Listen to Internet Radio Station to your Xbox
How to add and listen to internet radio station M3u files to your Xbox
HOW TO CREATE INTERNET RADIO STATION FILES TO LISTEN TO ON YOUR XBOX THROUGH XBMC
INTRODUCTION
I have been doing this for years as I love my internet radio, especially through my original Xbox and I don’t know if this is widely known in the TiZ Community so I am making a quick tutorial to show you how to do it in the following steps:
ITEM & INFORMATION NEEDED
You will need a PC with access to Notepad (standard on PC’s) and the use of GIMP or Photoshop or similar program to make you radio station icon only.
An Xbox (duh !) and the ability to FTP to same. The Xbox needs to be connected to the internet to access the radio stream (There are plenty of other tutorials available to show you how to do all this.)
The ability to use graphic manipulation software (GIMP or Photoshop) and navigate and add sources in XBMC on your Xbox
NOW LETS PROCEED
ON YOUR PC
Open Notepad in Windows
Find the stream of the internet radio station you like from Google. For this example I am using Absolute 80’s a UK 80’s inspired radio station. The stream is
http://stream.timlradio.co.uk/ABSOLUTE80SIRMP3?ats=1
Copy the stream into notepad and save the notepad file as the name as your radio station name and end extension of .M3u
So for example ABSOLUTE80s.M3u
Put this file inside a folder and call the folder Absolute 80’s
Using GIMP or Photoshop create a small icon (for example 350 x 350 or 250 x 250 jpeg - suggested sizes) to represent your radio station and save it as ‘ folder ’ (without quotes) inside the folder you create for the station
So inside the folder (named Absolute 80’s) there will be an icon called ‘ folder ’ (without quotes) and the M3u file (2 items in total)
Place this folder inside the following location (my example – where my XBMC folder is installed on my Xbox) here:
F/App/XBMC/UserData/playlists/music
And restart your Xbox
NOW ON THE XBOX
In XBMC navigate to ‘Listen to Music, Go to ‘add source’ and press green A button on your Xbox controller.
Navigate to ‘browse’, then to Music Playlists folder, Press green A button.
(*you will see all your added radio station folders here)
Go to OK and press green A button on your controller
Navigate to ‘Enter name for this media source and call it Internet Radio Stations ( or whatever you like)
Highlight OK and press green A button on your controller.
YOU ARE DONE
You will now have a location within Listen to Music to click on within XBMC with all your internet radio stations.
Now with your Xbox connected to the internet you can listen to all your favorite radio stations by repeating this process for each station you want and adding them.
The main thing is to locate the internet stream (which changes from time to time with some stations) for the station you want on Google.
I have done this as a lot of the old Python scripts for XBMC internet radio no longer work.
Hopefully this help others in the TiZ community get more out of the Xbox.
Cheers
ZaphodX
