(Almost) Perfect Media Sharing Harmony

First off, the reason for the "(Almost)" is that there isn't one program that does everything.  That would truly be perfect.  That said, here is what I currently have working and a limited explanation of how... limited because even I don't know what the heck I'm doing most of the time!

I own a Windows XP PC, an Xbox 360, and an 80-gig iPod Classic (it's black, thanks for asking).  My PC and 360 are on the same network.  I would like to stream media between them.  I would also like to sync that exact same media to my iPod and have it portable for airplane trips, car trips, whatever.

First off - streaming mp3 and pictures works fine.  That is easy to do with Windows Media Player.  It runs in the background of your PC, doesn't consume a huge amount of resources, and works pretty well for sharing playlists, single files, picture folders, etc. to the 360.  Hopefully nobody has a problem with that.  It also streams certain video files.  *.wmv basically.  That works fine, too assuming you set up the media sharing and network properly.  I won't get into those (relatively) easy steps.

Syncing mp3 and pictures to an iPod also is accomplished pretty easily.  There are a lot of programs that can manage all that, but I broke down and have been using iTunes.  It's been a rocky relationship in the past, but it is finally working fine with the latest iPod Classic firmware release.  iTunes is still a resource hog when syncing, but at least it's working well.

But what about videos?  Well, with the latest 360 dashboard update, H.264, divx, and xvid codecs are supported by the 360.  Good news is that H.264 is what you can also play on an iPod Classic.  Finally, you can have one video file format for everything.  Here's how I got it all working:

Windows Media Player will not recognize H.264 files as media and add them to your library for streaming to the 360.  You have to update your registry for the appropriate filename extensions (*.mp4, *.m4v).  I found "solutions" everywhere for this, but the set of instructions that finally worked for me was found here.  Note that I already had ffdshow and Haali installed (potentially different versions than this tutorial called for) and it still worked fine without uninstalling any codec packs.  The key difference with this tutorial vs. all the others that didn't work is step 6 (delete the WMP library cache).  After I deleted the cache, my library updated and found my H.264 files no problem.  And I could play them back on my 360 immediately due to using the registry patch (important step).  Sweet.

So now you can create, download, or rip H.264 files - add them to your iTunes library and WMP library and stream/sync them wherever you want - 1 format, 1 location on your PC, excellent quality, yay!  Here's what I use to get content (all programs mentioned are free) : existing files - convert them to H.264 (*.mp4) using Videora Converter.  DVD (encrypted) - rip & convert them to H.264 (*.m4v) using Handbrake, while DVD43 is running in the background (to strip the CSS protection).  Note that you could break the law by using DVD43.  I do not advocate that.  This is only to create a file that will play in your iPod (and stream to your 360).  I assume you have already paid for this DVD/video file that you are ripping and/or converting.  You can rip DVD's at 640x480, which is scaled to 320x240 on an iPod Classic screen, but is shown in full DVD resolution when streamed through your 360.  Better quality than cable, Directv, or AT&T U-Verse... maybe even better than OTA.  My sample video for learning all this was an episode of Futurama - "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" which I own on DVD.  Now I need a faster PC to rip DVD's faster (22 minutes of cartoons takes about 45 minutes on my 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 with 2GB of RAM and fast DVD drive).

This exercise kind of reminds of the first mp3 I ever downloaded.  It was Billy Joel, "This Night".  I owned it on vinyl at the time and I needed to play the song for a music theory class I was in.  For those of you scratching your head and thinking "huh?" - Billy stole the melody of the chorus from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 8 "Pathetique".  Our groundbreaking research concluded that old melodies are still relevant and appreciated today... or some such nonsense.