360 media player functionality

joshua1

Hey all, I recently got myself (with the aid of 2 others) a 360. Upon looking through it a bit, I saw the "stream video from a PC in your network" dealie. This seems neat. The problem is, I don't particularly want to drop something like 180 dollars on a wireless adaptor for the 360, when it might not work. So what I'm asking is, what's it like? Is it actually useful? What about codecs? Is the networking any good? Im currently using my laptop as a miniature portable media centre, but if I can stream my videos of it onto the 360 in the other room, on a bigger tv, I think that would be rad. So, anyone have any experiences with it?

UncleChet

I stream to my 360 on an almost daily basis. I have a media center PC (win xp mce) and I had to copy a code provided from the 360 to my pc media center setup. It's really nice, though it does scale the image back to i Think 4:3 and I have a 16:9 tv. I don't know if the wireless adaptor is required, but I have it and it works like a champ. I will occasionally get network lag due to my buddy running uTorrent, but I turn it off and my streams return to normal.

tl:dr I stream to the 360 a lot and really like it.

Zonkytonkman

i have the media center extender, and today it woudln't play some videos for me. said that some of the files needed weren't downloaded. what should I do dude?

UncleChet

I wish I could help Zonky but I don't know much about the magic behind it. I'm only streaming files recorded by my media center pc (tv shows) and streaming them. I have also streamed mp3s but that's about it. It works for me and I don't push it too hard.

robotbebop

The xbox works great as a media center as long as you use WMV for video and WMA/MP3 for audio. Don't count on your DivX working without hacking, modding or a generally crappy "universal" media center solution like TVersity.

Mr_Grinch

The 360 isn't a good all round Media player. You pc has to either be a media center pc (check control panel->system) or you have to have a well powered one to transcode on the fly.

The 360 can play, streaming, without transcoding:

HD .TS
WMV

and probably a few others. You won't get it to play .avi without transcoding. If you transcode to your 360, you're converting a file from it's original source (say a divx .avi) in to a .wmv that the 360 likes to deal with. If your pc isn't fast enough then you need to leave the 360 to buffer for a bit before playing the file, otherwise it'll stick (Somewhat like when watching a trailer over the internet).

In general I'd say, if you want to watch High Def .wmv and .ts and you have a Media Center install, it's a good deal. If you've largely a xvid collection then I'd go with an Xbox and softmod it (plenty of guides out there), it's cheaper and it does SO much more.

joshua1

So, having a laptop would probably be better option for a media centre then? vs. streaming it to the xbox? all that stuff seems rather complicated

Zonkytonkman

Mr_Grinch wrote: »

The 360 isn't a good all round Media player. You pc has to either be a media center pc (check control panel->system) or you have to have a well powered one to transcode on the fly.

The 360 can play, streaming, without transcoding:

HD .TS
WMV

and probably a few others. You won't get it to play .avi without transcoding. If you transcode to your 360, you're converting a file from it's original source (say a divx .avi) in to a .wmv that the 360 likes to deal with. If your pc isn't fast enough then you need to leave the 360 to buffer for a bit before playing the file, otherwise it'll stick (Somewhat like when watching a trailer over the internet).

In general I'd say, if you want to watch High Def .wmv and .ts and you have a Media Center install, it's a good deal. If you've largely a xvid collection then I'd go with an Xbox and softmod it (plenty of guides out there), it's cheaper and it does SO much more.

see, i have media center extender. it came with my vista install on my lappy top.

saint2e

Bit of a tangent, but what's the easiest way one can play divx on the 360 via streaming?

robotbebop

Mr Grinch wrote:

In general I'd say, if you want to watch High Def .wmv and .ts and you have a Media Center install, it's a good deal. If you've largely a xvid collection then I'd go with an Xbox and softmod it (plenty of guides out there), it's cheaper and it does SO much more.

Please keep in mind that this will void your warranty and ban you from Live.

robotbebop

Just stumbled upon a program called Transcode 360. There's a Vista beta that works great with Vista thus far

You may need to download a MSKB patch however, seeing as anti-virus software tends to break it.

Links:

Transcode 360 and the KB933049 fix