HOW-TO: Streaming Music and Pictures to a 360 from a Mac
29 Comments
Published December 29th, 2005 in Apple, Microsoft, Noteworthy, Technology, Wireless
This is my first How to guide so please bear with me, it is not all upto scratch. After seeing on Xbox 360 fanboy a solution to stream music and photos to a 360 from a Mac (and Linux and Windows) I thought ‘why not?’ So I took some photos and put together this guide in helping others. This uses TwonkyVision’s UPnP MediaServer software, which is not free. However they have a trial version that terminates after 30 mins. So if you can’t cough up the cash then just start up the server again after 30 mins, or better yet have Automator do it for you.
So to start off, download the trial version here. It seemed to me that their link for ‘Mac OS X Setup’ wasn’t working so I clicked on the ‘Mac OS X Runtime Only’ link. Don’t be afraid this is nothing scary at all (really).
After downloading the file, double click on it to extract the files from the zip and then click on the folder to open it. Now you may not see all the files that I have above, that’s ok because I have been running the program which generates the files for you. Now double click on the file with the black terminal icon that says “twonkymedia-trial”.
This has started the server so it is now running.
Now in the same folder you opened up the server from (in the Finder) scroll down and click the file that says ‘twonkyvision-config.html’. This will open up a window in your default web browser taking you to the main server page. On the left hand side menu bar click ‘Content’. You should be able to see the same thing I have above. In the ‘Content Location’ box you will need to type in where your music and photos are located. For mine I used “M|/Users/Balazs/Music/,P|/Users/Balazs/Pictures/”. The ‘M’ and ‘P’ define the location for the Music and Photos. The ‘|’ symbol is used to separate the actual location from the characteristic (ie. Music or Photos). There is no need to type a location for the videos as those cannot be streamed, not even from a Windows XP machine using Microsoft’s software.
For all of those who are using NAT’s (Network Attached Storage devices) or have their music on a Windows computer point the directory to ‘/Volumes/namehere‘, where ‘namehere’ is the name of the device (at least how it shows up in Finder. Please bear in mind this is case sensitive.
Hopefully you’re not lost, if you are leave a message in the comments at the very end.
Next thing to do is to go into the ‘Network’ tab, again using the menu bar at the left. Scroll down if you can’t see this. Here in the ‘IP address of the server’ box, type in your IP address of your computer. If you don’t know what it is go to ‘System Preference -> Network -> Click on your internet connection (eg. Airport) -> Configure -> TCP/IP -> Look at the IP that is displayed in the IP address box‘. This is quite crucial otherwise it won’t work properly.
This next part is optional, but I recommend it to know which computer your 360 will connect to. Click on the ‘Navigation Tree’ tab on the menu. In the box ‘Server Name’ enter what you want your computer to be recognised as (this will be displayed on the 360).
Before starting up your 360 you must disable the firewall (if enabled) on your Mac to allow the Xbox 360 to communicate with your Mac. If you don’t do this your 360 won’t find your machine. You can experiment with what options to enable or disable on your firewall if you are weary about turning it off, but I haven’t tried this. To disable the firewall go to ‘System Preferences -> Sharing -> Firewall -> Stop‘.
Start up your 360 and go to either Pictures or Music. Then click on computer. At this point the above screen should be showed on your Xbox.
Click on ‘Yes, Continue’ and it should be searching for ‘Windows-based PCs’.
It should find your Mac (or Linux Box) with ease and display the name you gave it on the right hand side. Go on and select your machine and press A on the controller.
I did this with the pictures and it found my pictures (albeit in the iPhoto folder so I have no idea where anything is). You can click play slideshow and it will play all of them for you (if it found any). From here you can go back and browse your music and listen. Enjoy.
A few notes:
If you go back to the server status page, under clients it should now display ‘Xbox 360′, with the IP address given to the Xbox.
Have fun and enjoy your music and photos!
29 Responses to “HOW-TO: Streaming Music and Pictures to a 360 from a Mac”
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That’s a great how-to you’ve got here. The only thing I need now is an Xbox360
.
Thanks for the how-to guide. My problem stems from now actually having a twonkyvision-config.html file. The runtime archive dumps only 5 files: the runtime server, radio.m3u, revision readme in 2 languages and a revision history.
I’m running OSX 10.3.9. And the 360 does recognizethe Twonky server running. It can’t find any picstures because I can’t configure the app with which folders to access.
On a positive note, I changed my background theme a month ago to one of my favorite pics (I even have a 720p image ready for when I get a HD TV). All blade feature that 1 picture. This was done using my wife’s notebook, running Media Connect on XP Pro SP2.
if you cant get the .html file then try this:
enter your IP in the address bar of your browser followed by “:9000″. So if my IP is 10.0.1.5 then I would type this “http://10.0.1.5:9000/” I hope this has helped!
On a seperate note, congrats on changing your image, do you know if it can be done without windows media connect as I have tried using WM Connect but it doesn’t like my WIN XP home machine as I think it need Professional.
Anyway glad I could help.
Thx for the help. I did get the app to run successfully. Turns out it dumps the HTML and config files in the home directory: /users/. It only checks that directory for the settings files and not the folder the app is launched from. Ah well, I did get it to run, and was able to stream music off the notebook.
I believe you can only get music to the drive by ripping it off a CD. Copying it off your comp or MP3 player (protected or not) is not allowed. If this is the case, then there’s no way to successfully move my aac files over. And since you can’t create playlists based on streamed data (only a last played list, which forgets as soon as the connection is lost), I doubt I’ll be moving my catalogue to the 360.
As for WMC, at first I couldn’t get the 360 to see my PC. After checking out http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/devices/wmconnect/troubleshooting.aspx, I enables the specified ports in Windows Firewall. It worked for a while, and then didn’t (as one last file was misisng off my comp). Solution? Disable any firewall on your PC, give the 360 privilege and share the right folders and the 360 should pick up your shares. You can always turn back the firewall once you’re done streaming.
Thanks again for the help, Balazs.
Hey thanks for the tutorial, worked great. What is your gamertag? Mine is tblaze11, feel free to look me up.
My gamertag is BaluXP
Thanks a lot! My Mac has established the connection with my 360, the problem is, when I goto the “Music” or “Pictures” tabs it cannot find any of those files? Am I doing something wrong? I may be typing in the wrong location in the ‘Content Locations’ text field? I’m putting, “M|/Users/babics/Music/,P|/Users/babics/Pictures/”- does that look wrong to you? Would the “/” at the end throw it off? Any suggestions would be great… Thanks!
Is your username typed in right? Are you sure it ios not in any capitals? Other than that I’m not sure.
IF you re-type them in and in the config menu on the main status page click on: “Rescan Content Directories”
That may do the trick, but otherwise I’m not sure.
Hope I could help,
Balazs
Hey, I ended up getting it to work! I just took off the “/” at the end so it was just “M|/Users/babics/Music,P|/Users/babics/Pictures”. Also, is there a tutorial on how to use the Automator to open up files every half hour?
No, as it really depends on where the file is stored. I’ve tried it but it didn’t work for me a showed me an error. I’m not very good at Automator and Applescripts so I wouldn’t know. Sorry! But if you really like the app, then consider purchasing it as it is not that much.
I was considered purchasing it until I converted the price from the Euro to USD- it’s $2,400!! That’s crazy! On the website it said 19,95 Euro’s which converted into USD is $2,400! Ouch!
That has to be a mistake! It is because of the comma after 19. The europeans use a comma instead of a dot for the decimal point and in conversion tools this can cause them to get mixed up. Try typing in 19.95 into the conversion field.
I guess we’ll see; I just emailed the company to double-check the price when converted to USD. I’m seriously looking at purchasing the program if it is truly within a reasonable price. When I receive a response I’ll let you know. Thanks!
Hi there. My 360 finds my Mac without any trouble but that’s where the problems start. It will either find it but then say it can’t find any file because it may be behind a firewall or it just sits there and does nothing no matter how many times I press select on the computer it finds.
According to the Twonky status screen my 360 is connected and it also shows 2981 music tracks under the “served content items” but try as I do I can’t stream them.
Any thoughts anyone?
Have you disabled the firewall in OS X?
I need help with the full version. I tried the trial and it worked until it ended (I was in the middle of listening to music), and the server stopped working. I opened up terminal again and the first time it would say, blah, blah Welcome to TwonkyMedia and then it would say ip found and would show my ip address. This didn’t happen the second time so I figured that it was just because of the trial so I decided to buy the full version. I downloaded the runtime version and opened up terminal, made all of the adjustments to the configuration page but when I go to my 360 to connect to my iBook, it doesn’t find it and in terminal it says:
ifconfig: en0 has no inet interface address!
17:49:36:752 [ERROR]DB:chdir failed iBook/Users/Edga/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music
17:49:36:755 [ERROR]DB:chdir failed iBook/Users/Edga/Pictures
17:49:36:758 [ERROR]DB:chdir failed iBook/Users/Edga/Movies
ifconfig: en0 has no inet interface address!
So I figured something is wrong with my content. I have switched around different combinations of slashes in different places and putting a space after the comma but nothing seems to work. I also noticed that on the configuration page it shows that I only have 1 song and around 200 radio channels. I know I have many more songs than that. I do not know what else to do. I don’t want the $24 to go down the drain. Please help.
It seems to me that your IP address hasn’t been configured properly:
Try that and see if it helps,
Balazs
I got this sucker working for my itunes stuff but not with pictures but the 30 minutes ran out on the trial before it could finish doing a resca. Now all I need is a 3sitty which comes out 23/03 here.
Thanks a bunch, I’ve tried to get it working before without luck, your tutorial saved my day
thanks man, needed this. very good tutorial.
An update.
For the past week and a half, I’ve been using Connect360 from Nullriver. Available @ http://www.nullriver.com/index/products/connect360.
It is vastly superior to Twonky Media, in that it actually has a native OS X interface, instead of an irritating web interface. Music is taken from your ITunes playlist, and pictures from your Iphoto album. The initial release (0.9) crashed on 10.3.9 as soon as it detected the 360. 1.0 fixed that. But the big one was the 1.5 release which now supports Iphoto 3 and 4 (for those 10.3.x users). This forced me to upload custom (4×3, 16×9) images to my Iphoto album and it works great.
I’d venture to say that Connect360 is superior to Media Connect on XP. As soon as allowing/denying permissions for certain Xbox 360s is added, as well as video streaming, I won’t be using Media Connect on XP again.
Oh, I forgot to add:
The unregistered version limits the music selection to 100 songs. This may seem adequate, but it’s spread out over your entire library. It may only pick 25 songs from the sum of your playlists, and 75 from the library. Point is, no playlist will have all its songs streamed (that is, if you song collection exceeds 100).
What to do? Pay the $10 asking price to get full support. Which is actually quite small and supports an excellent software.
Reading back, it sounds like I’m promoting Connect360. Well, that may be so. But not because I am being paid by NullRiver, but because it works so well. I can’t stop gushing about it.
Oh, and I’m an unabashed Xbox fanboy.
I have to say that I have just tried out Connect360 and it doesn’t work for me. It says that it has found my 360 and is streaming content to it and found all my music etc, but my 360 can’t find my mac. I even restarted the Mac and turned off the firewall, but nada. Well at least Twonky’s stuff works.
I have tried MS Media Connect 2.0, MS Media Player 11 (Media Connect 3.9) and D-Link Media server. Twonky beats them all big way. It is fast and dont skip. It handles large collections (5000 tracks) and hase very handy Artist Index, Album Index etc mode. I recommend Twonky to everybody.
More in my blog: http://jacksgadgets.blogspot.com/
the link to the demo above doesn’t exist.
I did a google search and found the webstie but it only had a 30 day trial. when i unzip this it only gives me a setup file called mediaserver
Top notch stuff and with the new fall update my 360 is now happily play xvid video as well all streamed from my Maxtor NAS via my iMac
Cheers!