No music on Xbox extenders

[bob_p]

Recently, I tried to play music through several Xbox 360 extenders from my Windows 8.1 WMC PC - and none of the extenders see any of the music files. The extenders can see and play everything else (videos, pictures, recorded tv) - they just can't see music.

I've tried putting the music folders on the WMC system and in network shares on my desktop PC, Windows Server and a Seagate NAS box.

And no matter where the files are, the extender software doesn't see them.

As a fallback, I tried to use the Xbox system music player - with the streaming Windows Media Player library - and while I can see the songs, it shows everything is in a single album - so that really doesn't work either.

Any reasonable suggestions? [i.e., not going to reinstall Windows on the WMC box to fix this...]

[Crash2009]

Just to narrow it down a bit....Is it that they cant see music files or they cant see the music directory.

Copy a few music files to (videos, pictures, recorded tv directories) .....Can you see and play them now?

[bob_p]

It doesn't appear to matter where the music files are stored - they won't show up on the extenders. So it is evidently a problem with how WMC determines if a music file is present on the extenders - or the list of supported file types is messed up. I have quite a few music files on my server - and adding/remove that folder from the Music library doesn't produce a long pause while WMC is searching for files in those folders - so that could indicate the extenders aren't even looking for the music file types.

Another possibility is that the extender user accounts don't have the correct permissions.

Interesting puzzle...

[Crash2009]

Can you see and/or play the files from within your WMC 8.1 box?

Same question for all your other workstations around the house?

[bob_p]

All of the PCs can see the music - and WMC running on the 8.1 box can see and play the music. The only problem is with the extenders - who won't even display the files...

[Crash2009]

So, do you think the extender account MCX??? Is the problem? If so, try uninstalling one extender, then install it again.

[bob_p]

Tried the uninstall/install. It's possible the problem is with the MCX accounts - though I added one of the accounts to the PC's administrators group - and that didn't have any impact.

It's possible the problem is because my WMC system is in a Windows Domain managed by a Windows Server Essential server - I'll try some experiments with that...

[Crash2009]

All that domain stuff is over my head. I seem to remember WHS 2012 needed a little extra TLC to make the shares available. If I'm reading you right, your 8.1 box has permission to view/play the music share, however, your 8.1's extenders don't have the permission.

1- Check your settings in the Add Folder section. As I recall "Let me manually add a shared folder" opens up to.... enter a username and password as part of the config. You might need your domain credentials entered here. Over on the other end (the server) might need to allow the extender to have access.

I'm surprised Recorded TV has no problem on your extenders. Have you tried duplicating the settings for music.

2- Maybe its the folder structure:

I had some trouble in the past with this folder thing not correctly showing/displaying/playing in the past. I ended up tearing up my beautiful folder arrangement year/artist/album/etc. and simply throwing 3000 mp3's into D:\Music. Wasn't that tough, I just used explorer to search *.*.mp3 select all and copy to D:\Music

[3rob3]

You probably need this:
http://tobias-tobin.blogspot.com/2008/0 ... o.html?m=1
Strange that videos are working though.

[Shark007]

If the 'PerceivedType' value is missing from the registry, this would be the cause of your issue.
It is possible that some poorly written player software removed these native registry entries on uninstall.

Here is a registry example for MP3 so you can check your registry. . .

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp3]
"PerceivedType"="audio"

The quotation marks in the example above do not exist in the registry. They only exist in a registry file.

[bob_p]

It's not access to the shares - because the extenders don't see music sitting in local folders on the WMC system. Will check the registry to see if I can spot anything.

[DavidinCT]

If the 'PerceivedType' value is missing from the registry, this would be the cause of your issue.
It is possible that some poorly written player software removed these native registry entries on uninstall.

Here is a registry example for MP3 so you can check your registry. . .

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.mp3]
"PerceivedType"="audio"

The quotation marks in the example above do not exist in the registry. They only exist in a registry file.

Right this will do it. On your HTPC (where the music is) open Windows Explorer, browse to your music files, double click on one, If it opens in Media Player and starts playing it should be ok on this aspect, if it says it cant open the file or does not know what to do with it, open with Media PLAYER and try again.

It could be a codec issue too, if your playing content that uses a special codec, with out the codec installed, it will NOT play on extenders or might not even show. Also if it's a DRM protected item (iTunes, etc), it could cause this problem too.

On a general note, if it plays in Media Player, it will play in WMC....(not everything but, 95% of the time)

If it's local on the machine and the Exenders connect to that machine, it should not cause any problems on a domain level.