OrangeSwarm

Ushare is a very wonderful application for sharing media across your network. Recently i purchased a xbox360 and it has the ability to stream movies from my PC to my flatscreen TV. However, the xbox360 does not make use of samba/windows file sharing SMB/CIFS protocol which mean you will need some sort of additional software to stream to it.

Due to the fact that I use Ubuntu linux i can not make use of Windows Media Player 11 acting as a UPNP server. There are various ways to setup this type of server but i found that nearly all of them sucked in some aspect, most often they were just to complex for what i was trying to do. I tried the following UPNP servers:

• Ushare
• TVersity
• MediaTomb
• X360MeditServe
• GMediaServer

TVersity provides the best all around solution, including transcoding. Transcoding is more or less the holy grail xbox wise. However i did not get it to work so i just plain abandoned trying it. MediaTomb looks like a real profesional method for sharing media using UPNP but it was just way to complex for my taste.

Finally i found ushare which is a small and simple upnp server which does what i want, when i want! In Ubuntu it is very simple to install all you need to do is entering the following command

sudo apt-get install ushare

After which you you need to edit the configuration file. The main thing you would want to chance is the server name and the media-location. I have specified more then one location but I don’t see those files. Anyway enter the following command to edit the configuration file in Ubuntu (Gnome, for Kubuntu enter kedit instead of gedit)

sudo gedit /etc/ushare.conf

When you are done editing the configuration file to your harts content save it and prepare for awesomeness! When you want to stream to your XBOX360 you need to add a little parameter (option) when starting ushare. Enter the following command:

ushare -x

That is all you need to do to get it to work. Might sound like it is complex in comparison to a windows installer, but it requires just a little bit more input and though from the users which in return yield a better working program. If you don’t get the installer to work feel free to post here. Here is the installer guide i used.