How to stream video to your XBox360 using Ubuntu + uShare

I’ve known for a while that the newest Xbox 360 software supports streaming video from a computer running Window Media Center. What I didn’t know is that when Microsoft added the media center capabilities they decided to use someone else’s media server standard; UPnP to be precise.

This is really exciting because this means that anybody who implements this standard can stream video to an Xbox over the network.

I run Ubuntu Linux and discovered that there are several programs you can install that will setup a UPnP Media Server, the one I picked to use is uShare.  To install ushare I opened a terminal and ran:

sudo apt-get install ushare

After that I had to edit the ushare configuration file saved under /etc/ushare.conf

If you don’t feel comfortable editing the file you can run to help you setup the configuration file.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure ushare

Here is how I setup my file (I’ve removed the comments from the file for readability):

USHARE_NAME=Ubuntu_Media_Server

USHARE_IFACE=eth0 (the name of which ethernet adapter you’ll send the data over)

USHARE_PORT=49153

USHARE_TELNET_PORT=1337

USHARE_DIR=/home/slayton/Desktop/Shares (any dir will work just put your media there)

USHARE_OVERRIDE_ICONV_ERR=yes

ENABLE_WEB=no

USHARE_ENABLE_XBOX=yes (the USHARE_ is missing in the file you need to add it)

ENABLE_DLNA=no

uShare automatically starts a daemon upon boot, I don’t like this so I kill the daemon after boot with:

sudo /etc/init.d/ushare stop

Then I start uShare when I need it with:

ushare -x  (-x is for xbox compatible mode)

Start up your Xbox scroll the Video Library, select Ubuntu_Media_Server (or whatever name you picked) and begin the streaming goodness!

Advertisement