Xbox 360 and NAS

educatedfool · 21-04-2008, 10:37 PM

Just wondering if the 360 works with network attached storage or do you need windows media player for it to work? I've searched around a few threads and haven't managed to find anything.

Saves clogging up the xbox hard drive with music and movies. Reason is I don't want to have my main PC running when the xbox is running as the room quickly becomes an oven. And some extra storage would be good to back up my files

If that fails I'll be aquiring another older PC in a few weeks which I can use to store the files and run for long periods of time in a different room. But something like an Icy box would be handy as it's low power, small etc.

TAKTAK · 21-04-2008, 10:39 PM

i'm pretty sure you need WMP for it to work as you need to enable some options in WMP. but i could be wrong

Steve B · 21-04-2008, 10:50 PM

is there a Twonky module for your NAS? you could try that, i think it encodes to wmv on the fly. I'm not sure though!
when i was looking for a solution to this, i bought an Apple TV

**directhex** · 21-04-2008, 11:24 PM

the 360 will play (some) content from a UPnP server, but not a SMB (windows file share) server.

some, but not all, NAS devices can act as UPnP servers (e.g. any that can use Optware packages, such as the NSLU2)

educatedfool · 22-04-2008, 08:57 PM

Thanks for you info, I'll need to look a wee bit further in this. Some NAS has xbox 360 compatability built in, but i don't really feel like paying alot extra for that, was just hoping for like a 70quid icybox and a 500gb harddrive. Anyway I'll have a second PC that I can tune down and throw in another room to do all my media streaming for me

eshrules · 23-04-2008, 09:01 AM

as has already been mentioned, it's possible with a lot of NAS (i've got a freenas in the process of being put together) but the issue arises with transcoding, the xbox is very fussy with what it will and won't play....

I've yet to find a solution that will allow my xbox to stream all media from the Freenas... the only way i've found that works, is to access the Freenas, via my Main PC, running Tversity and WMP....

clearlyolly · 23-04-2008, 09:06 AM

works a treat with my synology ds-106e. Can stream music, videos and photos no problem. Need to have the latest firmware though.

**directhex** · 23-04-2008, 09:08 AM

Originally Posted by clearlyolly

works a treat with my synology ds-106e. Can stream music, videos and photos no problem. Need to have the latest firmware though.

synology devices are very extensible - for one thing, you can run the aforementioned optware packages

clearlyolly · 23-04-2008, 10:44 AM

yeah I think I'm in love with mine. It's my favourite geek-related gadget

Lord Midas · 23-04-2008, 11:55 AM

Surely you can connect any external storage, then under the media tab select your poison, movies/music. Then press the X button to choose alternative file location. Choose the external storage and off you go.

Is this not correct?

dave87 · 23-04-2008, 12:06 PM

Only if it is FAT32 formatted, and the first partition on the drive.

Steve B · 23-04-2008, 01:44 PM

Originally Posted by Lord Midas

Surely you can connect any external storage, then under the media tab select your poison, movies/music. Then press the X button to choose alternative file location. Choose the external storage and off you go.

Is this not correct?

can the xbox play divx yet? i thought it had to be re-encoded on the fly.

eshrules · 23-04-2008, 01:50 PM

Originally Posted by Steve B

can the xbox play divx yet? i thought it had to be re-encoded on the fly.

certain ones, yes, I think it was introduced in the 'fall 2007' update....

but I've had to use tversity on occasions for some of my divx files...

Lord Midas · 23-04-2008, 02:35 PM

Originally Posted by dave87

Only if it is FAT32 formatted, and the first partition on the drive.

Ahh yes. True. Silly Microsoft. Here they are making all their OSes NTFS only, yet the Xbox can only read FAT32 from external drive? Dur.

Plus, nearly all my XVID & DIVX files run perfectly fine.

white_sw · 24-06-2008, 08:35 AM

I looked into this some time ago and eventually decided the best way was an old motherboard and components from a PC upgrade I had laying around. I built this into a tower case and added 10 (I am very lucky, have a free source for the disks) 400gb disks in icy dock enclosurers. That way, 5 disks only take up 3 5.25" bays. My case has 12 5.25 bays so still plenty of room for expansion. Then used Openfiler (free NAS software and very, very good) and ushare. Check them out, works a treat. I can share disk out to anything I want using practly any protocol, even iscsi. All hooked up over bonded gigabit network (bonded requires 2 switches and 2 nics) and also wireless for laptop. Openfiler doesn't, as standard include upnp, but with the addon of ushare it does. I think the developers of it may be looking to add upnp as standard in a future release. The Openfiler software also includes Bacula (network backup software) for backing up my various systems to LTO2 tape drives.

Odc · 26-06-2008, 12:13 PM

I have a Synology DS207 and it works perfectly with my 360 for streaming music, videos and photos. Great little device

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