Custom soundtracks

[PristineSteam]

In episode 8, Chris and I were talking about how you can use an iPod with the Xbox 360 to plug in your own soundtrack for a game. The way this works is that you plug the iPod into the USB input in the front of the 360. Then from the dashboard you go to the blue media screen and select music, then you select the iPod. You can play a playlist, album, etc. Then you go back to the dashboard and start up a game. When you get to the game, your iPod music will be playing instead of the game background music. Some games will make the iPod music cut out for a little while when the game is at the main loading screen, but the music comes back once you start playing.

Yesterday I discovered that in Project Gotham Racing, not only does this work, but whenever your iPod goes to a new song, a little pop-up window within the game will show the artist and song name! This is great. Now I just have to make some more custom playlists for my favorite games.

[The Brass]

yea costum soundtracks are in alot of games including GTA which i found was pretty cool because it had its own radio station that had your own music and a few commercials in it. and most EA games have a costum soundtrack

i play my own music whenever i can especialy halo 2 i use my mp3 player and i find just like raz said it helps you play better

[teal]

I really find it annoying to have to connect my ipod up to the my 360 whenever I want to have custom soundtracks.

Have you tried using Windows Media connect?

The program resides in your systray. You just point it towards the folders you want to *share* and it then makes them available to your 360 over your network (you do have to have the 360 and the PC on the same network). It does work over a wireless network, but i have experienced some spotty performance depending on the wireless signal. Of course, the wired connection works best.

The interface on your 360 is just like the one for your ipod, but without the messy cables coming out the front.


The Windows Media Connect can be a little troublesome to get working depending upon what your firewall situation is. Under most circumstances, you shouldn't have to do anything to get your 360 and PC to talk to each other. However, I had some problems after a PC reformat due to my MOBO's built-in Firewall (Nvidia nForce Active Firewall). I had to completely uninstall it to get it to work. However, once your PC and 360 recognize each other, you can re-install the firewall without incident.


-t.


*If you haven't used WMC yet, you will love it. Custom soundtracks are definitely a huge bonus for games like Geometry wars, PGR3 and MotoGP. In fact, I found that I played some of more simple arcade *puzzle* games a lot more (hexic), simply as an excuse to listen to music (that was streaming from my PC).

[raz0red]

Yeah, very good point teal. I installed WMC when I first got the 360, but haven't used it too much. I was just messing around the other day when I stuck my iPod in. WMC is definitely the best way to go. Although, now that we have a 360 at work, it is pretty nice to just walk up, plug in my iPod and play.

--Raz.

[PristineSteam]

I have tried WMC and it is nice, but personally I prefer using the iPod. My Windows box is in a different room, on a different floor of the house from my Xbox 360 and I don't always have it turned on. My "main" computer these days is a Mac, which also means I usually don't have my latest songs and playlists synced to the Windows box.