Writing Windows Media Center Extender

Question

I recently purchased an XBox 360 and was first introduced to the term "Media Extender". I didn't realize that windows had the ability to stream content to an XBox and was very surprised and excited. I also noticed that people wrote their own plugins that allowed streaming of, for example, netflix. I would like to know more about how to do this but find it hard to even Google it because I know so little about the terminology (I'm not sure whether the XBox is the "extender" or the "extender" is a plugin that makes the Xbox stream). Can anybody explain this technology to me and perhaps direct me to good getting started reference for building my own plugins (for instance, to stream Pandora to the Xbox)?

Answer 1

An Xbox 360 is a Windows Media Center Extender device, implemented in software on the Xbox. Dedicated hardware implementations exist, such as this, but I don't think they've ever taken off like they were supposed to.

Windows Media Center can be extended via its APIs for building add-ins. Take a look at this Google search.

In my experience (we use this in our lounge) not all plugins seem to work via the Xbox 360 - some work only on the PC.

Hope this helps some.