Xbox 360 Hard Drive DRM Issues
By Tim Coyle |
December 8th, 2005
Comments (10)
The Xbox 360 can stream music and photos from a networked Windows XP machine and video/TV from a Windows Media Center PC. You can also get a hard drive for the Xbox 360 and store music and video on it for playback. But some people like Gamespot are reporting that you have to rip your CD’s to the hard drive and any MP3’s loaded onto the hard drive won’t play:
Get used to ripping tracks from audio CDs because that’s the only way we could get music onto the 360’s HDD. The console could recognize and play MP3 songs from USB devices like memory sticks and portable media players, but we couldn’t transfer songs over to the HDD. Similarly, the system could play songs from a data CD that contained MP3s, but we couldn’t transfer the music directly to the system’s HDD. The 360 can stream music from USB devices and data CDs, but it won’t let you copy any songs from those sources.
I’m sure this is some sort of DRM content protection but what’s the point of the hard drive if you have to rip everything to it? Has anyone tried loading video onto the hard drive – does that work?
December 8th, 2005 at 11:07 am
No, you cannot transfer videos directly onto the 360’s hard drive.
No you can’t transfer mp3’s from a pc to the hard drive, from an iPod to the hard drive, or from a CD to the hard drive, however you can stream compatible formats from any of these. you can rip audio CD’s to the 360’s hard drive.
December 8th, 2005 at 11:13 am
Thanks for your input, bugmenot! I’m sure the everyone will find this information helpful.
December 9th, 2005 at 11:29 pm
I’m surprised that Microsoft blocked completely a gamer from transferring stuff to the hard drive. It seems you can only rip CD’s to your hard drive so I don’t see the point of having it. (I’m sure someone will come up with a workaround eventually) I guess you only need/want the hard drive for game backwards compbatibility.
December 12th, 2005 at 8:39 am
Well if I could stream the MP3’s from my PC I guess it’s not too huge a deal, since all of my MP3’s are on there. But the fact that you can’t copy them over is a bit annoying. Maybe they just want to be sure you don’t gobble up all your hard drive space?
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Are you f^@*!*g retarded they couldn’t give a f^@*!*g damn about your hard drive space all they care about is the money aspect thats how corrupt f^@*!*g Microsoft is they will probably come out with software in the near future but it will come at a hefty price. Its exactly what happened with the release of the xbox 360 they rushed it out to catch the christmas market and look at what happened thousands of houses damaged due to flaming 360s and what did they do said were sorry heres a check now buy the elite 360 for another 500 f^@*!*g bucks f^@*!*g rip offs burn in f^@*!*g hell Microsoft. Open source leads the way… If your not a complete retard might i add
May 19th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Can you believe…here we are, two and a half years later, and I still cannot put my videos on it. I have a 120GB hard drive on it, and a 512MB memory stick. I want to watch a video I downloaded, so I put two episodes on it. But then what? I have to watch them then and there, and then start again for the next two episodes? What happened to the common sense when I can watch my videos from one source. 120GB is a fine size for a media library -oh, wait, I can’t use it at all. This bites. What a rip off.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Why can’t you watch downloaded videos on a 360? The answer is simple…. Xbox Live Marketplace. If everyone was able to download movies from their PC (free) to the 360, there would be no need for downloading movies and TV shows from the marketplace, thus causing MS to lose some $. They wouldn’t want to do that.
You can however hook up to Windows Media Center PC’s and stream through that to a 360, but let’s face it. Just watch it through the PC and don’t go through the trouble.
June 8th, 2008 at 3:19 am
This whole thing has annoyed me completely as I have a PS3 which I can copy media from my pen drive, my PC, and well anything you connect to it with complete ease. So I wanted a 360 as well, so figured I would buy the elite as it has a bigger hdd so then I can put more videos on it and not require anything externally attached to it, only to find out that I have spent more money purely for the fact that I have a black 360 because I cannot use the dam hdd. This is the most stupid thing ever, and what is also stupid is that you can go to Love Film and sign up to receive DVDs and games for a small fee per month, and yet Microsoft think that almost £4 a movie to rent for 24 hours is good. I am left thinking why the hell did I buy a 360 when after you have paid to get all the extras you require you will have paid a ridiculous amount of money that could have been spent on actual games!
September 7th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
DO SOMETHING KIND MICROSOFT!!
January 8th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Unfortunately, it seems to me that I’ll have to take a CDRW, write MP3s as audio tracks to it from my PC (stored on a 1TB external HD that I can just plug into the damn XBOX360 already, no less), THEN rip them onto my 360 HD for the simple reason of.. get this people..
MAKING A &#@%ING PLAYLIST!!
You can’t save a playlist on 360 using files on an external source, like my 1TB drive. I went and made a phenomenal Halo 3 playlist, and when I went to save it for future use, NOPE. Couldn’t do it. Files need to be on the 360 HD.
I can understand the prevention of copying for DRM purposes.. But come’on MicroSHIT, get it together, let me make a playlist using externally sourced files. I understand as most non-retarded people do, that you need to have the source accessable at time of play, so, I’ll just leave the damn drive plugged in.
Really, I’m beside myself as to how absolutely stupid that in itself is.