Print

[stidrvr]

Well I may not be able to help you out entirely but this is what I did. I bought an external USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure a while ago. Before I got my 360 I saw Llamas tutorial on adding an external HDD. I thought cool, I now have a use for my enclosure. I had a spare 80gb HD laying around so I formated that, dumped my MP3's on it and went to town.

I played around with that for a while and remembered reading about Windows Media Connect. I didnt have SP2 installed as Im just running XP Pro. After I got that all sorted out, I now didnt have the need for the external HD anymore. Which was kind of a pain because I didnt want to have to turn the external HD on all the time and didnt want to leave it running all the time either. There arent really arent any differences between the two, other than convenience. While scrolling through some of my music I noticed the the M3U files (playlist files) showed up. Although I didnt try to play them, they were there. Im somewhat disappointed in the media player on the 360. There arent many features, like random or shuffle. I think I saw somewhere about people running apps like winamp or mediaplayer on the 360 but cant confirm this. If thats the case I would use that over the 360's media player.

As far as video goes, I havent even tried yet. Mainly because I dont have need. I have read that people are getting good results with Transcode360. Although I think the use of this program is for playing full length movies.

Sorry I couldnt help out more, but this is what I've had experience with.

[buggs1a]

Sorry, I hit the new topic button in my other post.

Thanks for a response. So is what you are trying to say is the 360 can see .mu files or whatever they are called, but you have not tried any of this? I don't know anything about mu files or whatever.? That might work for making playlists on a pc and then using the external drive connected to the 360 for that?

My cousin wants all music on external drive and wants to be able to do play lists etc. I have no idea if this is even possible since the 360 doesn't seem to let you do anything with an external drive except play music from it and that's it.

If this is the case can someone please recomend a media device that will do what they and I want? I have heard of devices with built in hard drive, wired, wireless, plays streaming from pc, has a UI etc. I think Toshiba or someone made one for like $900 or so a couple years ago maybe? I guess if this stuff is too difficult with the 360 that's what we need then.

For a device we choose to buy I'd be glad to do a small payment for helping us research this if possible.

[stidrvr]

An M3U is a playlist file. Example, you go into say winamp and add all the songs you want into the player and click, save playlist. This creates a file that winamp recognizes for all the playlist information, like file location etc. Like I said before, when I was going through some of my songs I noticed that the M3U files were listed with my mp3's that were on my external harddrive. I didnt try them but if the 360 will play them, this will do exactly what you are wanting to do. Curently I have the entertainment center torn apart to paint the room but if no one else will confirm these I will try myself and let you know if they work.