The seventh generation of video game systems have expanded their platforms from just gaming devices to full media players. The Xbox 360 is no exception to this and the system easily allows you to transfer pictures from your laptop to the Xbox so they can be displayed on your television set.

Connecting to Network

For the picture transfer to occur, you will need to connect your laptop and Xbox to a home network to make sure they are talking to each other. There are several ways to go about doing this. If your Xbox is in an area where your Internet router is, you can directly plug the Xbox and the laptop into the network with cable. This is a wired connection and is good if you have easy access to the router. Most likely, though, the laptop is being used portably and the Xbox is attached to the television in a different location than the router. In this case a wired connection simply will not work. If your peripherals are set up this way, a wireless connection might be the way to go. The Xbox360 has an internal wireless modem, which can connect to a wireless network. You will just need to make sure that the laptop has a wireless modem as well.

Media Server

You need to make sure your computer has a media server that the Xbox can access for the picture transfer. The best way to do this is to download the Zune software from Microsoft, especially if you are using Windows as your laptop operating system. This way all three software components of the media sharing are by Microsoft. If you are using a different media server (e.g. Google Media Server) you must make sure that the sharing option is on and that you have added pictures to the media server.

Displaying Pictures

To make sure the XBox can display the pictures, you must have the latest firmware installed to the game system. You should be able to do a system update in your Xbox to get the latest version and install it. Once the firmware is installed, open the media section on the Xbox, choose the pictures option and select the picture you want to look at. The picture will be displayed on the system. Conversely, you can also connect the laptop to the Xbox directly with the sync cable, which came with the system, but you need to have the media server installed before you connect them. Once connected, go into the media section on the Xbox like you did when you were transferring wirelessly.

Source:

Zune.com: Play Media on Your XBox 360