streaming content to your 360

In case you didn't know, if your 360 and your Windows PC are connected either by ethernet or via wireless you can stream content from your WinPC. Content is defined as:
Audio

1. Windows Media Audio (.wma)


2. MP3 (.mp3)


3. WAV (.wav)

Video

1. Windows Media Video (.wmv)


2. Microsoft Recorded TV Show (.dvr-ms)


3. Audio Video Interleaved (.avi)


4. MPEG-1 (.mp1, .mpeg, .mpg)


5. MPEG-2 (.mp2, .mpeg, .mpg)

Picture

1. Bitmap (.bmp)


2. Graphics Interchange Format (.gif)


3. Joint Photographic Experts Group (.jpeg, .jpg)


4. Portable Network Graphics (.png)


5. Tagged Image File Format (.tif, .tiff)

The catch is that unless you’re running Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (WMCE) you can forget about streaming the video portion.  There are several reasons why streaming video from your standard WinXP (pro/home) won’t work and probably won’t work for a while (if ever)

1. Microsoft wants to drive sales of WMCE


2. A special protocol is required to stream video

I’ll quote what I read on the forums:

When connecting to a media center PC the Xbox 360 (or any MCE extender) creates a Terminal Server (TS) session to the MCE PC. This is a special TS session that can only run the ehome UI.

Anyway, it’s not a total loss, if you’re running WinXP (home or pro) you can still stream photos or music from your PC.  You will need to install Windows Media Connect on your PC, this tool will allow you to define what folders/files your DMR (Digital Media Receiver, in this case your 360) will be able to view.

In the future there is speculation that the next version of Windows (Vista) will have all this streaming stuff built in but the release of Vista is quite a ways away so it’s kinda irrelevant at this point.