There's three pieces of good news if you use your XBOX 360 as a media center extender. Well, three pieces of news anyway. It turns out you can stream videos purchased through Amazon's Unbox service from your PC to an XBOX 360. And if you happen to be a fan of WMV files, starting tomorrow Microsoft will launch an update to the XBOX dashboard that lets you play them from any connected PC, optical disc, or USB flash drive.
The bigger news is probably that the update will add HD-DVD and 1080p support. You'll also be able to stream videos from any PC running Windows XP and Windows Media Player 11. Currently you need a Windows XP Media Center Edition machine in order to stream video to an XBOX 360.
Amazon news via Zatz Not Funny
1. Well, I'm not absolutely sure you'd be able to stream 1080p from a PC, but the update will allow the 360 to display 1080p video on an HDTV display. According to the folks at EngadgetHD, there was a demonstration of an XBOX 360 playing 720p videos streamed from a PC.
Posted at 2:47PM on Oct 30th 2006 by Brad Linder