Using XBOX 360 as a Media Extender with WMC

The Game Room
1

I wasn’t sure if this was a GQ, IMHO or a CS topic, but I figured I’d catch the most XBOX geeks in this forum, so here we go.

I’m in the process of transferring all my old VHS tapes to my PC running Windows Vista with Media Center. The plan is to then play all those videos on my XBOX 360 via it’s media extender capability but I’m having a little trouble figuring out the details for it. Anyone out there using their 360 this way have any advice?

Based on some research it appears that the 360, even with the recent dashboard upgrade, still will only play WMV formats and certain MPEG formats. This is annoying but I can encode the VHS tapes in WMV format if required, though MP4 would ideal since I could also watch them on my Zune and/or an iPod.

I’ve seen some old software that will transcode video on the fly in WMC allowing you to watch different formats on the 360 but that software is out and apparently out of date. I haven’t put too much effort into researching it, have any of you folks?

I also use Windows Media Player 11 and Zune 3 on my machine because I own a Zune and prefer WMP11 to watch videos (ahem, porn) on the PC and I know both those programs have XBOX integration as well. Especially the Zune and both my Zune library and Media Center are visible on my 360. Any opinions one which is bets to use via the 360?

Ideally I’d like to encode all of my videos the same way and have them playable on my Zune, a future iPod and the 360, but I’m not sure if that possible and if so what format and settings to use.

Anyone care to share their experiences? Anyone fought this battle before and come up with an ideal solution? Best universal format for media players? Talk to me geeks!

2

I use TVersity - it’s free and it’s nowhere near out of date. Others have had success with Orb, but I like TVersity better - it transcodes on the fly almost seamlessly if you have the horsepower on your system

3

I have an HTPC running vista and using VMC. I did try using the xbox 360 as an extender, but since I don’t play any console games (PC gamer really) I simply didn’t like the noise the 360 emitted. I now use a silent d-link media center extender for the bedroom TV.

I do know that the xbox 360 can stream obviously, TV being served by your PC (in case you have a tuner) and it has most of the abilities of your media center PC such as time shifting, recording, etc.

It should also be able to stream Divx, most MPG2 streams and wmv. Divx is probably your best bet in terms of quality and encoding time. It’s what I’ve been using and it’s served me well for both SD and HD stuff.

4

This doesn’t seem to be the case unless I’m doing something wrong.

5

Use TVersity, as mentioned above. I’d never used the media center capabilities on my 360 at all until I downloaded that, and I was up and running and watching x.264 (HD) videos streamed from my computer to my PC in about ten minutes. This works even with my ancient (1.5GHz) PC, though the initial buffering before the video plays does take a little while.