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How best to access & stream a large music collection from PC to Xbox?


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Old 20-08-2010, 19:45
]EGG[
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Guys really hope someone can please offer me some advice on the best course of action to take.

I have a very large music collection on my PC (55,000+ MP3's) and want to access this via streaming it to my XBOX 360.

My problem is that using the music player front end on the XBOX 360 is just plain terrible. It doesn't seem to be able to display more than 25,000 songs but the main problem is that the MP3's are just listed in any odd random order regardless of chosing to sorting the songs by name, artist or album.

Is there any way (even if it means getting some alternative software) that enables the user to view their music more intuitively - say via an album cover view so you can then browse each albums content individually?

The XBOX only seems albe to display songs in one large continual random list and I'm guessing this has something to do with whatever file information is stored in the tag because there doesn't seem to be any order to it regardless of whether I chose to display by song, artist or album.

Can anyone please offer me some advice on the best way to view all my music and get better accesss to it?

Big thanks in advance, this is causing me a major headache :*(
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Old 24-08-2010, 15:42
PlayerUK
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You could try using PS3 Media server (free), Twonky media server (15 day? free trial), both have support forums.
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Old 24-08-2010, 18:46
Imploding Voice
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i know some people have problems with it but Windows Media Player has always worked for me - and is the simplest to use.
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Old 26-08-2010, 03:29
zantarous
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if you have a machine that is running Windows Media Centre then you can use the WMC function on the 360 which will give you covvers and allow you to sort music by artist, album, title and create play lists.

It is not smoth or as quick as playing them nativly but it does look nice.

Another option to consider might be to create some playlists in WMP which will appear on the 360, I have about 30 or 40 of them, music to suite all moods and helps managing music easier. Although with this you get no album artwork.

if you go the Media centre route then you can also get some nice plugins which will work via the 360, there is a very nice plug in for iPlayer and Shoutcast.
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Old 26-08-2010, 16:50
Chris Simon
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My problem is that using the music player front end on the XBOX 360 is just plain terrible. It doesn't seem to be able to display more than 25,000 songs but the main problem is that the MP3's are just listed in any odd random order regardless of chosing to sorting the songs by name, artist or album.
I assume the XBOX is using UPnP to browse your collection? Or are you just using folder views so they appear in the file structure you have on your PC? Or is the XBOX accessing a network share and indexing the files itself? Sorry, I'm not familiar with the XBox!

Anyhow, if the XBox can browse a UPnP server (a library of media that has been catalogued and indexed the way you want it via ID3 tags in the files and publishes itself over the network to media players), then there are a myriad of servers available for running on Windows. Windows Media Player can act as one, so can WinAmp etc. Or have a look at this list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...rs_and_clients

They will almost certainly give you a structure of browsing by Artist, Album, Genre or Title at least. But this can be quite limiting and frustrating for large collections or if your collection is varied, as generally this structure can't handle:

Compilation albums (i.e. Various Artist albums, or generally where the song artist is different from the album artist)
Mulit-volume sets
Any categorisation/cataloguing other than Genre

And compromises have to be made with regard to the way you sort your collection. I'm still after the perfect solution that allows me to categorise my collection the way *I* visualise it! My media software of choice is Meedio/MeediOS - it does indeed have an infinitely customisable menu structure but as yet it does not publish over UPnP (the plugin is still under development...) so you cannot use another device to browse its library.

If, for the future, you are thinking of moving your collection from your PC to a standalone NAS unit, look no further than http://www.synology.com whose dinky machines have a built-in media server so you dont' actually need a PC switched on and running media server software - there are other NAS manufacturers too that include media servers on their machines, e.g. QNAP I think who provide Twonky Server with their machines.

PS. Just noticed your comment about your suspicions about the tags. I'm afraid nothing is going to work unless you've got your files tagged properly! The best you can do is to organise your files in a coherent directory structure and then get the XBox to browse by folders.
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