Streaming to an Xbox
Discussion
Currently I download videos to my main PC and copy them to the laptop if I want to watch the latest Lost on the TV in the lounge, as it has a VGA input.
This is all well and good, and works lovely, but I wouldn't mind not having to get of my arse and find the laptop every time I want to watch something.
Just bought an Xbox 360 and doing a bit of research I should be able to stream videos to it (even mpeg4 with transcode) however to do that I need MCE on my PC, which I don't have.
Anybody used MCE and is it worth getting just to do Xbox 360 streaming? Can I even get it without buying a piece of hardware?
Can I do video streaming without buying MCE? Maybe using the Vista Beta?
This is all well and good, and works lovely, but I wouldn't mind not having to get of my arse and find the laptop every time I want to watch something.
Just bought an Xbox 360 and doing a bit of research I should be able to stream videos to it (even mpeg4 with transcode) however to do that I need MCE on my PC, which I don't have.
Anybody used MCE and is it worth getting just to do Xbox 360 streaming? Can I even get it without buying a piece of hardware?
Can I do video streaming without buying MCE? Maybe using the Vista Beta?
I "obtained" MCE so I could use my 360 as an extender and it is absolutely brilliant.
I don't think the beta version of Vista supports the 360, the earlier ones didn't anyway.
Transcoder works well but can be a bit of processor hog. Also wireless connection isn't brilliant, can be a bit tempremental.
I don't think the beta version of Vista supports the 360, the earlier ones didn't anyway.
Transcoder works well but can be a bit of processor hog. Also wireless connection isn't brilliant, can be a bit tempremental.
peter hh said:
MCE plays movies, but where do you get these movies from?
Not DVD's,
do you get a subscription in with your MCE to download movies or sumit?
Not DVD's,
do you get a subscription in with your MCE to download movies or sumit?
MCE plays WMV's, DIVX etc. Only streams WMV's to the XBOX natively so you use Transcoder to well, transcode to a wmv stream that can be sent to the XBOX.
The OP "may" have ripped from DVD or "possibly" from P2P although I couldn't possibly comment on where they "may" have "possibly" obtained these videos.
Plotloss said:
You can hack the 360 so it plays Divx natively as well, works well apparently...
Not so much "hack the 360" as a "on-the-fly transcoding via a plug-in with MCE" at least that's what I get from a quick skim read of the article on it.
Click
I'd suggest needing serious grunt on my MCE machine to pull it off though with any form of reasonable quality though.
Get a copy of TVersity, run it on your PC, then every media enabled device can use the media that is on your computer.
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
If you don't mind adding a new bit of hardware - and not having to install copies of MCE, you could do no worse than buying an old Xbox (original) off eBay and running Xbox Media Centre.
A quick search on eBay shows you can pick up an already-modded one for 50-60 quid.
I use one - and XBox Media Centre (XBMC) is absolutely genius! It'll natively play just about anything you can throw at it, including DVDs, XViD, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, etc. The only format it balks at is 1080i WMV videos - it just hasn't got the processing power. Everything else is fine though.
Well worth investigating if you stream videos regularly into your living room.
(Edited to fix eBay search. If it doesn't work, search for "xbmc" )
A quick search on eBay shows you can pick up an already-modded one for 50-60 quid.
I use one - and XBox Media Centre (XBMC) is absolutely genius! It'll natively play just about anything you can throw at it, including DVDs, XViD, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, etc. The only format it balks at is 1080i WMV videos - it just hasn't got the processing power. Everything else is fine though.
Well worth investigating if you stream videos regularly into your living room.
(Edited to fix eBay search. If it doesn't work, search for "xbmc" )
Edited by spyke on Monday 23 October 19:15
spyke said:
If you don't mind adding a new bit of hardware - and not having to install copies of MCE, you could do no worse than buying an old Xbox (original) off eBay and running Xbox Media Centre.
A quick search on eBay shows you can pick up an already-modded one for 50-60 quid.
I use one - and XBox Media Centre (XBMC) is absolutely genius! It'll natively play just about anything you can throw at it, including DVDs, XViD, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, etc. The only format it balks at is 1080i WMV videos - it just hasn't got the processing power. Everything else is fine though.
Well worth investigating if you stream videos regularly into your living room.
(Edited to fix eBay search. If it doesn't work, search for "xbmc" )
A quick search on eBay shows you can pick up an already-modded one for 50-60 quid.
I use one - and XBox Media Centre (XBMC) is absolutely genius! It'll natively play just about anything you can throw at it, including DVDs, XViD, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, etc. The only format it balks at is 1080i WMV videos - it just hasn't got the processing power. Everything else is fine though.
Well worth investigating if you stream videos regularly into your living room.
(Edited to fix eBay search. If it doesn't work, search for "xbmc" )
Edited by spyke on Monday 23 October 19:15
Already do.. it's great.. just waiting for v2 to come out..
although, I would like to be able to use the 360, the MCE button on my remote would like some use!
doubtful if that will ever happen imo, the 360's security is a lot wider-ranging than the old xbox.
best place to get bleeding edge news is www.xboxhacker.net but even that is slow, they've sussed the dvd protection but that's it - I can't see the box being hacked very quickly for anything, let alone running a different OS on it.
best place to get bleeding edge news is www.xboxhacker.net but even that is slow, they've sussed the dvd protection but that's it - I can't see the box being hacked very quickly for anything, let alone running a different OS on it.
Frederick said:
doubtful if that will ever happen imo, the 360's security is a lot wider-ranging than the old xbox.
best place to get bleeding edge news is www.xboxhacker.net but even that is slow, they've sussed the dvd protection but that's it - I can't see the box being hacked very quickly for anything, let alone running a different OS on it.
best place to get bleeding edge news is www.xboxhacker.net but even that is slow, they've sussed the dvd protection but that's it - I can't see the box being hacked very quickly for anything, let alone running a different OS on it.
Thanks for the link.
360's a tough nut to crack I'll grant you however it looks like several teams have got a few vectors to try, running backup disks has been done the next challenge it fooling it in to running unsigned code... I'll keep my eye on that forum and ta muchly
spyke said:
If you don't mind adding a new bit of hardware - and not having to install copies of MCE, you could do no worse than buying an old Xbox (original) off eBay and running Xbox Media Centre.
A quick search on eBay shows you can pick up an already-modded one for 50-60 quid.
I use one - and XBox Media Centre (XBMC) is absolutely genius! It'll natively play just about anything you can throw at it, including DVDs, XViD, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, etc. The only format it balks at is 1080i WMV videos - it just hasn't got the processing power. Everything else is fine though.
Well worth investigating if you stream videos regularly into your living room.
(Edited to fix eBay search. If it doesn't work, search for "xbmc" )
A quick search on eBay shows you can pick up an already-modded one for 50-60 quid.
I use one - and XBox Media Centre (XBMC) is absolutely genius! It'll natively play just about anything you can throw at it, including DVDs, XViD, DivX, WMV, QuickTime, etc. The only format it balks at is 1080i WMV videos - it just hasn't got the processing power. Everything else is fine though.
Well worth investigating if you stream videos regularly into your living room.
(Edited to fix eBay search. If it doesn't work, search for "xbmc" )
Edited by spyke on Monday 23 October 19:15
Latest version even plays RealMedia...
Guess who else has one...
Got a 300GB drive in mine... also acts as a handy NAS device..
Frederick said:
Get a copy of TVersity, run it on your PC, then every media enabled device can use the media that is on your computer.
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
That looks exactly what I need! If it works as it says it does
I've got a broken Xbox, and i'm loath to spend any money to get this working
I had an impending evening of dual boot MCE installation hell, but this TVersity business seems to be the panacea... trooperiziz said:
Frederick said:
Get a copy of TVersity, run it on your PC, then every media enabled device can use the media that is on your computer.
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
That looks exactly what I need! If it works as it says it does
...and it doesn't
Reading down into the very depths of the documentation, it doesn't support video on the 360. I thought it seemed too good to be true.
afaik there is no way to play video on the 360 apart from using MCE.
Microsoft's 360 would become hugely popular if it supported popular codecs, giving it an even bigger edge over the ps3 and wii. I'll have to stick to my Xbox 1 for playing media for now..
Microsoft's 360 would become hugely popular if it supported popular codecs, giving it an even bigger edge over the ps3 and wii. I'll have to stick to my Xbox 1 for playing media for now..
Edited by scorp on Tuesday 24th October 11:52
trooperiziz said:
trooperiziz said:
Frederick said:
Get a copy of TVersity, run it on your PC, then every media enabled device can use the media that is on your computer.
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
you can get it free from www.tversity.com and it takes all of two minutes to get going with it
That looks exactly what I need! If it works as it says it does
...and it doesn't
Reading down into the very depths of the documentation, it doesn't support video on the 360. I thought it seemed too good to be true.
ah... I used it to stream mp3s through the tv rather than video... :eggonface:
In case anybody cares, I've got this working now....
The latest update for the 360 dashboard allows you to stream WMVs to your xbox360 using windows media connect on XP SP2.
So what i've done is downloaded windows media encoder, which isn't the best application in the world, but it's free and works, and more importantly can be run from the command line.
I've got a script that takes all videos in one directory, no matter what format (assuming you have the codecs you need), converts them into a format of WMV that is compatible with the XBOX and drops them into a directory that is shared via media connect. Video quality is perfectly watchable, and using the setting I have the file size comes out at around twice the size of a divx file, with no noticeable loss of quality. It takes around 10 minutes to encode a 40 minute file on my pc.
As far as a seamless solution goes, as long as you download all your videos into one place and remember to move them to somewhere else once they are converted, then it's a simple click of a button to get them viewable via the xbox.
Anybody with some basic windows dev skills could probably make something that is a bit more flexible, but it works for me...
I'll post the script on here when i get home, if anybody is interested.
The latest update for the 360 dashboard allows you to stream WMVs to your xbox360 using windows media connect on XP SP2.
So what i've done is downloaded windows media encoder, which isn't the best application in the world, but it's free and works, and more importantly can be run from the command line.
I've got a script that takes all videos in one directory, no matter what format (assuming you have the codecs you need), converts them into a format of WMV that is compatible with the XBOX and drops them into a directory that is shared via media connect. Video quality is perfectly watchable, and using the setting I have the file size comes out at around twice the size of a divx file, with no noticeable loss of quality. It takes around 10 minutes to encode a 40 minute file on my pc.
As far as a seamless solution goes, as long as you download all your videos into one place and remember to move them to somewhere else once they are converted, then it's a simple click of a button to get them viewable via the xbox.
Anybody with some basic windows dev skills could probably make something that is a bit more flexible, but it works for me...
I'll post the script on here when i get home, if anybody is interested.
trooperiziz said:
In case anybody cares, I've got this working now....
The latest update for the 360 dashboard allows you to stream WMVs to your xbox360 using windows media connect on XP SP2.
So what i've done is downloaded windows media encoder, which isn't the best application in the world, but it's free and works, and more importantly can be run from the command line.
I've got a script that takes all videos in one directory, no matter what format (assuming you have the codecs you need), converts them into a format of WMV that is compatible with the XBOX and drops them into a directory that is shared via media connect. Video quality is perfectly watchable, and using the setting I have the file size comes out at around twice the size of a divx file, with no noticeable loss of quality. It takes around 10 minutes to encode a 40 minute file on my pc.
As far as a seamless solution goes, as long as you download all your videos into one place and remember to move them to somewhere else once they are converted, then it's a simple click of a button to get them viewable via the xbox.
Anybody with some basic windows dev skills could probably make something that is a bit more flexible, but it works for me...
I'll post the script on here when i get home, if anybody is interested.
The latest update for the 360 dashboard allows you to stream WMVs to your xbox360 using windows media connect on XP SP2.
So what i've done is downloaded windows media encoder, which isn't the best application in the world, but it's free and works, and more importantly can be run from the command line.
I've got a script that takes all videos in one directory, no matter what format (assuming you have the codecs you need), converts them into a format of WMV that is compatible with the XBOX and drops them into a directory that is shared via media connect. Video quality is perfectly watchable, and using the setting I have the file size comes out at around twice the size of a divx file, with no noticeable loss of quality. It takes around 10 minutes to encode a 40 minute file on my pc.
As far as a seamless solution goes, as long as you download all your videos into one place and remember to move them to somewhere else once they are converted, then it's a simple click of a button to get them viewable via the xbox.
Anybody with some basic windows dev skills could probably make something that is a bit more flexible, but it works for me...
I'll post the script on here when i get home, if anybody is interested.
Interesting. Still, it's a bit rubbish it's only capable of playing WMVs. Does having Windows MCE or that tvelicity.com thing (can't remember what it was called and can't be bothered to go and read, although it's taken me so long to type this I probably could well have done so by now, and made a cup of tea in the meantime) get around the problem?
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