Xbox 360 Musings
I recently bought a used Xbox 360 and have been messing around with it for the last couple weeks. Since then I've learned some things and thought I would put them all in one place.
Original Xbox Support and System Update 9199
The Xbox 360 can play some Xbox 360 games. The official ist is here:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm
The real trick is getting it to actually work. It seems like nearly every link on the Internet points to this update:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/console/systemupdates.htm
But that link is wrong.. The real update to play Xbox games on Xbox 360 is here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/d/1/8/d181ee58-de70-4484-936b-0e9161ccd6b2/BackCompat_11-2007.zip
You must have a Xbox 360 hard drive in order to apply this update and to the best of my knowledge it can only be applied by buring the file to a CD or by connecting to Xbox Live. You cannot apply with USB drive
Applying both update 9199 and the SystemUpdate_12-2007 will not do anything to a modded Xbox.
Media and Xbox 360
As best I can tell, there are two ways to play media on the Xbox 360.
- Through Media Center
- Video Library
Media Center
Media Center does not support playback of XVIDs. The updates that add XVID support do not apply to Media Center. Which makes Media Center pretty useless, for me anyway.
I believe the update that adds this is 2.0.6683.0.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_System_Software
Video Library
This is the big one. From here you can play XVIDs, connect to streaming servers (which I will cover later). But there is a big gotcha. In order to make it do all this great stuff you need the Optional Media Update.
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802fffe07df/?of=3
From what I have read, the Optional Media Update comes with some limitations:
- Can only be downloaded from Xbox Live
- It is signed to your console, if you take your HDD to your friends house and download it and bring it back to your house it will not work unless you connect to Xbox Live
If the update is installed correctly it will work while not being connected to Xbox Live.
I have read some sketchy tutorials that say you can hack it onto the Xbox 360 HDD but I doubt that work because they do not address the signing. I have not personally tried.
You will also need a Xbox 360 HDD to get this update. I believe all of this is part of Microsoft's plan to punish those with modded consoles.
If you do not have the update you will get the following error code:
51-coodf236
Streaming Media to your Xbox 360
If you want to play movies on your 360 you can either copy the files to/stick in a USB thumb drive or you can stream directly to the Xbox.
Two popular options exist for the streaming:
I have only used PS3 Media Server and it's great. Really good.
Here is a link all the video formats that Xbox 360 supports:
http://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/gamesandmedia/movies/videofaq/viewvideoplaybackfaq.aspx
Conclusions
Hopefully this info hels out somebody!