Tutorial: How to use the Xbox360 to play files off the PCH?

[victorakkersdijk]

How to connect a Xbox360 via Vista Home Premium to the PCH?

Disclaimer: I managed this only after a couple of days in quite a few steps, so please forgive my if this tutorial is not entirely correct, yet. Do post your comments!

Let's face it, the Popcorn Hour is great for playing movies, but for large pictures or music I would like a Media Center Extender (e.g. Xbox360) for it's faster and shows album art.

Unfortunately the Xbox360 cannot connect directly to the PCH. So you will have to use a Media Center PC in between.

The setup is as follows:
PCH - Media Center PC (Windows Vista Home Premium) - Xbox360 (all connected through a local network)

First: Copy music & pictures to your PCH HD
Tip: Make sure that you can play files from the PCH on the Vista PC
Then follow the basic steps on how to connect the Xbox360 to the Media Center on the Microsoft website

Here comes the tricky part: How to make the Share on the PCH visible to the Xbox360? The trick is that the Xbox logs on as Mcx1, so you have to make a logonscript to map the networkdrive for the Mcx1-user (Xbox360).

This is the logonscript that does the trick:

Code:

Set objNetwork = CreateObject("WScript.Network")

objNetwork.MapNetworkDrive "P:", "\\pch-a110\share", , "pch-a110\NMT", "1234"

Copy paste this in a new textfile and save it as "MCE.vbs" in the folder C:\Netlogon
Tricky part again: Share this folder (sharename Netlogon)

Tip: Test the file by double clicking it, it will map the popcorn hour as the P-drive. if not, your script doesn't work...

Now, the next part I don't fully understand and there may be other ways, but this way it worked for me (thanks to the original poster here):

Quote:The key is to use Windows Power Shell (which is a new type of fancy shell from Microsoft that's much more powerful than the regular command-line) and type a few commands to set a user's login script through PowerShell's command-line interface.

PowerShell can be downloaded here...

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver20...fault.mspx

Once installed you run PowerShell from the start-menu. Mind you, run it "As Administrator" (right click on the Startmenu item). You should get a command prompt (similar to a regular command-line) and then you should type the following:

$user = [ADSI]"WinNT://./mcx1,user" [press enter]
$user.LoginScript = "MCE.vbs" [press enter]
$user.SetInfo() [press enter]

Where "mcx1" is the username for your extender (it usually is, but if you have more than one extender then you'll get mcx2, mcx3, etc...) and "MCE.vbs" is the filename of your login script. As usual the logins script must reside in a folder that's being shared under the name of "netlogon".

Note: the command "net user" might work...

And that's all folks!

Start MediaCenter on the Xbox, "Settings" and "Add directory" etc. (See Microsoft website for more info) this will allow you to add the P-drive to the Media Center and in a short (or long) while, your music and photos will show!