XBOX XBMC, MacBook and iPhone

[dutchchilly]

Hi,

This is the situation.
I've got a softmodden XBOX (1) with a 500GB HDD wich I mainly use to watch movies on my tv (XBMC).
I've got an MacBook and an iPhone wich syncs with the MacBook.
Is there any way I can tell my MacBook iTunes library that the mp3's and movies are on a shared map of the XBOX?

What I want is this:
- Watch movies and listen to mp3's on my XBOX with XBMC in the livingroom (already doing that)
- Sync my iPhone with the iTunes on my MacBook with mp3's/movies from the XBOX
- Use an Airport Express in my studyroom with the mp3's on my XBOX
(I'm also planning to use a part of the 500GB XBOX HDD for Time Machine, but that's a different story)

Hope it still makes sense.
Cheers

 

[mac4drew]

I don't know that this is possible. If it is, I'm interested as well. I've never had much luck getting songs that are stored on another server to sync from iTunes to iPod/iPhone. The last time I tried it, it worked but was very slow, and every time I synced with my iPod, I had to be on the network with the server. I gave up on this setup very quickly. And that's with Mac-to-Mac file servers (AFP). I believe XBMC can only be configured to run an FTP server and a UPnP Server, both of which aren't supported that well in OS X (and especially not in iTunes) so far as I know.

IMO the best solution would be to install a big hard drive on an old desktop PC or Mac (you can probably get a used computer that will do it for under $100), put all your music and videos on there and share them to XBMC via Samba (aka SMB/CIFS/Windows Networking). That way you could run iTunes on the old Mac or PC and use AirPort Express and sync your iPhone with it while still being able to access your videos and music through the network from XBMC, and even from your MacBook. I'm running Samba on an 8 year old Dell (with Linux) right now and it's worked great with XBMC for a couple years. Everything is surprisingly fast, even over a wireless network and on such an old computer. It's super easy to set up XBMC to view Samba shares if you know how to type in an IP address, and configuring a Samba server on Mac, Windows, and Linux is just a couple of clicks. With this setup, you can also save your Xbox HD space for more emulators, homebrew software, and game backups.

And as far as video, I'm betting that your videos are in XviD, DivX (AVIs) or some other format. In which case, you'd probably need to put them to H.264 or another codec before they'd play on your iPhone anyway.
And if you converted them all to H.264 and deleted the originals, the files wouldn't play on your Xbox. So for videos, you'll probably need two sets of files regardless.

Good luck!