XBox 360 as a MC Extender

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › XBox 360 as a MC Extender - questions

rvangelder

352 posts

Ultimate Geek

#95080 26-Dec-2011 19:46

Hi all,

I'm considering moving my HTPC into another room (currently Windows 7 MC) and replacing it with a XBox 360.

I've read that it's quite a nice solution, however I have at least one question.

1. Is it possible to play recorded tv shows at 1.25x speed? This is a must-have feature for us.
2. Are there any other noticeable differences between a local media center and an xbox360 extender media center?

Thanks

gehenna

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#561651 26-Dec-2011 21:27

There's a pretty good discussion on here about this already, a couple in fact. Search and you'll find them. In general though there's no real difference between the functionality except that in order to watch some types of media on the Xbox you need to transcode where on a PC you would just install the correct codec and watch natively.

k14

629 posts

Ultimate Geek

#561655 26-Dec-2011 21:36

That's all I have ever used as a HTPC. I don't know how you would play it back at 1.25 speed. I don't use the windows media centre extender, tried it a few times but it is just really slow to load and slow to get to what you want to watch. I use serviio which is a DLNA server and it works perfectly. The other way is to just share your media folders on your computer and you can stream them straight from there. Pretty much the same as the DLNA way but I prefer the way Serviio sorts all the tv shows/movies and it also tells you which episode was the last watches. There are heaps more options too that you can change. Also it allows you to stream formats not supported by xbox natively, which occurs from time to time.

rvangelder

352 posts

Ultimate Geek

#561663 26-Dec-2011 21:53

My biggest issue is the play speed. I searched the forum but there were no results so I made a new post.
I appreciate you mentioning the transcoding - that shouldn't be an issue for me. If you know any other differences, I'd be keen to learn them before I take the plunge.

I'm not going to switch away from Windows Media Center because I'm so happy with it.

Could anyone else with an WMC xbox extender confirm whether the play speed 1.25 works ok?

gehenna

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#561689 26-Dec-2011 23:28

I never experienced any speed issues with my Xbox as an extender. It worked perfectly well as an extension to the Windows Media Center PC - as it is intended. I can't recall about the play speed though.

rvangelder

352 posts

Ultimate Geek

#561760 27-Dec-2011 10:52

if you currently have an xbox extender against a windows 7 media center, could you please try playing a recording, then hit the fastforward button on your remote once to see if the play speed increases?

gehenna

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#561774 27-Dec-2011 11:32

I don't so can't sorry, been a while since i had one.

k14

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Ultimate Geek

#561815 27-Dec-2011 13:13

rvangelder: if you currently have an xbox extender against a windows 7 media center, could you please try playing a recording, then hit the fastforward button on your remote once to see if the play speed increases?

Yeah the speed increases but the first fast forward option is at least 2x and maybe 4x. Unless there is some custom setting I doubt you can do 1.25x

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rvangelder

352 posts

Ultimate Geek

#561817 27-Dec-2011 13:16

It's supposed to play at 1.25x speed and the audio plays at normal pitch but actors talk faster.

rhysb

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#561821 27-Dec-2011 13:25

rvangelder: It's supposed to play at 1.25x speed and the audio plays at normal pitch but actors talk faster.

No, sorry, the xbox will not play back at 1.25x with audio. It just fast forwards as k14 mentions.

The Photo Wall feature is also not available on an extender if you use that. Photo slideshows work fne though.

rvangelder

352 posts

Ultimate Geek

#561927 27-Dec-2011 18:10

Thanks for the feedback. No 1.25x playspeed is a deal breaker. What a shame.