The Xbox 360 is an annoying game console. After the first error message of a flashing red ring of death that made me return it to Microsoft, now it has stopped playing MP4 files after the last system update!
Firstly, it took quite a while to figure out how to stream MP4 and video files on Xbox 360 using Windows Media Player, but once I did it, it was great because I could watch all my movies, TV shows, etc. my TV is no problem.
Then there was a system update in April and now my Xbox 360 can no longer see MP4 files. When I go to the folder with MP4 files, the message “Video not found” appears.
After spending more time anyway, I was able to figure out how to get my MP4 files to play again on Xbox 360! Hope this helps anyone who has the same problem.
Play MP4 files on Xbox 360
Step 1. The first thing you need to do is delete the current watched folders in Windows Media Player.
You can do this by going to Tools, then Options and clicking the Library tab. Now click the Monitor Folders button. Remove everything from the list except the defaults.
Step 2. Now you need to stop Windows Media Player Sharing Service. You can do this by going to Task Manager and killing two processes (wmpnetwk.exe and wmpnscfg.exe), or you can go to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services, right-click on the WMP Network Sharing Service and select Stop.
Step 3: Now that the Network Sharing Service is stopped, we need to delete the entire Windows Media Player library. Please note that this will not delete your real media files, but will simply delete the index generated by WMP.
Go to the following location and delete all files with the .WMDB extension.
C: Documents and Settings username Local Settings Application Data Microsoft Media Player
Step 4: Now you need to rename all your .MP4 files to .AVI. I don’t know why this should be done or why it works, but it is! Therefore, any MKV files converted to MP4 need to be renamed to AVI. Please note that they do NOT need to be recoded, just rename in Windows Explorer.
Step 5: Now open Windows Media Player and return to the Monitor Folders dialog box. Go ahead and re-select the folders containing the videos you want to stream to Xbox 360.
Let Windows Media Player recreate your media collection’s database library.
Step 6. After that, go to the services console again and this time right-click and select “Restart” in the WMP Network Sharing Service.
This is it! Now you need to go to Xbox 360 and browse the folders again. Hope, like me, you see your MP4 files playable again!
It should also be noted that whenever you add more videos to your folders, you will have to go through the whole process again! It’s a dizzying pain in the ass, but it’s the only way to make it work. Enjoy!
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