03-25-2008 - Video on X-box

[Donomni]

Riiiiiight... 'cause I LOVE spending money on shit I usually get for free. Uh huh.

I'm calling it now. April 1st, teh forums go down for a week, with Martin saying he can't possibly support Greg's booty plunderin' swashbuckling.

[van]

Dang, I very rarely buy a show on DVD. The only ones I've bought are Firefly, and season 3 of Battlestar Galactica - and only because I couldn't find the first few eps of s3 on Easynews and I hate using torrents, haha.

[randomizer9]

If you are running Windows XP Media Center Edition (most WinXP PCs from Dell, HP, ect should have this) you will need to install a Media Center Extender onto it, fire up the 360, go to the Media blade, select "Media Center" then follow the setup instructions.

[adciv]

So. Will all the episodes of Lost be watched by April 4th? Just in time for the 4th season of BSG.

[Edgeman]

Registered to post this, just wanted to comment that I found using Windows Media Player to share my library was hideously slow. Tested a couple apps and have been using TVersity for several months now. I don't know how to get it to transcode automatically, and I can't get the 360 to play the x264 codec files, but it plays all my newer xvid files without difficulty over the network, and most of my older divx files too (since the update).

[BtEO]

The xbox does do xvid/divx (mpeg4 and h.264), but doesnt seem to support much in the way of audio codecs - so a bunch of my videos I had don't work right off the bat.

What the heck kind of audio codecs are you finding in your AVIs these days other than MP3? It's a pain in the ass to find a muxer that sticks Vorbis or AAC into an AVI container properly.

If you download a release with either of those it's almost certainly going to be in an OGM or MKV container which will need to be remuxed into AVI anyway. If you can handle that transcoding the audio isn't any less or more difficult.

[Hopium]

i use tversity to stream files to both my 360 and with my wireless router i can stream shows to my psp using the same thing its actually more stable and more dependable then wmp11 or zune + it uses alot less sys resources it will work for the ps3 as well i haven't tried access it with the wii browser yet only because i have no use to but i am sure it works for streaming pictures and such. all you need to do is disable sharing via wmp11 or whatever your using now and then add the shared folders to tversity you can increase the resolution on files that tversity needs to transcode but if your using xvid or divx it playbacks at its native resolution cause the 360 now supports xvid and such since the nov 07 update i am watching run fatboy run right now with it also refresh your library whenever you add new files or they don't show up i set mine to auto-refresh every 4 hours. torrents+360+tversity=MY DVR

[surge]

I came in here to echo the comments, why reencode with the sluggish Zune software? The 360 has had full Mpeg-4 support (Xvid/Divx) since Fall, all you have to do is use WMP11 to share out your media library with other devices, just leave it running. I tried using the Zune software but its too bloated. You can also do as others say and copy the files to a USB disc or DVD, the 360 will read them off either.

Okay, you do not have to leave Windows Media player running while you use the Xbox 360. If you network go down and you have to reestablish the connection you have to start it up again for the Xbox 360 to notice it, but you never have to leave it running.

Heh, all I know is when I close it I can no longer access the files, since I don't actually use the computer for anything right now other then that so I never really cared to investigate.

[NDogg]

ok long time reader first time poster

Just watch the episodes you need on abc.com! They stream all 4 seasons in full screen HD!!!
http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streaming/lan ... u&lpos=FEP

I can't believe I registered an account here just to say that...what a waste...

[onyxraven]

The xbox does do xvid/divx (mpeg4 and h.264), but doesnt seem to support much in the way of audio codecs - so a bunch of my videos I had don't work right off the bat.

What the heck kind of audio codecs are you finding in your AVIs these days other than MP3? It's a pain in the ass to find a muxer that sticks Vorbis or AAC into an AVI container properly.

If you download a release with either of those it's almost certainly going to be in an OGM or MKV container which will need to be remuxed into AVI anyway. If you can handle that transcoding the audio isn't any less or more difficult.

Hah I don't know - I havent spent the time to figure it out - all I know is that the xbox complains not about 'invalid file type' or anything, but 'missing audio codec' when trying to play those. And somehow, its the majority of my videos I've had for years.

[Hopium]

if you goto xbox live store then to games and scroll to media there is codec packs to download in a complete package, i am guessing what your trying to play is some time of anime cause sometimes they use some crap audio codecs.

[TopCat]

(or Mac for that matter...my Mac formatted portable hard drive is recognized perfectly by my 360).

I was actually about to post that I was really impressed that you could do that (although it probably requires you install the update that enables the iPod to work with the 360). You can't with the PS3 with HFS+ disks, and I got real confused because it had worked on my xbox.

And, only in the latest update are divx files over 2gb supported! hah!

[TopCat]

Does this kind of video playing from the network or a USB key work the same kind of way on the PS3? I'm especially interested in playing files off the network sine the PS3 has built-in wireless. Why the 360 doesn't, I have NO IDEA.

I have a PS3 and no, it doesn't do very much on the way of playing good with servers. The only stuff it'll find is stuff on a DLNA host, and I had to get some special stuff (EyeConnect or MediaLink) in order to do it, and from then it's still buggy (like I can see the list of albums, but it'll say there's no songs on the album).

I did, for a split second, have the ability to see video files, and one neat thing about the ps3 is you can copy them over to your hard disk (for buffer free streaming).

Anyway: since you can download content from the browser, maybe something that creates a webpage (maybe a perl script? i dunno) which has links to all your files that you'd want the ps3 would work out.

And on Wireless: Why the PS3 doesn't have built in Wireless N, I don't know.

[Deacon]

N is still at the draft stage, and that's certainly a "future proofing" step rather than just throwing in a/b/g wireless that will work for pretty much everyone out there.

I mean, come on Microsoft, even the Wii has built-in wireless...

[TopCat]

N is still at the draft stage, and that's certainly a "future proofing" step rather than just throwing in a/b/g wireless that will work for pretty much everyone out there.

I mean, come on Microsoft, even the Wii has built-in wireless...

So, I just bought an apple airport express so that I could use it as an N receiver for my gaming consoles & slingbox. In fact, an Airport Express is the same price as the microsoft wireless adapter. Unless you check provantage.

On that note: the first one I got from Provantage didn't work, but since I'd had successful dealings before I exchanged it, and they took care of it just fine. Slow, but it worked out when I contacted them and some woman working there bumped shipping up for me.