Just a small utility I made yesterday. Have a look.
Part of readme.txt:

send2XBMC makes it easy to send either an URL or the address of a
remotely shared (SMB) or local media file to your Xbox. This can be done
by opening the file through the dialog of send2XBMC or by providing
the path/URL by a commandline parameter. To use paths with spaces,
add quotation marks to the parameter. Be sure to have the Web Interface
enabled on your Xbox.

To use send2XBMC with Total Commander from its Start Menu, point to the
location of send2XBMC and use %P%N as parameters. This will send the file
under the cursor to play on your Xbox.

You can create a shortcut to send2xbmc.exe in the SendTo folder of your
user profile to use send2XBMC from the context menu. To add files to the
XBMC playlist, create a shortcut with the parameter "/add" (no quotes).

Download

New version:

Changes since v2.0.0428:
========================
+ Added a routine to automatically choose the right (audio or video)
playlist, instead of just using the currently active, which didn't
work that well
+ INI-file entries AudioExt and VideoExt to manually configure which
extensions are to be handled as audio/video files in order to add
them correctly to the corresponding XBMC playlists

Changes since v1.0.0426:
========================
* Completely restructured code
* Removed UPX Compression (theoretically, since it has a very small
file size already, it should initialize a bit faster)
+ Some more checks integrated
+ Added commandline parameter "/add" to add files to the XBMC playlist

Download

send2XBMC v3.0.0508

Changes since v2.1.0429:
========================
* Code restructuring
* Added audio playlist extensions to variable AudioExt
+ Ability to send/queue more files at once from commandline / file dialog
+ Ability to send files containing the following characters: & + ; #
+ Short paths to files allowed (C:\Progra~1\...)
+ Total Commander temporary list file compatibility (%L)

Download

Thanks for sharing this.
Always good to see new tools coming out.
Unfortunately I can't test it at the moment, I wish the people who did would give some feedback/support to help you.
& Don't let the lack of user feedback/support here put you off.

KM

Thanks for your reply. I just made this little tool for myself and it has worked out great for me, so I decided to share it here.

It's a lot easier to make a playlist from your computer (explorer/Total Commander) then to browse all your shares from the Xbox. Also it allows you to use your Xbox as sort of a quickview extension to explorer/Total Commander.

Sounds good,
Maybe you should get it released to the other xbox modding sites too.

Also personally I feel that exe packers are best for non bloatware/resource hungry programs, i.e. your app.
The difference in performance is minimal in these cases.
Incase you change your mind, check out PECompact2: http://www.bitsum.com (has better compression than upx).

good luck.

KM

Well, since this program runs for just some milliseconds to get the commands sent to XBMC and then immediately quits, the best would be to have the program initialize as fast as possible. When compressing the executable, the downside is that it has to be unpacked in memory every time it's started. Then again, the upside is that your pc doesn't have to load as much data from the harddrive, which could slow down the process. The difficulty is how to determine which process (the reading of more data from HDD vs. the extraction process to memory when compressed) costs more time and is, of course, entirely dependent on your processor, memory and harddisk. I chose not to compress it, to reduce the cpu usage when started. Feel free to compress it, of course.

Furthermore, I know that an executable compressed by UPX has no memory overhead whatsoever when run, for PECompact2 I don't know anything about that, same for extraction speed compared to UPX. If you can persuade me with evidence that it would in fact be better to compress the .exe, please do elaborate.

Well if you want ultimate startup speed cos of the your design you should stick to not using any compressors.
And to speed it up even further try StripReloc: http://www.jrsoftware.org/striprlc.php

KM

I tried StripReloc, but it seems there are no relocations in the file already.

Your app is probably written in VB in that case.
I tried it on a few VB programs & it didn't work on any of them.

KM

Explorer context menu

I made quite some changes to since the last version posted here. Some of the new features:

• YouTube support (even high quality H264/MP4 format): automatically extracts video URL from a YouTube video page URL like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AqIJpvA_yY
• Automated Explorer context menu integration (removable): send files to XBMC directly from Explorer
• Automated Opera context menu integration (removable): send online files or YouTube videos to XBMC directly from Opera
• Total Commander list file compatibility: send selected file(s) to XBMC directly from Total Commander
• Custom shares specification: decide what Windows SMB shares to include or exclude in share search when sending local file to XBMC
  
• Proper error handling when problems connecting to XBMC
• Quite some code cleanup

Easy 1-2-3 Starting Guide:

1. Make sure the XBMC webserver is ENABLED!
2. Integrate send2XBMC in Explorer, Opera and/or Total Commander (see included send2xbmc.txt)
3. Check if the creation of a send2xbmc.ini file is necessary for you, for instance to provide send2XBMC with the IP-address of your Xbox (see included send2xbmc.txt)

Opera context menu

Download here (v4.4.0615)

send2XBMC v4.8.0504

Changes since v4.8.0217:
------------------------
+ Added "Send to" Explorer context menu extension: this addresses both the
issue of not being able to play multiple files from Explorer (this opens up
multiple instances of send2XBMC causing trouble) and the 'Play from here'
feature request: select the files, right-click on the file you want to play
first and use 'send2XBMC - Play now' from 'Send to' menu
+ Added functionality to (ask to) ignore playlist files when multiple files or
folders are selected to prevent files from being added twice to the playlist
* Although the shell extension is still available, it can be considered
obsolete, as it causes problems when adding multiple files simultaneously:
Explorer will open up an instance of send2XBMC for every file/folder selected
causing 1) an unordered adding to the XBMC playlist and 2) possible problems
when adding too many files/folders at once (XBMC returns errors)

Changes since v4.7.0106:
------------------------
+ Adds Explorer context menu items for folders
* Support for other protocols than http (e.g. rtsp://)
+ Custom webpage patterns for video URL extraction (see INI-file settings)

Changes since v4.6.1116:
------------------------
+ Added support for Entensity.net flash movies
* Added .flv to file extensions for Video playlist
* Quick fix for YouTube due to localization of the page
* Renamed Explorer and Opera context menu items ("send2XBMC - Play now" and
"send2XBMC - Add to playlist")

Changes since v4.5.0707:
------------------------
* When function SyntaxURL was called (and "%E2" substitutes "."), the correct
playlist (video or audio) could not be determined

Changes since v4.4.0615:
------------------------
+ Added Opera context menu item to enqueue URLs
* Renamed Explorer and Opera context menu items ("Play/Enqueue in XBMC")
* Fixed a dumb bug with not passing through the variable $Path when checking
if the file was shared or not

Changes since v4.3.0612:
------------------------
+ Added commandline parameter "/dellshellext" to remove entries from Explorer
context menu
+ Added commandline parameter "/opera" and "/delopera" to automatically add
or remove Opera context menu items respectively
+ New INI-file entry YouTubeMP4 to choose for high quality H264 YouTube stream
as the Xbox CPU might not be up for it, causing stuttery playback
* Cleanup of ShellExt function
* Minor changes in Main, ParseParameters (formerly DeterminePath) and FileCheck
* Fixed issue with substituting "/" by syntaxURL

Changes since v4.2.0608:
------------------------
* [Big thanks to .zap!] SyntaxURL function is now more universal and used to
change every non-alphanumeric character into its corresponding hexadecimal,
avoiding problems with URL parsing by XBMC (should fix YouTube problems)

Changes since v4.1.0607:
------------------------
* Removed stupid ByRef(erence) residue
+ Added commandline parameter "/shellext" to add send2XBMC to Explorer
context menu: right-click on file(s) and send to XBMC immediately
+ Proper error handling on network connection problems (finally!)
+ Some more code clearity by comments where appropriate
- Removed the debug code

Changes since v4.0.0607:
------------------------
* Code cleanup with regards to sending command to XBMC
* YouTube support: now doesn't need a temporary file
* YouTube support: no line-by-line variable seeking in HTML page
+ YouTube support: dialog if link could not be found or parsed correctly

Changes since v3.1.0517:
------------------------
* SharesIncl now has priority over SharesExcl
+ Preliminary support for YouTube URLs: tries to pass through the
higher quality MP4 format videos first, if not found for the specific video,
then FLV is passed to XBMC

Download

Have you released this to the XBMC community, over at XBMC.org ?????

Well, I put it on the forum (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=26253), but never got a reply.

I would love to be able to test this app but i cannot get it into the opera context menu.
whenever i copy and paste the command into start>run it just says that it cant find send2xbox.exe.
Could you provide a step by step, I believe i have the latest build, but i do have microxp on my laptop so i dont know if that makes a diff or not

Err, don't forget the complete path to send2xbmc.exe, whereever you have extracted it to. For example, if you put it in C:\Program Files\send2xbmc, then use the command:

"C:\Program Files\send2xbmc\send2xbmc.exe" /opera

Don't forget the quotation marks.

I did as you said and the cmd prompt screen actually stayed black like it was trying to do something but even when that screen went away and i went into opera and right clicked on a link send2xbmc wasnt in the menu

Here's how it works:

send2XBMC checks whether there is a custom .ini file in your Application Data directory (%appdata%\\Opera\Opera\profile\menu. If you have a single profile in the Opera main dir, it'll direct you to that profile folder. If it can't find any menu setup .ini file in a profile dir, then it'll point you to the default .ini file.

See the double Opera\Opera? Perhaps that's changed with newer versions, could be...
If you DO use a customized menu setup, please be sure you let send2XBMC edit that specific .ini file! Check which .ini file you use in the Opera preferences and point send2XBMC to that file.

You did something wrong if you saw the command prompt though. Try the new version, it's compatible with Opera 10 (http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/blog/).

Download here