360 as extender - audio and video error

[whertigo]

Hello from Norway!

Some background info:

I've been running Vista 64 sp1 about a year, and using my xbox 360 as an media center extender, hard wired. Its been mainly for pictures and music as we all know it's picky when it comes to video. It's been swell, no hickups at all. All this time, I've had a hauppage HVR4000 installed but not ever in use. Since all i have is analouge cable for TV-signal, I didn't have much use for it anyway, as WMC as of sp1 didn't support this type of signal.

A few weeks back I discovered TVPack2008, and suddenly realized I could put my HVR4000 to some good use. Since this update was OEM only, I had to find a rouge copy of the installer. Voila, analouge cable TV-playback on my 'puter.

Here my sorrows start:

Streaming to MCE (360) now only produced video or audio errors, saying I had to restart the extender. Pictures could still be viewed, but all video/audio nomatter what filetype, would no longer work.

So in my last desperate effort to get it to work again, I installed win 7 64, and was hoping for a change of luck. Same symptoms, different error message: "MCE cannot find the file you are trying to play". Pictures can still be viewed as before. The files are stored in default folders, and they are not corrupted. Streaming to dashboard works fine, both audio and video.

Also the "Play To"-functionality is not working, giving me error codes 0X80040369, UPnP-error 705, saying "cannot control the device".

What I've tried so far without luck:
-Updating firware on my D-link N router
-wiping the Xbox 360 harddrive and running intial setup
-opening up required ports on firewall (although I've read this doesn't do anything for devices on the same network)
-uninstalling hauppage drivers when using vista64 sp1.

My win 7 install is clean, no codec packs or funny stuff.

Anyone experiencing similar things? Or better, could give me some pointers to how to fix it?

 

[whertigo]

Looks like someone over at windows7forums.com are having similar problems, and no solutions either.

 

[whertigo]

I keep talking to myself in this thread it seems

I got to borrow my friend's Xbox 360 the other day, and it's giving me the exact same errors as on my own 'box, so I guess that rules out that part of the chain as the perpetrator.

And since I've tried both Vista and Seven without any luck either, I'm thinking maybe this is my router's fault...

 

[whertigo]

Right, so in my crusade to get this to work, I set up a laptop with win 7 32bit, and what do you know, it works! the Xbox is streaming audio and can be controlled from the win 7 32bit laptop.

So obviously, the router is not the problem, it must be my win 7 64bit pc. Which has a Hauppage 4000 card in it. Which I now suspect to be the reason it not working.

Expect updates

 

[whertigo]

Removing the hauppage card did not help one bit, my xbox 360 is still not able to stream from my windows 7 RTM pc while in Media Center extender mode.

Can anyone please confirm whether or not this is supposed to be working?

 

[whertigo]

Finally solved!

The hauppage hvr-4000 was not the problem, - the computer name was it seems.

I've used my nickname as account name when installing all versions windows, except when installing windows on the laptop, when I used my girlfriends name. My nick, pålle, contains the scandinavian character å, ergo will the default computer name be pålle-PC (unless you change it of course, which I haven't bothered to do). But on reinstalling win 7 x64 last night I used the a more international rendition of the nick - paalle, and voila, MCE on the xbox 360 works. Streaming live TV using the hvr-4000, music pictures, the works.

So it seems MCE on xbox 360 doesn't like non-english characters, and using scandinavian characters like æ ø å will stop it from properly. This also explains why not to many users are experiencing the same issue.

Hopefully this thread can help others with non-english nicknames