Windows Media Connect a Memory Hog
I posted about how much I like Windows Media Connect and the way it lets you access media on your computer network from the XBox 360 without having to do a lot of configuring on the 360; but the drawback is the thing is a memory hog.
The process name for the service is is wmccds.exe – right now on my system, it’s using 77 meg of memory.
Either it’s got some massive buffer for the decompressed data (which it shouldn’t need – it should be sending the mp3s directly to the XBox 360 and letting it do the decompression) or it’s cached my entire music library (song names, album names, etc) in memory. That’d be dumb, but I don’t see any other explanation.
There are some other software elements of the XBox 360 that show a lack of polish. For example, the photo viewer has almost no options. There’s so much they could have done with that. Also, when you’re playing a DVD, the only way to fast forward or skip to the next track from the controller is to bring up a little menu and choose those options on the menu. But I have a controller full of buttons - why not let me use some of the other buttons on the controller for these functions?
Fortunately all of this can be updated. Rumour has it Microsoft plans to keep the XBox 360 around for a long cycle, so continuing to develop the dashboard software would be a great investment for them.