So, the Media Center interface in Windows 7 is pretty snazzy, but as far as I knew, the XBox 360 "extender" functionality was limited by shoddy codec support. I guess I was wrong.
After spotting a few posts about Media Browser for MCE, I checked into it a bit more and found that the DVD Rips I do using Handbrake actually play on the 360 through MCE.
A 20 man hour day or research later, I have somewhat cleared up the other hurdles. Following instructions found here I was able to get my 360 to see data stored on my NAS through MCE. Also, because no software is perfect and MediaBrowser seemed to have a tough time cleaning up data about Movies and TV Shows, I turned to Media Center Master which (again) is not perfect, but is a FANTASTIC interface for managing all this data. If you do not want to use the Media Browser interface, this software also can build the necessary xml file data structure to allow you to use the "Movies" section that is built in to the Win7 MCE. It is also pretty slick, but it is not going to be as frequently updated/tweaked as the Media Browser code.
So far so good. I have cataloged all of my Movies and TV Shows, have them directly streaming from my NAS which frees up space on my main machine and I can watch everything from the MCE interface on my main machine if I want, thus marking things "watched" properly in both places. Pretty slick. There is still more I want to do, but this is a mighty fine start!!!
