok. Can anyone recommend something that can do this already, or a whitepaper about it? Am I going to have to reverse engineer the MS protocol? Because that may put me off unless someone can give me some pointers.
If I made it I’d make it an independent app to Amarok and then interface it. Is there some general purpose streaming solution out there that I may be able to write a plugin or something for? As reinventing the wheel is not for me.
With this feature I could play geometry wars while listening to some of my collection, which would be nice as the GW theme gets a little repetitive after about 30 seconds.
Please don’t slate me for my 360 purchase! It rocks too much for me to not have one.
I’m 99% sure that the Xbox 360 only accepts WMA/WMV streams, which means this would probably be a fairly pointless endeavour
I have Windows MCE. Xbox Live integration with friends lists etc was the reason I switched from MythTV to MCE.
You can stream from a windows machine using Windows Connect … it’ll stream any audio format. You can stream video through MCE (limited codec support). You can install Transcode 360 and stream any codec (again, through MCE AFAIK).
So in summary, the 360 will accept any type of audio stream that can be processed through windows connect, including mp3. However, it won’t support smb shares so you can’t just mount a share on your linux machine - I hate that MS doesn’t allow this … but when you are the big fish, you get to call the shots.
AFAIK the XBOX supports UPNP. This is an open standard (from Intel) used for audio/video streaming. Do you know the Philips Streamium product line? UPNP. I’ve one of these, and it works perfectly with mediagstreamer, an open source UPNP server.
Now, if only Amarok could be an UPNP server this would be awesome! There are many, many UPNP capable devices out there, and it would be great to stream from Amarok. I’ve suggested this one time on the Amarok dev. mailing list, but it seems that UPNP implementation is quite difficult…
BTW, Windows Connect is UPNP. For once MS followed a standard
Cheers people. So if I build a UPnP MediaServer, as described in the relevent whitepaper it should work? I’ll do some more research first.
Yes, AFAIK this will work. GMediaServer (http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/gmediaserver) works fine with my Philips UPNP device. Try this project to see if your XBOX works. There using libupnp which is the Intel reference (open source) library for an UPNP server. Integration in Amarok is my Chrismas wish for this year!
BTW, I think that proper UNP support is much needed in KDE4. This is really taking of (look at all the audio/video manufacturers like Philips) in home entertainment, and standard support would be great!
I’ve done some (small and fast) research, and there’s now an active follow up project of libupnp: http://www.virtualworlds.de/upnp
Maybe these guys can help to implement a simple server in Amarok…
play geometry wars while listening to some of my collection, which would be nice as the GW theme gets a little repetitive after about 30 seconds. Please don’t slate me for my 360 purchase! It rocks too much for me to not have one. Real URL: http://www.methylblue.com/blog/?p=48
Amarok Blog July 24th, 2006 at 18:15You do indeed need to, at some point, look at a general UPNP framework/dbus daemon for KDE4.
Benjamin Reed: OSCON 2006 — Say “Hi” * Jaroslaw Staniek: Is Google Trends a replacement for research? * Gilles Caulier: digiKam and DigikamImagePlugins 0.9.0-beta1 released: thanks to Renchi… * Max Howell: TODO: Xbox 360 Streaming From Amarok
KDE Dot News July 25th, 2006 at 5:41I tried a plain upnp mediaserver using ushare, a handy OSS project. But the 360 didn’t see it. So I’ll next try to see the server some other way to check it’s working.
nice one, max!
keep me up-to-date on your progress, please 
cheers,
muesli
There is some info about xbox 360 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/gmediaserver-devel/2006-01/threads.html
I use TwonkyMusic. It’s not free but it works well. More info at http://twonkyvision.com/ Clients for Windows, Mac and Linux.
Spiderman, Kevin Becker, thanks very much, that’s good info
You know just yesterday I was hoping somebody out there was doing this, anyway I found that http://www.tversity.com/ has some experience when it comes to connecting with the 360 and seem to like open formats at least, perhaps they’d be useful people to talk with?
Anyway why would anybody blame you for having a 360, there are a lot of MS haters out there but products like the 360 show that they do some good stuff still (really really good in fact), it’d be a shame to just bash a decent company for it’s past crimes- time to forgive and forget so we can just get to good competition (IMHO).
beware that xbox360 is not a renderer and not an open standards upnp player. it needs special functionality for it to work with media connect(basically consisting of a Validate() upnp method additional to the orgiginal architecture ) and some naming conventions.The way Twonky succeeded to do it is by reverse engineering it. You can do it too using the UPnP authoring tools from Intel.I will keep you posted on my progress.For any additional help, dont hesitate to contact me @ assaad.chalhoub@ifsal.com
Guys, remember your UPnP media server must have the name as mediaservername:1:Windows Media Connect .The container for music must have as tag Container.MusicAlbum for it to work.Moreover ,if one of you guys is working with intel sdk, the url published by an intel media server cant be read by xbox although it can be read anywhere. this is the best i came up to till now .if i now how to get that url read, I will reply
for more information and source code dont hesitate to mail me at assaad.chalhoub@ifsal.com
hi everybody,
i’m a french guy, and i’m looking to be able to listen to the music which is on my debian directly from my xbox 360
i’ve tried gmediaserver and uShare, but nothing was good
when reading you, it seems to be good
can you confirm me that it can be possible from a debian?
thanks
360 Media Server worked on the first try. Its Java and worked for me on FC5, but its limited. Based on what it was sending to the xbox, I was able to get the xbox to at least see ushare, though I can’t get past that point.
http://x360mediaserve.sourceforge.net/
I run Ubuntu 6.06 amd64 and only just baught my 360 today. I primarily work in linux and wanted to have access to my music shares. I setup TwonkyVision Media server and configured the paths to the music I want to share. My 360 is picking up the music perfectly.
I will continue to test the TwonkyVision server but will probably end up buying the full thing (30 free trial then 29 euros).
I would still love to have access to video files stored on my network via the 360 though
Now that they released the update to live we should be able to rock video in the same respects.
Twonky will play music but not film, I think most standard Upnp players will send music to the 360, but to get video u need media center crap from M$ , we need someone to add video support for xbox 360 to one of their products, cos having win MC installled in VMware on my linux box just to stream video to my 360 is wank
I have just bought a Iomega Storecenter network hard drive which has a Upnp media server built in. Will an Xbox 360 see it on my network straight out of the box so I can stream music? Thanks
read the read me in 360 Media Server you have to use the web interface to add your music folders and then restart also sometimes you must after staring type your ip address ex ( ./start 192.168.0.1) and confirmed working in fc6.
[...] Re: Xbox not recognising ubuntu [...]
Xbox not recognising ubuntu - Ubuntu Forums March 16th, 2007 at 16:19MS may have followed a standard of using UPNP but they developed it, and it has to be one of the biggest security holes ever created. any windows user worth his salt would have disabled that the moment the install was complete.
As for streaming, sorry, I have no idea, but promise to stop by here again if i find anything out. I will have a chat with my co-workers and see what we can think of
Haven’t tried this yet, but can’t see why you couldn’t use the Amarok shouter script to stream, then use x360mediaserve (see link above, very clever, alpha, works perfectly) to pick up the stream locally and push to XBOX. I’ll see if this is possible. Not that clean a solution. On the other hand, if someone could implement the 360mediaserve code as an Amarok module, we are sorted. Media format is not an issue BTW because 360mediaserve transcodes any format not understood by the XBOX to PCM anyway.
[...] Micro$oft! They think that they can conquer the world? Visit here:- http://www.methylblue.com/blog/?p=48 and scroll a little down, there are many useful links, perhaps you will find something? And btw [...]
Streaming Media to xBox 360 - Linux Forums by TotalPenguin! Get linux Help! April 2nd, 2007 at 20:32[...] hilft dir der Link hier weiter - insbesondere die Comments: http://www.methylblue.com/blog/todo-xbox-360-streaming-from-amarok/ _________________Making Millhouse cry, is not a science project. Neue Antwort erstellen [...]
Ubuntu und Xbox 360 - Thema anzeigen - ubuntuusers April 8th, 2007 at 7:48[...] Re: Network Storage - 05-15-2007 Don’t know if this was it but may help, read the comments because there are some interesting links… TODO: Xbox 360 Streaming From Amarok | MethylBlue [...]
Network Storage - Page 2 - Social Forums May 15th, 2007 at 21:07Hey,
Solution:
http://linux.vanvalkinburgh.org/2007/05/25/stream-videos-to-xbox-360-with-patched-ushare/
By!
[...] :: HDTV reception and network streaming in a box streaming video to xbox 360 - Ubuntu Forums TODO: Xbox 360 Streaming From Amarok | MethylBlue Video of streaming HDTV to an Xbox 360 - Engadget HD Linux port project - XBox Media Center [...]
stream movies from fedora core to xbox 360 - Linux Forums July 28th, 2007 at 5:31Just putting it out there - as australian TV is broadcast and recorded as MPEG2, the 360 can play that streamed from MCE as well (I have this set up).
[...] Xbox not recognising ubuntu, this link may provide some clues [...]
Xbox not recognising ubuntu - Ubuntu Forums December 14th, 2007 at 19:24Not a single person on this page has used the term UPNP correctly.
For shame.
Thanks D, real helpful there.
There are a number of UPNP/DLNA servers out there for Linux. There is Ushare which seems the most popular, there is TwonkyVision (costs $) and a few more… Try to mix up your google searches, try Linux UPNP, then say Ubuntu Xbox 360 and so on and so forth and you come across a lot more.
The real problem is there is no proper definitive solution that is easy to use and actually works from installation, until that happens I may just have to switch my home server back to XP…
Hi
I installed Twonky yesterday and it works fine with xbox360… but it takes “forever” to build the music/photo list and if you get a bit nervous and start pressing buttons Twonky hangs.
KP