I totally thought that Microsoft was gonna drop the ball on the whole Xbox 360 multimedia. I've reviewed multimedia PCs that were meant to be consumer friendly and it would be kind to call them train wrecks, so when I heard the 360 was going to have built-in media streaming I was doubtful to say the least.

Man did they surprise me. Not only did Microsoft deliver on its promise to make the 360 a central part of your entertainment center, gamer or no gamer, they did it in a way that is completely effortless to set up.

Once I got my debug 360 plugged in to my TV and went through the quick on-screen set up for the console, I hopped straight over to the 360's Media menu.

Setting up file sharing between my computer and the 360 was a breeze. First I had to download a little 6.5 Meg file called Media Connect 2.0 to my PC and install it. (This requires a computer running XP) Next, I just selected music on the 360's menu and then selected computer. After a short search the 360 found my computer on my network and I was in like Flynn.

Media Connect relies on existing shared folders rules, but if you don't have any set up you can just hop into the mini program and set up the places you have your stuff stored. It was all very easy.
The next window brought up a screen that let me sort through my music by albums, artists, saved playlists, songs and genres. Once I picked something to listen to I could choose to have a sweet visualizer take over my entire TV screen or just listen to the music in the background.

Pictures were just as easy with options to slideshow through your pictures or view them one at a time. You can even rotate your shots so you won't have to stretch your neck trying to check out sideways shots.

Most impressively, the wireless WiFi-enabled 360 downstairs was able to stream music and show pics from my computer just as easily.
There are some minor issues. First, going through my 1,800-plus albums one page of titles at a time is an extreme pain in the ass. I wish they had a way to flip through letters or ever groups of letters, like all of the albums starting with A-C or something like that. Fortunately, this is nothing that a quick online update can't solve.

The other bummer is that, at least at present, the 360 can't stream video from your PC unless you are running the Media Center Edition of Windows XP. I really hope they figure out a way around this because if it could do that on non-Media Center PCs I'm sure a lot more casual gamers would start checking out the console.

If they fixed these two relatively minor issues I think the 360 could almost stand on its own as a multimedia device, games be damned.

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