How to be an Adult: Lesson 3

BUY VIDEO GAMES??

I already have a PC running Windows Media Center Edition 2005. It is able to pause and record live television like a DVR (like Tivo). I have been touting the Xbox360’s ability to act as a media extender for the PC for a long while now, so Mal wanted to get one. By act as a media extender I mean that it is SUPPOSED TO connect to your wireless network and stream recorded TV, music, and pictures from your PC to the television in your living room. I didn’t do my homework well enough, and was surprised to learn that to connect wirelessly to the internet, I had to purchase an additional wireless adapter for the Xbox. I also learned that I had to upgrade my wireless router to an A + G router to stream video affectively over the A network. After doing all that, I was ready to get this thing hooked up and ready to go. I spent all weekend opening ports and disabling/enabling my commercial firewall and my router firewall and calling Xbox support (so they can blame it on the router firewall) and Linksys support (so they can blame it on the windows it on my third party firewall). Finally at 6 on Sunday, Xbox technical support tells me, "Oh that error you’ve been getting, that’s a Media Center software problem, and YOU’LL HAVE TO CALL MICROSOFT (which was closed). So our weekend ended with much money and time spent, and nothing to show for media extending, a key feature that sold us on the Xbox 360. Maybe I’ll get a chance to call today or tomorrow while tech support is still open.

Note: Despite the complaints, we have had an awesome time playing Elder Scroll IV: Oblivion, and please… any computer/electronics geek that may stumble across this blog and may want to comment about Microsoft; save it because we already know.