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Anybody have MCE / Xbox360 ?

post #1 of 10
4/19/06 at 5:52pm
Thread Starter 
Hey all

So I just got my M170 (Still loving it btw) and I ordered it with the intention of having MCE hook up with my Xbox360, which worked pretty flawless until.... Video format issues

So my question is for anyone else who is trying to do what I am and your success with it. What are you using to convert your video to something that MCE can stream to your 360 ?

I have tried the Windows Media encoder method and I get 4 hour transcodes and massive (3 GB ) video files. I have also tried Videora, this seems to work but I'm not happy with the quality, also the files are 4 X bigger than the source. Is there a way to make Windows Media encoder compress ? Or can you compress afterwards and not loose the compatibility. Worst of all is I can play most of the formats in MCE, they just won't stream through extender.

Any ideas would be appreciated
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post #2 of 10
4/20/06 at 4:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkneuros
Hey all

So I just got my M170 (Still loving it btw) and I ordered it with the intention of having MCE hook up with my Xbox360, which worked pretty flawless until.... Video format issues

So my question is for anyone else who is trying to do what I am and your success with it. What are you using to convert your video to something that MCE can stream to your 360 ?

I have tried the Windows Media encoder method and I get 4 hour transcodes and massive (3 GB ) video files. I have also tried Videora, this seems to work but I'm not happy with the quality, also the files are 4 X bigger than the source. Is there a way to make Windows Media encoder compress ? Or can you compress afterwards and not loose the compatibility. Worst of all is I can play most of the formats in MCE, they just won't stream through extender.

Any ideas would be appreciated
Transcoding is the only way to keep the video/audio sync'd for streaming to the Xbox360. Trying the Video_TS rename method causes lots of random problems with different movies. So unless you want to watch each and every rip/rename movie for defects, the 2-4 hour Transcode process is still shorter and stable for streaming. The only other thing I've found is to just use a TV tuner, plug in your DVD player to the video-in, and record the movie thru the TV tuner. This will program very pleasing results and only takes as long as the movie is to get it done. Just set MCE to external cable box and give it a weird zip code it can't find. Then you can do manual recordings and rename them later. You won't get 5.1 audio, but the picture quality with be just fine and the video/audio sync will be top notch.

Alot of groups have tried looking to see if they could hack the Xbox360 dashboard to support DivX, but considering the WMV/WMA/MPEG decoder is hardware based (through the ATI chipset), none of them see it as a reachable goal.
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post #3 of 10
4/20/06 at 11:23am
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the idea, I never considered playing into the tuner card, I am going to try tv out from one pc to tuner card in another and see if the quality is decent enough. Most of the material I'm trying to preserve is dvd ripped then compressed. As for the content on dvd, that should be a very adequate solution. I'll post my results if pc to pc works well.

Thanks again
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post #4 of 10
4/20/06 at 11:49am
I download lots of movies and TV shows off the internet that use divx and Xvid and stream them all through my Xbox 360 using a cool program called Transcode 360. You can get it from http://www.runtime360.com/ , which oddly enough seems to be down right now. But if you google it you should be able to find it somewhere else.

With this program all you have to do is install it on your PC running MCE and on the xbox when you go to view a movie, highlight it, hit info button, select More... and then select transcode and the program transcodes the video files on the fly while you watch them. It has worked with everything that I have tried to watch so far.

Hope that helps
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post #5 of 10
4/20/06 at 4:19pm
I remember early versions of this program. The thing that disgusted me most about them was that you had to go into the room with the MCE box just to start the Transcode, and then walk all the way back to the Xbox360 and start the stream.

Last I checked you couldn't activate and stream the entire process from a single click of your Media Remote on the Xbox360, correct?
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post #6 of 10
4/20/06 at 9:06pm
Thread Starter 
OK, totally fixed my issue

I tried Transcode 360, and I'm not sure what I did but whoa did I mess up Windows, I couldn't get a full to desktop boot in less than ten minutes.
So I wanted my drive split into partitions anyway Clean Reinstall.
I'll ghost backup and then maybe tinker with that another time.

I ended up using MCE through my component HD cable and am avoiding extender altogether. It looks sweet and every video file plays. It even let me use my Firefly remote for MCE. I'll still record with Beyond TV and share the video folders for MCE.

Not what I had originaly planned but working well anyway. I'm still boggled as to why M$ would allow codecs to be installed and used in MCE but not allow them for the 360.
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post #7 of 10
4/22/06 at 10:18pm
Jax

I just started using transcode 360, so I don't know much about the earlier versions but.. The version I have is very nice. Its just a simple click of the info button and then select transcode and everything works like a charm for me.
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post #8 of 10
4/23/06 at 5:21am
Darkneuros... the MCE box isn't the one decoding the video when you see it on your TV. The MCE box just streams the WMV file to the 360 and the 360 does the decoding itself. The codecs are "supposedly" in hardware and not written into the Dashboard according to tech's that replied to the old 360 webcasts about lack of video streaming support.

Thearod, I'll download it and eventually get around to giving it a try. I'll let you know what I think if I remember to try it out. For now I'll stick to my direct capture method.
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post #9 of 10
4/23/06 at 1:26pm
Thread Starter 
My misunderstanding, Thanks for clearing that up, I'm not sure where I got the idea it streams, so following that line of understanding, the 360 will never be able to play other formats. Go M$ !

Is there any compressed format that will work ?
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post #10 of 10
4/23/06 at 4:03pm
Only WMV and MPEG-2 are supported by the on-board hardware of the Xbox360 as far as I know.
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