XBox 360: March 2006 Archives

After trying to use Movielink to stream movies to the XBox360 and failing miserably, I thought I'd give their competitor a shot. At first look, their interface through MCE seemed better, less pixelated and it fit better in the screen, but their content wasn't nearly as extensive as Movielink's. They have a very limited selection and absolutely no free samples to test out the technology. Since there were no free samples, I passed trying it from my MCE2005 server to the XBox360.

Result, not enough content to bother.

Unbelievable that Movielink doesn't work with XBox extenders. After seeing how this is a company that Intel supports with Viiv (MCE + special hardware), I can't see how they can get away with it. I recently downloaded a sample movie of theirs to test streaming through my XBox360. I got in a loop where the Movielink Manager wouldn't complete it's install, it kept failing. Since they offered with the Live Chat (I guess they expected problems, huh?), I tried it out. Here is the transcript.

Katie S.: Hello Shawn
Katie S.: Do you have your pop up blocker enabled?
Shawn: i disabled it.
Shawn: that's what happened though
Katie S.: Ok, now click the following link
The agent is sending you to http://4077.movielink.com/moviemanager/CleanWMPDRM.exe
Katie S.: Follow the link above. We will need to delete your DRM component, which may also delete licenses from other music/movie rentals that you have in windows media format. If this is ok, proceed to click "Yes."
Katie S.: Let me know when the clean up is successful
Shawn: ok
Shawn: ok meaning its done
Katie S.: Good, now click the following link
The agent is sending you to http://drmlicense.one.microsoft.com/Indivsite/en/indivit.asp .
Katie S.: Click upgrade when enabled
Katie S.: and let me know when it is complete
Shawn: it's done
Katie S.: Click Start -> Programs -> movielink -> Relaunch Movielink Manager and let me know if you are able to open the Movielink Manager
Shawn: that did it.
Shawn: thanks

Ok, that's fine, got it to work on my MCE2005 desktop. Now I want to stream it to my XBox360 as a Media Center Extender. Didn't work. Unfortunately I get this error while trying to play the sample movie:

Security Error.
Unable to validate security of your media center extender. As a result, the extender will not play protected media content.

Now I contact "Live Chat" again to see what the problem is:

Fred C: Hello
Shawn: hi
Fred C: Shawn, unfortunately I cannot offer support for Media Center Extenders
Shawn: ok thanks.

Slam! Result, Movielink + Xbox360 = Waste of time. Now time to try CinemaNow.