MCE on XP on 360

After recently getting my Xbox360, I decided to re-format my desktop PC and install a copy of Windows XP Media Centre Edition so that I could start streaming movies to the new console.

After all, my old Xbox (which is still sitting quite comfortably next to my 360 under the TV) was mainly used as a Media Centre, so I did'nt want to give up that functionality when I upgraded.

I attempted to get this working the other day but failed miserably. The 360 would not see the XPMCE machine on the network at all! I did some further reading yesterday over at the XboxScene forums and ran through all the updates from the M$ WindowsUpdate site last night. I thought I had the latest version installed already - but apparently not.

An interesting side note is that once you have gone to the M$ WindowsUpdate site and it's Validation Check thing reports that your copy of XP is dodgy, you can go to Tools > Internet Options > Programs > Manage Add-ons and set the Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool to "disabled" and it works after that! How fucked up is that? Well… fucked up in a good way.

I did'nt get a chance to test it further until this morning after the kids and wife had left for school - and after a little tinkering with the ZoneAlarm firewall (ie disabling the fecker) the PC reported that a new Xbox360 was detected and I was prompted to download another extra bit of software and enter a validation key that the 360 had given me.

AND THEN IT WORKED!!!!!

I nearly pissed my pants with joy! So many people have had issues with getting the two connected. I don't believe in god - but he was on my side today!

I had already converted a DivX video to the WMV format that the 360 likes using the Videora Xbox360 Converter and it worked a treat! The only problem is that the file literally doubled in size to just over 1.6gb! There is a way of converting movies from DivX to WMV on the fly, detailled over here but it looks a little complicated really.

Update: Just found out about this application too which was written by the original Xbox Media Centre programmers. And he's from Milton Keynes too!

Technorati Tags: XP, XP media centre edition, mce, xbox, xbox 360, videora, stream, zonealarm, genuine advantage, WMV, DIVX