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Xbox 360 Fall 2012 dashboard update adds native Play To functionality

Aug 9, 2012 5:34 am by damaster | 9 comments

Whilst Microsoft is setting up its Xbox 360 console to be the hub of entertainment in their living room, Xbox 360 owners had long been complaining about the lack of a simple functionality that allows them to easily play music and videos on their big screen using their console – native Play To functionality. For years, Microsoft only allowed users to stream their music and videos hosted on another PC in their network via the Windows Media Center Extender functionality, however this is set to change in the upcoming Fall 2012 dashboard update.

According to TechIT.co.il (via The Verge), Microsoft has finally added native Play To functionality to the Xbox 360 console, as shown in the screenshot below:

What this means is that users will finally be able to use any of their Play To compatible device (i.e. many smartphones and tablets, Windows 7 and Windows 8 supports this functionality) to stream their music and video to their TV screen via Xbox 360. You can check out a demo video of this functionality in action:

The addition of this Play To functionality, as well as the introduction of Xbox SmartGlass, finally brings Microsoft’s vision of three-screens-and-the-cloud closer to reality.

This entry was posted in News and tagged Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox SmartGlass. Bookmark the permalink.

guest
Im getting a “Failed to retrieve media information from media server” error do you know how to fix that?
Simen Mangseth
Hi! I sent an email to you yesterday on feedback@liveside.net, have you got it? Please answer! :)
James
I like the old XBOX logo font better :(…. I’m glad they didn’t change the icon though.
Mario Albertico
I always wondered why this wasn’t possible in the first place. I like Media Center and its visual effects when playing music, but sometimes the number of issues to get it to work would make it a less pleasant experience. This looks promising, but I see that the “Failed to retrieve media…from server” error message is still there :/
http://twitter.com/harlemS Travis Pope
To be fair you could stream music and video from a PC running Zune or Windows Media Player as well before, but the media exchange had to be initiated from the Xbox’s legacy Video Player.
- Damaster – LiveSide.net
  Yup you’re right. But the difference between this and Play To are:
  1. Play To is not limited to PCs running Zune or WMP, you can play contents from your phone or any DLNA Play To compatible device.
  2. Point of initiation. Before you need to browse through the old Xbox interface to find what you want to play. With Play To you initiate playing the content from your device
  - http://twitter.com/harlemS Travis Pope
    I just wanted to make sure folks knew about the feature to tide them over until they are able to get their hands on this.
chinch987
FINALLY! This is REALLY big news to get xbox as the defacto “streaming” device in a house. Not requiring a new device/xbox either. Perfectly timed with Windows 8 where any Win8/RT device will stream to xbox360, nevermind some WP7 devices already.
Playto is quite understood and underutilized. For example some winphone bloggers weren’t t even aware you can connect today a Lumia 900 using Play to Windows Media Player (windows 7 PC)
http://twitter.com/gibbyhome Mark Gibbs
can you stream with play to from the music and video app in windows 8? I can’t do this with my tv only with media player on windows 8 witch kind of stinks because I want to stop using windows media player
Mark