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The last thing that I wanted to do was toot a Microsoft horn, but I wanted to test out Windows Media Center with an Extender (XBOX 360) and stream TV. This test really is only for me to determine the minimum amount of service that need to be enabled/automatic for this function to work. This sounds like an easy task, but it took me several hours to finish it. (and several more months previously to jump into the task).

First off, my Xbox 360 does not have a wireless card in it, and sometime during our move, one of the cats or my wife ate the 100′ Ethernet cable that I had, but I have known for a long time that the WRT54G v5 Linksys router is capable of doing so with dd-wrt.com updated firmware. This router was just sitting around doing nothing as I upgraded my main routers to Dlink 655′s.

The warnings throughout the site say "you could make your router unusable," but in all honesty, I don’t think I would have ever used the old wireless access point again, anyway, so a bricked router meant nothing to me… but a router that can act as a bridge for my Xbox 360 magically would become useful.

The guide I used (to the letter) to get updated firmware with additional features is here:

http://www.bitsum.com/openwiking/owbase/WRT54G5_CFE/

After getting the system set up and working, it was just a matter of connecting up and *bam* the Xbox 360 has a connection to my PC as a Media Center Extender.

Several other obstacles I encountered were that my previous service settings in Vista were too strict and I had to set them all back to default. Thus the posting yesterday about needing a registry file to set them back to default. I did it the old fashion way and all worked after 30 to 45 minutes. Now I need to go back and narrow down what "really" is needed and not just what "works." There the trick stands.

Anyway, after much fiddling, I got the systems to hook up and now I can watch internet TV in my living room from my XBOX 360 directly connected to a Linksys wrt54g v5 using www.dd-wrt.com firmware (which, by the way, is the best router firmware I have ever used). Kudos to the team.

Windows Media Center has come a long way and it is pretty good, even in "internet TV Beta" state.

Just if my readers were wondering "what" I actually do daily…. this is it. First was getting the PS3 to connect to my media server, now the XBOX 360 was an obvious extension (no pun intended) of this effort.

I will try and draft a more through "How To" outlining the exact steps that I took, but for now, I am going to go lay on the couch and… basically… chill and watch streaming TV.