Linux to Xbox Media Share
by Brad K on 12/21/2008 in Linux, Software
Like most people I have a couple TVs in my house. One of the TVs has the Linux based MythBox on it and the other has the Xbox 360. Now I keep all my movies on the MythBox (all legal backups of course). I wanted to play these on my Xbox on the other TV. I noticed that after the Xbox 360 dashboard update the Xbox saw my shared drive and I could browse to my media directories. When I tried to Play one of these I got some cryptic Microsoft error code. So I did a little research and found out that Xbox media streaming uses the DLNA protocol to receive content from a peer on a network. Great, does Linux have a DLNA protocol server, YES, it is called uShare.
Here are the easy steps to set it up.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ushare
Configuration
Once finished, you’ll have uShare installed and ready for configuration. Out of the box, it won’t work for our purpose. You’ll need to edit /etc/ushare.conf to enable Xbox compatibility as well as define the standard port – 49200. Open /etc/ushare.conf as root and change the following lines:
USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_DIR=/path/to/your/media
ENABLE_XBOX=YES
Before these changes will take effect, you’ll need to restart ushare using its init script. However, an issue I’ve noticed is that the last line (’ENABLE_XBOX=YES’) does not always work. So before we restart uShare, we’ll need to make a small change to the init script that resides under /etc/init.d/ to force Xbox compatibility:
sudo vi /etc/init.d/ushare
and add the following line at the beginning of the script:
USHARE_OPTIONS=-x
This tells uShare to start with Xbox compatibility. Now restart uShare using the init script:
invoke-rc.d ushare restart
Now you are finished. You may need to restart the Xbox. Now navigate to ‘My Xbox’ and then select ‘Videos’ and finally you should see ‘uShare’ at the bottom (computer icon). Selecting that will connect to your Linux box and you’ll be able to browse your media just as you would on your PC.
When I tried to play a xvid file it said I needed a download to play this file. I am sure it was the codec, but it was free and worked great. Now I have another TV with a HD feed that can Play all the movies on my MythBox .
uShare also works for playing media across the network on the PlayStation 3.
I love technology!
Foobar
Dec 21st, 2008
You beauty! Works great here (ubuntu 8.04 for the server).
Frank J
Dec 21st, 2008
Glad we could help and share these tips.
Brad K
Dec 21st, 2008
Foobar,
Glad it helped. Now the Xbox 360 is a multi media device. You will also notice that the solution is wife approved. The whole family didn’t have a problem using it.
Enjoy,
Brad
MICHAEL J. SCHMITZ
Dec 22nd, 2008
NO XBOX OR LINUX, JUST XP
Frank J
Dec 23rd, 2008
For those who do this is a great way to utilize Xbox beyond gaming.
John Willis
Feb 25th, 2009
Awesome little tutorial… Saved me loads of space on my ps3! Cheers dude!
Frank J
Feb 25th, 2009
John,
I am glad Brad helped you out and hope to see more comments from you soon!
Andrew Mc
Aug 1st, 2009
This was great.
Buggered arounf with PS3 Media Server but it was one big memory hole chewing up 980MB+ of total memory just on startup so I did a search for alternative and found this.
Did a yum install ushare on my CentOS 5.3 container in OpenVZ and added the config details and then restarted the service and bang there it was. No jumpy playback, network protocol errors and hours of #$%^%$ing around.
Thanks
Rew
Frank J
Aug 1st, 2009
Andrew,
Thanks for the feedback and comment!