Stream video content from XBMC on Ubuntu Linux to an XBox 360

I’ve recently started to play around with XBMC, a fantastic open-source media server that supports UPnP.

Following is a quick procedure to stream video content from a machine running XBMC to an XBox 360 Arcade.

In this example, my XBMC server is an old Pentium 4 machine running Ubuntu 10.10, with XBMC version 10.0 installed. It contains an nVidia Quadro4 550 XGL graphics card, and in this post here I have described how to enable hardware accelerated graphics for it.

In this example, I’ve assumed that the server and XBox are already connected to a home LAN. XBMC is running the detault Confluence skin.

First, let’s enable basic sharing. Launch XBMC, and in the application, goto System -> Network. Enable “Share video and music libraries through UPnP”:

Now, let’s locate the media server from the XBox. On the XBox, goto Dashboard -> System Settings -> Network Settings -> Wired Network -> Test PC Connection. If you see a machine with the name “XBMC: Media Server” listed, then the server has been detected okay:

Now let’s add a video to test streaming with. In XBMC, goto Videos -> Add source. Locate a compatible video file (see here for details) and right-click on its file name to manually add it to the XBMC library. From here you may rename the file for easy sorting in the library, as well as add it to a custom genre. Once the file is in the library, then we can access it from the XBox:

Finally, on the XBox, goto Dashboard -> My Xbox -> Video Library -> XBMC: Media Server -> Movies -> Recently added movies. You should see the file shared from XBMC listed – select it and play: