It's been a long, fairly expensive, time consuming and sometimes frustrating journey; but my quest to share my media throughout the house has finally come to an end.  I'm going to layout my setup in this article but first I'd like to do some of you a favor.  If you have the money, then you can save yourself a lot of time ... build a home theatre pc and be done with it.  Build a HTPC with one of these new 8800GT cards and connect it directly to your TV and speakers.  Forget the extenders and only use your Xbox for gaming, that's what it does best.  For me, a new machine wasn't an option so I went the Xbox 360 Media Extender route.  It's quite a bit more work and you won't be able to play all of your media through a single interface, but in the end I've gotten everything to work one way or another.

I have a pretty standard office-type network setup at home and this whole media center solution exists exclusively on the LAN.  There are four machines involved in this project, all wired at 100Mbps:

• SERVERBOX - This Windows Server 2003 x64 machine is located in the basement and is full of harddrives.  It holds 2TB of shared data including music, television, dvds and software.
• DC - The domain controller (Active Directory).  This is a Windows Server 2003 x86 virtual machine which resides on the SERVERBOX.  It's only used to authenticate users and runs just fine with only 128MB of RAM.
• OFFICEBOX - This Vista Ultimate machine is my main computer located upstairs in the office.
• XBOX360 - The Xbox 360 is in the living room connected to the bigscreen and surround sound.

STEP 1 - Configure the OFFICEBOX to play all of your shared media.

I'm not going to dive deep into the networking here so once you have your SERVERBOX sharing your files correctly, you'll want to be able to play these files correctly from your desktop machine.  More specifically, you'll want to be able to play these files on your desktop in the Media Center application, because later you'll be connecting your Xbox as an extender.

• Music - Wasn't a problem for me.  I use only MP3 and they will all play in Media Center, Media Player, and VLC.
• Pictures - These also work fine in all the programs mentioned above.
• Video - Here's where the fun begins.  VLC plays everything without a problem.  But in Media Center/Player to play:
  
  1.  Regular DVD's - Install a DVD player/codec, I like PowerDVD.
  
  2.  Divx/Xvid/3vx - Install the Divx Codec that comes with the free Divx Player.  Also install the AC3 Filter from sourceforge, which is also free.
  
  3.  Ripped DVD's - I prefer to rip my DVD's to the harddrive (on my server) and play them from there.  To do this you have to enable the "DVD Library" option in Media Center by changing this registry key:
  
  [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\DvdSettings] and locate "ShowGallery".  Change it's value from "Play" to "Gallery" (case-sensitive!).
  
  Startup Media Center and you'll find a new "DVD Library" option under "TV and Movies", enter it and then right-click or press Info to "Add Movies".  Browse to your ripped dvd folder, if they're on a network share they need to be mapped to a drive.  This will allow you to play these ripped DVDs (from your server) on your desktop through media center, but not on your TV through Xbox Media Center.

STEP 2 - Connect the Xbox360 to Vista Ultimate as a Media Center Extender

1. Connect them together.  Get the Xbox keycode and then enter it in Media Center and they'll connect.  It's an easy process.

STEP 3 - Access your shared media from the Xbox 360 through the Xbox Media Center Interface

If your media is stored locally on your desktop machine, this process is simple and straight forward.  Enable media sharing on your desktop and then browse to your stuff on the Xbox.  You can even share media from multiple machines and this is all very easy as long as those machines have the media stored locally.  This isn't the case for me, it's all on the SERVERBOX in the basement, so...

• To access network shares from your Xbox Media Center, read this article.
• This will now allow you to access your media and you will be able to play music and view pictures easily.  Video is another issue.  You will only be able to play Xbox supported video content, so forget Divx/Xvid and all the rest even if you installed the codecs above and are able to play them on your desktop.  You can't play them on the Xbox through this setup.
• To play ripped DVDs.  The best process for me (which retains original video/audio quality) requires a few steps, but in the end you'll be able to play them through the Xbox:
  
  1.  Use DVDDecrypter to rip your DVD to the harddrive.
  2.  Use DVDShrink to extract just the main move to the harddrive (I keep only 1 audio and 1 subtitle, I've heard you must do it this way but I haven't confirmed it).  This will leave you with a handful of .vob files.
  3.  Use VOBMerge to create a single .vob file.
  4.  Rename this .vob file to .mpg.
  5.  Use VideoReDo -> Tools -> Quickstream Fix on the .mpg file to fix any errors.
  6.  This single .mpg is a dvd video of original audio and video quality now suitable to be played through the Xbox Media Center!  (You can pause and skip forward/backward 30 secs at a time, but that's it).

All of this gets you as far as you can go through the Xbox Media Center interface.  There is another Xbox interface for media playing, the Xbox Dashboard.  Again, this is easy if you're sharing media through Windows Media Player 11 (not available on Server 2003), and that media is stored locally.  However, you probably still won't be able to play Divx/Xvid and other video formats so you may want to follow the steps below to get that to work.

STEP 3 - Access your shared media from the Xbox 360 through the Xbox Dashboard Interface

So you've done all this work and you're satisfied that you can't play your other video formats, it's time to game.  Load up some Forza 2 and press the Xbox button to play some of your own tunes while racing and... they're not there (if you are sharing from a remote server).  Well this is just not acceptable, the solution?  TVERSITY!  And luckily, this will solve both problems above.  Loading TVersity on my SERVERBOX allows me to access my media through the dashboard interface AND allows me to play any audio or video by transcoding it on the fly to an Xbox friendly format.  The one thing to note is that you will have to disable Media Sharing on your other machines, which might not work for everyone, but if you have all of your media on a single machine you're definitely in business.  And, even though it's unsupported, TVersity runs fine on a 2003 64-bit server!  To setup TVersity the way I did, follow these instructions.

STEP 4 - Enjoy your media on the bigscreen with surround sound.  Save your money for a HTPC and close this chapter of your life!

And a big thanks to the love of my life who tolerates me and my gadgetry :)