MrBlades
28th September 2007, 15:31
So I recently decided to spend a bit more time with the ol 360, mostly on account of Halo 3 and Stranglehold which I've picked up this week. Having ignored my 360 for the better part of the last year, I also figured I'd see if I can do anything cool with it.
Played around with the ol networking and sorted out the ability to stream .wmv and mp3 audio .from a test PC, I dearly wanted to do more, like stream Eve-Radio, Weathertop-Radio, BootyIsland-Radio and, of course, console friendly new station TGR.
Except of course this didn't want to work, at least, not when running Media Player 11 as the media center. In thoery, it should, but I've had no joy getting any streaming working on the 360 from an online shoutcast source.
Anyway, I did some tinkering, looked around online a bit and came up with the following, which now allows me to stream shoutcast streams, divx and others video format right from my newly invigorated Xbox360.
So, you can tune into Eve Radio while taking Chow Yun Fat off on a murderous rampage through Hong Kong ... which is handy if you're currently tuned into Sarge.
How to :-
First off, download http://www.tversity.com/home onto your media center PC (This will either be your main system or the one which holds all your music and videos) and install it.
Once done, fire up windows media player 11 (if you got it installed) and disable the sharing option. If you've previously used WMP11 as your media center, it'll already have your 360 highlighted (most likely) as a shareable device. Simply unclick it (Library > Media Sharing > Unclick Share My Media) and your nearly half way done.
This is needed because Tversity conflicts with WMP11 if it's enabled, and we don't want that.
Now that's done, things get a wee bit more technical.
Whichever firewall you're using (I'm going to assume Windows XP firewall but it will be very similar in most other software firewalls) you'll need to create a program exception to the MediaServer.exe file within the Tversity install folder. Just open up the windows xp firewall (Access it through Start > Settings > Control Panel > Windows Firewall) and click on the exceptions tab.
Once done, click add program and then browse to the MediaServer.exe file and click ok.
While you are there, you need to add an exception to a TCP port, so go back to the exceptions tab on the firewall and click add port, name it somthing useful (MediaServer Port for example) and add port number 41952. Click ok when done.
If you are connecting your Xbox directly to your router and it's not via a hub or anything, you may need to open up ports on your hardware router. Can't help you directly there, but if you run into difficulties I'm sure helpful peeps here will see what advice they can give you.
Now that's done, it's time to reboot the PC.
Tversity media server will automally start the mediaserver service upon restart and it's now time to go wake up the Xbox.
Moving on ...
Firstly, make sure you've got your 360 connected to your local network.
Log in and goto the system section on your Xbox360, not stopping to play any games you may already have in the drive. Once there, highlight the computers options and select it to see if you're already connected to anything.
If you havent setup your Xbox to connect to a local machine on your network before, this will be blank. If you have done, you'll need to disconnect it first so it can see a different media center source than the previous one.
Once disconnected, head back to the Media part of your Xbox and click on one of the options. You usually have Pictures, Video and Music available. Click on Video (for want of any other) and then click on the computer option.
You'll get a splash screen telling you you need to install somthing or other on the target PC before it will find anything. Ignore it and click ok and it SHOULD pop up a new screen that will show Tversity as a connection option over the network.
If it does, brilliant, you're nearly there. If not, hmm, I dunno. Perhaps you did somthing wrong. Fiddle a bit and post here in a while If you are still having problems.
Now that's all done and your connection to Tversity is completed, all you need to do is populate it with some media to stream direct to your Xbox.
Back to your PC and load up the Tversity gui (Start > Programs > Tversity Media Server > Tversity Media Server).
Now it's up, click on the + icon in the upper left and select Add Internet Media, Add Audio URL.
You'll get a popup box asking for some info. Enter http://broadband.eve-radio.com:8000 in the Audio URL option and in the title bit, put Eve-Radio. Feel free to add a tag or two to help with indexing if you so desire, but it's not really important. You can do the same with our other stations as well if you desire, especially Total Gaming Radio, which is a new station that caters for console gamers.
For Weathertop-Radio enter http://broadband.weathertop-radio.com:8100
For BootyIsland-Radio enter http://broadband.bootyisland-radio.com:8300
For Total Gaming Radio enter http://total.gamingradio.net:8020
Once done, click submit, and hey presto, it's all done.
Rush back to your 360 and goto the media section. Goto Music, Computer and then the folder where you added your streaming audio. For some reason, it dropped it into songs for me, but may go elsewhere for you. Either way, once you find it (it will say Eve Radio usually) select it, then select play ... and bingo, you're now streaming Eve Radio (or other favorite GRN station) from you're Xbox360.
If you like, you can go back to Tversity and add a whole bunch of other media, including some streaming video, any music or video files on your pc and have at it.
Sadly, I can't seem to get it to work with streaming video's from shoutcast servers, which is annoying as I would like to see a life sized Risc head bopping on the video link late nights. If anyone manages to get this working with Tversity, feel free to let me know. I'd work it out myself, but I'm lazy and done enough today already.
Tversity itself is a little bit clunky, but it gets the job done. I need to completely reindex everything I've added to it because i've hashed it up horribly over the last few hours but with a little patience Im sure it'll be pretty neat.
Either way, I can now criticise on air DJ's from the comfort of Halo 3 and easily switch between stations when I have the urge to channel hop.
Now so can you.
Played around with the ol networking and sorted out the ability to stream .wmv and mp3 audio .from a test PC, I dearly wanted to do more, like stream Eve-Radio, Weathertop-Radio, BootyIsland-Radio and, of course, console friendly new station TGR.
Except of course this didn't want to work, at least, not when running Media Player 11 as the media center. In thoery, it should, but I've had no joy getting any streaming working on the 360 from an online shoutcast source.
Anyway, I did some tinkering, looked around online a bit and came up with the following, which now allows me to stream shoutcast streams, divx and others video format right from my newly invigorated Xbox360.
So, you can tune into Eve Radio while taking Chow Yun Fat off on a murderous rampage through Hong Kong ... which is handy if you're currently tuned into Sarge.
How to :-
First off, download http://www.tversity.com/home onto your media center PC (This will either be your main system or the one which holds all your music and videos) and install it.
Once done, fire up windows media player 11 (if you got it installed) and disable the sharing option. If you've previously used WMP11 as your media center, it'll already have your 360 highlighted (most likely) as a shareable device. Simply unclick it (Library > Media Sharing > Unclick Share My Media) and your nearly half way done.
This is needed because Tversity conflicts with WMP11 if it's enabled, and we don't want that.
Now that's done, things get a wee bit more technical.
Whichever firewall you're using (I'm going to assume Windows XP firewall but it will be very similar in most other software firewalls) you'll need to create a program exception to the MediaServer.exe file within the Tversity install folder. Just open up the windows xp firewall (Access it through Start > Settings > Control Panel > Windows Firewall) and click on the exceptions tab.
Once done, click add program and then browse to the MediaServer.exe file and click ok.
While you are there, you need to add an exception to a TCP port, so go back to the exceptions tab on the firewall and click add port, name it somthing useful (MediaServer Port for example) and add port number 41952. Click ok when done.
If you are connecting your Xbox directly to your router and it's not via a hub or anything, you may need to open up ports on your hardware router. Can't help you directly there, but if you run into difficulties I'm sure helpful peeps here will see what advice they can give you.
Now that's done, it's time to reboot the PC.
Tversity media server will automally start the mediaserver service upon restart and it's now time to go wake up the Xbox.
Moving on ...
Firstly, make sure you've got your 360 connected to your local network.
Log in and goto the system section on your Xbox360, not stopping to play any games you may already have in the drive. Once there, highlight the computers options and select it to see if you're already connected to anything.
If you havent setup your Xbox to connect to a local machine on your network before, this will be blank. If you have done, you'll need to disconnect it first so it can see a different media center source than the previous one.
Once disconnected, head back to the Media part of your Xbox and click on one of the options. You usually have Pictures, Video and Music available. Click on Video (for want of any other) and then click on the computer option.
You'll get a splash screen telling you you need to install somthing or other on the target PC before it will find anything. Ignore it and click ok and it SHOULD pop up a new screen that will show Tversity as a connection option over the network.
If it does, brilliant, you're nearly there. If not, hmm, I dunno. Perhaps you did somthing wrong. Fiddle a bit and post here in a while If you are still having problems.
Now that's all done and your connection to Tversity is completed, all you need to do is populate it with some media to stream direct to your Xbox.
Back to your PC and load up the Tversity gui (Start > Programs > Tversity Media Server > Tversity Media Server).
Now it's up, click on the + icon in the upper left and select Add Internet Media, Add Audio URL.
You'll get a popup box asking for some info. Enter http://broadband.eve-radio.com:8000 in the Audio URL option and in the title bit, put Eve-Radio. Feel free to add a tag or two to help with indexing if you so desire, but it's not really important. You can do the same with our other stations as well if you desire, especially Total Gaming Radio, which is a new station that caters for console gamers.
For Weathertop-Radio enter http://broadband.weathertop-radio.com:8100
For BootyIsland-Radio enter http://broadband.bootyisland-radio.com:8300
For Total Gaming Radio enter http://total.gamingradio.net:8020
Once done, click submit, and hey presto, it's all done.
Rush back to your 360 and goto the media section. Goto Music, Computer and then the folder where you added your streaming audio. For some reason, it dropped it into songs for me, but may go elsewhere for you. Either way, once you find it (it will say Eve Radio usually) select it, then select play ... and bingo, you're now streaming Eve Radio (or other favorite GRN station) from you're Xbox360.
If you like, you can go back to Tversity and add a whole bunch of other media, including some streaming video, any music or video files on your pc and have at it.
Sadly, I can't seem to get it to work with streaming video's from shoutcast servers, which is annoying as I would like to see a life sized Risc head bopping on the video link late nights. If anyone manages to get this working with Tversity, feel free to let me know. I'd work it out myself, but I'm lazy and done enough today already.
Tversity itself is a little bit clunky, but it gets the job done. I need to completely reindex everything I've added to it because i've hashed it up horribly over the last few hours but with a little patience Im sure it'll be pretty neat.
Either way, I can now criticise on air DJ's from the comfort of Halo 3 and easily switch between stations when I have the urge to channel hop.
Now so can you.