Xbox 360 Windows Media Center Setup

[Carmina Piette]

WindowsMedia Center Extenders (officially "Extender for Windows Media Center" and code named "Bobsled"[1]) are devices that are configured to connect over a computer network to a computer running Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate, Windows 7 Home Premium, or Windows 8 with a Pro pack to stream the computer's media center functions to the Extender device. This allows use of the Media Center and its features (such as view photos, videos, listen to music, watch live television and use DVR functions, watch recorded TV, etc.) on a television receiver or other electronic visual display.

The advantage with these devices is that a household's primary computer, hosting Media Center, need not be near the device used for display. Additionally, with an Extender, the Media Center can be accessed at the same time by several users. The Xbox 360 gaming console has Media Center Extender functionality. The Ceton Echo is a stand-alone extender.[2]

Media Center Extenders (MCX) can either be dedicated hardware devices, such as set top boxes or televisions,[3] or software based implementations such as the Xbox 360. First generation hardware based devices were based on the Windows CE operating system whereas the second generation devices can use other embedded OSs such as Linux as well. The Extender creates its own user account on the host PC(MCX1, MCX2, etc.) and then uses a version of Fast User Switching to enable the use of the host computer and Extenders at the same time.

Version 1 Extenders only support Media Center versions up to Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2 - they cannot support the version of Media Center incorporated in Windows Vista Home Premium/Ultimate Edition and later.

The server software, which runs on the host PC and streams the media, is built into Windows Media Center. An MCX device must be paired with the MCE software before use; this is done by pairing the MCE software with an identifying number generated by the MCX device.

The MCE software makes the user interface available via the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP, which is also used by Remote Desktop client). All processing done by the MCE software and plug-ins happen at the host computer; only the user interface is streamed to the MCX devices.

As such, the device can render the interface even though the Media Center-specific software (or the plug-ins) might not be installed there. However, the media files are streamed over a different protocol. To render the media, an implementation of the codec used to package the media must be locally installed on the Extender; having the codec on the host computer is not enough. Alternatively media can be trans-coded on the fly by the host computer to a codec that is supported by the Extender. In Windows 7 this is now a standard feature which will probably relieve Extender vendors in the future from having to include such a wide variety of codecs.

For quite some time, the Xbox 360 was the only Version 2 Extender available that could work with Windows Vista. When connecting an Xbox 360 to a Windows XP Media Center Edition PC, a free download is required to connect for the first time. When connecting an Xbox 360 to a Windows Vista PC, no download is necessary as all required components are built into Windows Vista.

Microsoft eventually announced the v2 Media Center Extenders from partners (Linksys, D-Link and Niveus Media) on 5 September 2007.[4] Version 2 capable Extenders support animated transitions between screens and additional capabilities of Windows Vista to handle newer video formats, notably, DivX, Xvid, Windows Media Video HD and H.264. They can stream HDTV (including 1080p) through HDMI like the Xbox 360, can stream protected content and many incorporate draft 802.11n wireless connectivity.

In addition to these updates, manufacturers were able to also integrate the Extender software as an application into devices such as DVD players. Windows Media Connect and Windows Media Player Network Sharing are able to connect to them on Windows XP; however, they do not work with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 as extenders.[5] Xbox 360 is the only device that can work as an extender with both Windows XP Media Center as well as Windows Vista.

The various versions of the Xbox 360 consume between 70 and 200 watts of power, depending upon model and activity (the 360 S consumes 70 W while idling[7]). The Ceton Echo claims to use less than 5 W. Energy cost depends upon electricity prices, model, and use, but for an Xbox 360 running continuously can be a significant fraction of the purchase price every year. The Ceton claims to save up to US$60 a year on electricity compared to a cable box or Xbox 360 used as an extender.[2]

Windows Media Center leverages the Remote Desktop Protocol when communicating with Windows Media Center Extenders. This is great, because one can keep media on a single PC and access it from different locations on the LAN. One common Windows Media Center Extender is the Xbox.

The protocols used between the extender and the media center are partially open. The presentation of the media center interface is done over RDP using a set of specialized virtual channel extensions. I am trying to gather as much information as possible regarding those protocols, in hope that we eventually come to know enough to build open source third-party Windows Media Center extenders.

[MS-DMCT]: Device Media Control Protocol Specification

[MS-DSLR]: Device Services Lightweight Remoting Protocol Specification

[MS-DSMN]: Device Session Monitoring Protocol Specification

[MS-DSPA]: Device Session Property Access Protocol Specification

[MS-DTAG]: Device Trust Agreement Protocol Specification

[MS-RRSP2]: Remote Rendering Server Protocol Version 2.0 Specification

[MS-RXAD]: Remote Experience Advertisement Protocol Specification

[MS-DRMRI]: Windows Media Digital Rights Management for Network Devices (WMDRM-ND): Registrar Initiation Protocol Specification

SoftSled is project which aims at providing a reverse engineered implementation of a Windows Media Center Extender. While significant work has been done, they seem not to have succeeded in getting something to work so far.

I did some basic investigation on my side. I took a packet capture between a Windows 7 Ultimate PC and an Xbox from initial pairing of the extender with the media center up to the first video being played. Here is what I found out:

The RDP session uses Standard RDP security, not TLS or NLA. Since the list of virtual channels advertised by the RDP client is sent before the exchange is encrypted, we can see which virtual channels are being used:

With the understanding that the overlap in a Venn diagram describing folks who use Windows Media Center, XBOX 360 as a Media Center Extender, and Visual Studio on their WMC machine is probably vanishingly small, I thought it might still be useful to post the problems I experienced with this combo, and the solution.

What I found was an interesting cluster of symptoms. For one, each time that I would unsuccessfully attempt to add the XBOX 360 as a media center extender, the Media Center Extender service on the WMC machine would disable itself. I could restart the service all I liked, the result was the same, each attempt resulted in the service being disabled.

I skipped through the Customer Experience Improvement Program Opt-in page, but you can select to join if you wish, then click Next. The next screen requests permission to connect to the internet to download information about your media and TV schedules, I selected to allow this:-

And to confirm the display resolution, then either fine tune display settings, or leave them as they are, for now I am going to leave them as they are and maybe come back to them later if video playback is not acceptable, but it is good to know you can configure your display in this way.

An interesting feature is to be able to setup DVD movies, either DVD drives, DVD multi-changers, or folders with an extracted DVD in it (in the VIDEO_TS and Audio_TS folder structure), so I setup the locations and finished the setup.

In order to add the XBox 360 I had to clear the settings from the old Vista setup from the XBox, but as soon as I did this and launched setup, as with previous versions the media center detected the XBox360:-

Isn't using Myth TV @ this point better? it's windows software without support. Dealing with windows software that has support is hard enough already or am i missing some magical functionality in WMC?

The only reason I posted this is because the win10 upgrade ends tomorrow and I have a WMC environment. I have a few TV's with Xbox 360s behind them. It is truly amazing That a program that really hasn't been worked on since 2007, is the best windows program I have ever used. You can just type an 8 digit code from your Xbox to you media center and it just streams. Media center was ahead of its time and I was sad to see it removed from windows when they announced 10.

Ah never knew that Xbox360 and WMC were compatible, but maybe with that new live/xbox/windows stuff. They maybe have a replacement in line for it. I sadly only had bad experience with WMC and then i fell in love with the Raspberry Pi community,so If you ever think of replacing your media network.

Yeah the just works factor is amazing. If you look up the ceton infinitv 4 or 6 tuner pci cards, they trade hands on ebay for $200 because of people like me that still love WMC. The codec pack I posted above does not have any adware.

use to be ? WMC was pretty decent all the way back to vista if one you use sharky's codecs and two alittle modding but nothing to nerdy ? Had hulu, pandora and all kinds of stuff easily dropped in. Back in day :( Now ? I haven't tried with win 10. Moved my media away from windows to avoid overagressive drm.

The ceton cards have a few bugs with them but are relatively pain free in their operation. The most annoying part is calling your cable provider to send a ccv activation code to the cable card so you can tune tv channels.

3a8082e126