Sound too good to be true?  It's not - media streaming to your XBOX360 or PlayStation 3 is here - and it's awesome.  Here's how to get it set up and working on your beloved 'Plug.

Enable Media Streaming

First, you'll need to enable the setting in the Pogoplug setup screen.  Head over to My.Pogoplug.com, log in, and click the "Settings" button in the upper right hand corner.

Once there, click on the "Media Settings" tab on the left hand side.  You'll see an option at the top specifically for XBOX360 and PS3 - click the check box to enable it.

Turn off 10 Second Preview Generation (Videos)

As of the writing of this article, if you are allowing the Pogoplug to automatically generate 10 second previews of your videos, only the 10 second preview itself will play on your game console, rather than the full file.  (Cloud Engines is aware of this issue.)  You have the choice, assuming you want to stream video to your console, to either allow Pogoplug to transcode the whole video, or not transcode at all.

To change how this works, click on the "Settings" link next to your Pogoplug in the Media Settings list.

You will receive a dialog box like the one above.  Change the indicated option from "auto-generate preview" to either full transcode, or disabled.

Note that if you do not transcode your videos, they will work on your console (assuming it's a format the console supports) but will not work in Pogoplug's web interface.

Housekeeping

I was unable to stream media to my console immediately after completing these steps.  I performed a simple reboot of the Pogoplug and temporarily disabled the in progress Active Copy operation, then tried again, and it worked flawlessly.  If you are having trouble, try these steps before continuing.

Fire Up Your Game Console

YES!  We're there.  Power up your 360 or PS3, and the Pogoplug should be visible in your media browser.  I tested on an XBOX 360.

Without any additional effort, my Pogoplug was immediately visible in the list of network attached devices, as my XBOX360 lives on my local LAN.

Viewing photos is a breeze.  In my case, the XBOX360 was able to sort based on the already present sorting in my Pogoplug, making it easy to find the photos I wanted to see.

Streaming music was similarly smooth.  My console detected all of the music files present on my Pogoplug, sorting them by album, artist, etc.  Playback executed without a hitch.  Note that the music playable by your console is limited to what the unit is capable of - for example, I doubt that XBOX360 supports Ogg Vorbis.  The console decides what it can play, rather than the Pogoplug - meaning that what streams on your 'Plug in the web interface might not stream on the console.

This is similarly true for digital videos.  Fortunately, I had already pre-encoded my shows/podcasts/etc. into a standard MP4/H.264 format, so the XBOX360 picked it up just fine.  Videos transcoded by the Pogoplug should play fine on your console as well.  I tested hour-long recorded television shows as well as movies, and all streamed smoothly and jitter-free.

Conclusions

This feature was a genuine "no-brainer" to set up, and worked as promised.  The only issue I encountered was that my XBOX360 required an optional media update to play back some of my videos, but this was not related to the Pogoplug in any way.

The bottom line is this - with no extra hardware, you can enjoy watching all of the digital media you are storing on your Pogoplug right in the comfort of your living room or game room.  Watching a movie? Photo slideshow when guests are over?  Music streaming during a party?  For Pogoplug and XBOX360/PS3 owners, it's now a reality.

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