The problem with the XBox 360

Why is it when you have a great product, say an Xbox 360 , which is great by the way, the games, XBox live arcade, need i go on... Theres always a drawback / something which makes you feel robbed... That's right the Media settings, why is it that you can either use the Windows Media Extender functionality or pair it to a Windows PC with the Media Sharing setup. This in my opinion sucks. So ok the Media Center extender functionality is tied to Media Center / Vista, that's bearable but why make it so that a remote device has to be a windows pc! Some of us in the world have Network attached storage, some of us even manage to get their NAS device, which in my case is a nice Linksys NLU2, which ill post about another time, to run an iTunes Media server... Sweet but oh no the XBox 360 does not count this as a device. Which means I'm still unable to play my beloved music collection downstairs with out my laptop. It's even worse when you think I have purchased a fiar few albums and tracks on iTunes, including the The The Hoosier's The Trick To Life and New Young Pony Club's Fantastic Playroom albums recently as part of a birthday gift. and I can't play them anywhere I need to :(

So whats the solution?

Well for one Microsoft will allow the XBox to connect to a normal network share, its not even a complicated Apple or Linux only share, its SAMBA! This will at least allow me to play my MP3s and CD's I have ripped into my computer. The next stage would be for the XBox to connect to a iTunes music share. Now I know Apple are keeping their DRM tech under wraps but for the good of the consumer media devices, which the 360 definitely is, must be able to talk to others and not be tied in to specific brands and technologies. I think we as consumers put up with far too much of this "tied in" attitude. I'm not going to go into the whole DRM debate as this will turn into an essay and not a blog post, but things need to be better supported, cross-platform.

Ideas

One Idea I have had is to write an add on to Media Center, which you can do in Vista although I'm not sure if this then shows up on the XBox? Any know for sure? Which accesses your iTunes and allows you to change its tracks / see whats on, you could then in theory stream your directx output from iTunes to your XBox. This as a concept sucks as your then tying up your PC but it may be a temp solution. Of course getting your XBox to talk to a network share or even an iTunes server would be truly amazing but we will wait and see on that one.

Must be the night for Blogging - iTunes & Vista

Well part three of my early encounters with Vista has lead me to quickly post about using iTunes with it. I have been using Vista for three days now and on neither day have I been able to connect to the iTunes music store and auth my music. I kept getting: "Connection attempt to Apple web site was successful. Connection attempt to iTunes Store was successful. Secure connection attempt to iTunes Store was unsuccessful. An unknown error occurred (-9808)." However tonight I decided to try and fix it, first I disabled my firewall just to check that wasn't blocking it, even though iTunes is an exception and it still err'd. I then decided to reactivate it and restart the service. Lo and behold it worked and now all my lovely iTunes purchases are back ;) So if you get this problem try restarting the Vista Firewall.