Topic: NullRiver Connect360: Stream media from Mac to Xbox 360 (Read 221 times)

Xbox-Scene · « **on:** February 09, 2006, 11:20:00 PM »

NullRiver Connect360: Stream media from Mac to Xbox 360-- Posted by XanTium on February 10 00:44 EST
We already talked about TwonkyMedia as alternative for Windows Media Connect to stream your music and images (for video you still need Windows MediaCenter Edition of course) to your Xbox 360 from a Windows, Mac or Linux PC.
NullRiver's Connect360 is a new streaming application made specially for the Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later. Just like TwonkyMedia the application is not free, but there's also a trial version:

Quote

Your Xbox 360 is capable of playing back your music and viewing your digital photos and with Connect360 your Mac's ready to share.
Connect360 automatically indexes your iTunes and iPhoto libraries and shares them to your Xbox 360. You can then use the Xbox 360 Dashboard to browse and play your media, organized in the exact same way that it is on your Mac.

* iTunes smart
You can browse and play your iTunes music by song, artist, album, genre or playlist. As you add and remove content to your iTunes library, Connect360 keeps your Xbox 360 up to date!

* What formats are supported?
Connect360 currently shares MP3 audio files and JPEG photos to your Xbox 360. Because the Xbox is limited in playing back only these formats, we are working on an automatic conversion layer for the other formats.

* iPhoto in big
With Connect360, you can enjoy your iPhoto photo library on your television screen, especially beautiful in high definition. Browse by photo album or watch a slideshow, its all easy and fun!

*Wired or wireless
Connect360 works with both the Xbox 360 built in network port (wired) and the Xbox 360 WiFi adapter. Connect360 will automatically detect your Xbox 360 and your Xbox 360 will automatically detect your Mac running Connect360. Now that's friendship.
The built in Access Control List (ACL) feature allows you to easily limit what Xbox 360s can connect to your Mac.

Official Site: http://www.nullriver.com
Download: nullriver.com (free trial/beta, registered version $10)

ZildjianKX · « **Reply #1 on:** February 09, 2006, 11:57:00 PM »

As a Mac/PC user, I have to say sweet. I use my mac for all my multimedia stuff since I know the system will never go down (crash) and is virus free.

Good to see there is a 360 streaming alternative, but I'll stick w/ my old Xbox so I can stream videos via Samba.

Altima NEO · « **Reply #2 on:** February 10, 2006, 12:58:00 AM »

QUOTE(ZildjianKX @ Feb 9 2006, 10:28 PM)

As a Mac/PC user, I have to say sweet. I use my mac for all my multimedia stuff since I know the system will never go down (crash) and is virus free.

Good to see there is a 360 streaming alternative, but I'll stick w/ my old Xbox so I can stream videos via Samba.

Yeah. Given the alternatives, and the limited functionality of this new software, its more of a "meh" thing.
Ill stick to streaming stuff to XBMC via samba too. (It works so good!)

Now if they can add full functionality to mimic WMC, like video too, then theyll have something worth looking at.

neineinei · « **Reply #3 on:** February 10, 2006, 01:35:00 AM »

Bah, i love it! The good thing is, that i can now stream my music on th mac while playing PGR3! :-) Really sweet! This is the goal of the app, not to replace XBMC or whatever on the XBox 1.

Ken_D · « **Reply #4 on:** February 10, 2006, 07:10:00 AM »

Please don't flame me if this question has been answered elsewhere before (I have looked), but ... what is stopping someone writing a non-MCE video streaming server? I understand photo and music streaming uses uPnP, presumably video streaming doesn't? Is there some kind of special authentication going on between MCE and the 360?

dirkoneill · « **Reply #5 on:** February 10, 2006, 08:02:00 AM »

I agree, this is not ment to replace XBMC. (Really coud anything ever do that? I think it's going to be years before we see something that good.) I am exceited that I can listen to my music while turning downt he sound of the damn explosions in Call of Duty 2.

bender b rod · « **Reply #6 on:** February 10, 2006, 01:53:00 PM »

I got this program and was all excited about streaming my rocking music from my ibook while playing my 360 and it detects itunes, iphoto and the 360, but the music on the dashboard is nowhere to be found, firewall is off itunes sharing is on, I've done all that i can think of and nullriver doesnt have phone support, my kingdom for some help! anyone has any pointers?

miller420 · « **Reply #7 on:** February 11, 2006, 12:21:00 AM »

I think it would be right cool if they took this concept and brought it to the xbox. I would LOVE to be able to stream my music from my xbox to my 360. I use my xbox as storage for my media as do alot of people (too bad you cant stream video without Windows Media Center) but i think it would be great.

robfern · « **Reply #8 on:** February 11, 2006, 08:36:00 PM »

Hey Bender,

I had the same problem you had. Eventually the way it resolved itself is after I booted up Connect360 and it successfully made all of its connections (showed checked marks with itunes, iphoto and xbox360), I then went back to the 360, turned it off and back on. Then went into music, selected computer, said yes to the questions and bam...there it was.

I thought I already had done that, but maybe it's just sensitive in it's current beta state.

good luck chief.

robfern

This post has been edited by robfern: Feb 12 2006, 04:37 AM

Esenthiel · « **Reply #9 on:** February 12, 2006, 10:54:00 PM »

Is there anything like this out for Linux?

weremichael · « **Reply #10 on:** February 13, 2006, 01:28:00 PM »

All right, all right, all right!!! This seems to be a fine little program. They first get my money with PSPWare and now I am considering this sucker too. I have all my music stored as apple lossless and it somehow supports that codec! How do they do that?? Anyone? It can't be converting the songs on the fly can it? I haven't given it a critical listen to try and find signs of compression.

I have been through quite a struggle converting an old, recently unused, MythTV box into a Windows MCE machine and trying to convert my music from Apple Lossless to Windows Lossless (with a stop as a .wav file along the way). This resulted in the loss of all the metadata. I had to convert to the highest .mp3 files (via iTunes) I could generate. While streaming the music to the 360 from the MCE box the metadata is still a little bit wonky (instead of showing the album and the artist while playing, it displays the artist twice). That and on more complex recorded music the evidence of compression is very noticeable.

I hope as this program progresses as well as PSPWare has.

-Michael

Author Topic: NullRiver Connect360: Stream media from Mac to Xbox 360 (Read 221 times)