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Xbox360 iTunes media hack/workaround

So you've downloaded the Xbox360 December update and you're excited you can play divx and xvid (as am I), but as you may have noticed you still cannot play some iTunes files, specifically m4v (as in The Totally Rad Show and Diggnation). So I've made a little workaround, aka hack, to fix this problem. You have to make sure you have the codec on your computer (supposedly), so you can play the files. I use the k-lite codec pack, so I can play anything. And I use Windows Media Player 11 to share my media to my Xbox360 (the Zune software wouldn't share the .avi's). Anyway, you can rename the .m4v files to .avi and they will play fine on the Xbox360. I've made a simple batch script that will automatically rename all the files to .avi:

@ECHO OFF
cd C:\Documents and Settings\Tweaq\My Documents\My Music\Podcasts\The Totally Rad Show \
rename *.* *.avi


Just create a .bat file and put the four lines above in there, changing to your folder where your .m4v files are. You can have it rename as many folders as you need, just copy the bottom 2 lines and change it to the folder you need.
The only downside is that iTunes can no longer find the files and you have to delete them manually. This is acceptable to me, as I'm behind on all my shows and they are stockpiled.

*Bonus*
Use Windows Scheduled Tasks (Control Panel>Scheduled Tasks>Add Scheduled Tasks) and have Windows automatically run the .bat file and rename your files for you every day or every week.

*EDIT*
It seems iTunes is now using one folder for mp3 and m4v, so just edit the location and take out Large Quicktime, and edit the filename from *.* to *.m4v

2 comments:

Jason said...

It turns out, even if you don't have the codec on your computer, you can rename the file to .avi, drag it on to the WMP window to start sharing it. Then rename it back to .m4v. WMP will not play it, but XBox360 will still see it and still play it just fine!

Tweaq said...

Thanks for the tip. I've also found if a file doesn't want to show up on the Xbox360 you can copy the file and for some reason the xbox will see that one. I've had several files I've downloaded not want to share, but making a copy did the trick.