i have windows xp, windows media player 10 and have windows media connect allowed in my router/firewall settings......
That's pretty much the setup I had... until last night - last night I took the Windows auto-update of WMP10 to WMP11 as it promised wireless streaming of video to my 360...wasn't quite that straigtforward though.
I'll try and dump my experience below, might be wothless or you might find a nugget or two of useful info.
The installation of WMP11 uninstalls the "Windows Media Connect" software that you can use in conjuntion with WMP10 to allow you to stream music and pictures to a 360... so, you can stick with "Windows Media Connect" & WMP10 which allows images and music, or you can go for the upgrade to WMP11 with the promise of images, music
& video (or at least the couple of video formats mentioned above). WMP11 now has the media sharaing bit "in it" so Windows Media Connect isn't required. Apparently, if the WMP11 option doesn't work out and you uninstall it you'll just autmatically revert to WMP10...I haven't done this so can't vouch for it.
Anyway, prior to having wireless broadband I was using an ethernet cable to connect the 360 to my laptop (laptop ethernet port), the broadband connection being provided by an ADSL modem (Belkin) connected to my latop via USB. With this set up I was using WMP10+WMC to stream music and images. From what I can remember it didn't work striaght off, the 360 wasn't able to "see" my computer. I *think* (this is about a year ago so it's a bit hazy) this required allowing WMC at my firewall (ZoneAlarm) but you've already done that by the sounds of things.
Anyway, since the USB modem and ethernet cable days I've switched to Wireless router (Netgear DG834GT) & 360 wireless adapter, and last night upgraded to WMP11. I was fiddling with router ports, firewall settings etc etc last night for hours but nothing I did succeeded in getting my 360 to "see" my computer...a definite step backwards. Today, home from work, start everything up from cold and it worked first time, go figure.
So, things I was fiddling with last night which you may need to look at:
- Make sure the "file and printer" sharing is enabled on your network connection: Start-->Control Panel-->Network Connections-->"Connection"-->File and Printer Sharing ... tick!
- UPnP on my router (it was already enabled so I didn't have to do anything, but perhaps you have to enable it explicitely?).
- Make sure you have the following windows services running on your laptop to support media sharing: "UPnP Device Host". "SSDP Discovery Service", "Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service", HTTP SSL. The "Windows Media.." one is the top level service with the others being dependencies which you can follow. (Should point out that these are what are required for WMP11 sharing, but I'll go out on a limb and say similar are required for the WMP10&WMC).
- Lots of troubleshooting sites (and the XBox itself) lists ports that need to be "open" in order for this media streaming to work but tinkering with ports in the laptop's and router's firewall didn't seem to make any difference...and like I say, now it's working and I haven't explitely opened any ports. They obviously need to be open for communication to happen, I'm just saying I didn't have to do anything - they were already open. (bit of a pointless point but it's getting late ;-))
- Try totally disabling you firewall (you've probably already tried this though).
Sounds like you have a few options:
(1) Your pragmatic suggestion of "maybe i should just buy a 2-4gb memory stick and just connect it to the xbox that way"
(2) Stick with WMP10&WMC, persevere with your investigations... you'll most likely crack it.
(3) Upgrade to WMP11 and *hope* it just works... not quite my experience but it got there in the end.
Regs.