Xbox 360 media

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crackrdbycracku

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#83678 20-May-2011 10:45

Hi All,

Me needing advice again.

I am considering buying an xbox 360, I want to do some gaming, the better half wants to do the exercise at home, blah, blah. I have most of these aspects covered.

Now, what I am wondering is how it will work as a media extender. I have a laptop (running Vista, oh the shame) which is good for downloading movies from legal sources, of course, and watching YouTube and TV on Demand and I am going to start recording TV to it when I get around to hooking up a TV tuner and there is enough TV worth watching.

What I would like to do is buy an xbox with a 250GB hard drive and move media stuff off my laptop to the console and watch from there.

If this isn't possible am I able to stream stuff from my laptop to my console so I can watch it on a bigger screen?

Has anybody had issues / problems / success with this?

Are there file format issues or MKV issues?

Will this work over Wi-Fi or does something need to be plugged directly into something? The xbox is going to be close to my wireless router but the laptop gets moved around.

Is XBMC an option or alternative? What are the benefits or issues? Are there other mod options I should consider.

Does Win Media Centre or Win Media Player 'play nice' with the xbox? Does one do bette than the other?

Anything I am missing? I'm not a complete moron but I'm no tech either. Is there somewhere to get easy step by step instructions?

Kind regards.

Jack

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

Regs

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Snowflake

#471488 20-May-2011 11:16

streaming from laptop to xbox is no problem. mkv is fine too with the latest xbox updates and divx codecs on laptop

wifi can be a bit dicey for high bit rate, i use cables

when you use the media center on the xbox, it is as though you are using it on the laptop. you see addins at both sides and the UI is identical. if you have tv tuner in laptop then you can watch tv from the xbox. you can use a standard media center remote (any one) with the xbox. unsure about storing media locally on the xbox for access via media center - i've never tried it.

some file formats stream natively to the xbox, some get transcoded. i forget which, but i think the h.264 freeview is transcoded. xvid and divx etc are all native from memory

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ActiveMatrix

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#471491 20-May-2011 11:20

I use this same setup at home with multiple Xbox's around the house. They watch TV from the Media Centre and Record TV as well as watching downloaded TV and Movie information. This all works very well, however I agree with the comment that using cables is far more problem free.

crackrdbycracku

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#471497 20-May-2011 11:29

Thanks for the info.

Ok, running cables from the laptop to the xbox shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Look forward to setting it all up.

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

ActiveMatrix

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#471498 20-May-2011 11:32

crackrdbycracku: Thanks for the info.

Ok, running cables from the laptop to the xbox shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Look forward to setting it all up.

Good Luck! - Once you've got it all setup, you'll wonder why you didn't do it years ago! - Media Centre (Especially with MediaBrowser) which is a free add-in for movie information, artwork, ratings etc really opens up the door to a fantastic experieince.

Definitly check out Media Browser - Also make sure you check the extra setup for security required for Xbox :)

All the best!

billgates

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#471500 20-May-2011 11:42

No way to transfer the media from the workstation to Xbox 360's HDD but as others have said, streaming works fine without any issues. Easy to setup. I watch freeview and stream MKV's and other various media files from my PC to Xbox 360's built in media center functionality.

Do whatever you want to do man.

gcorgnet

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#471501 20-May-2011 11:42

Hi,

I am quite curious about what you mean by extra security setting for XBOX.

Could you please explain?

Thanks,

Guillaume

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crackrdbycracku

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#471503 20-May-2011 11:49

Another, related, question for xbox 360 uesers.

What do you use the 250GB hard drive for?

I guess you store games there to save the inconvenience of changing disks and it stores games bought on-line which don't have a disk. How much space does a game take up, anyway?

But it seems like a massive amount of space if you're not storing music or movies there.

Does it get filled up? If so, with what?

Just curious really.

Didn't anybody tell you I was a hacker?

ActiveMatrix

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#471506 20-May-2011 12:02

gcorgnet: Hi,

I am quite curious about what you mean by extra security setting for XBOX.

Could you please explain?

Thanks,

Guillaume

Here you go: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permalinks/1316/how-do-i-set-up-the-xbox-360-to-work-with-media-browser

Without the permission being set Media will not display on the Xbox360.

gcorgnet

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#471510 20-May-2011 12:07

ActiveMatrix:
gcorgnet: Hi,

I am quite curious about what you mean by extra security setting for XBOX.

Could you please explain?

Thanks,

Guillaume

Here you go: http://community.mediabrowser.tv/permalinks/1316/how-do-i-set-up-the-xbox-360-to-work-with-media-browser

Without the permission being set Media will not display on the Xbox360.

Cheers for that.
Funny I got my working a few months back but don't remember reading about this nor do I remember setting it...

Thanks for clarifying.

billgates

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#471570 20-May-2011 13:42

crackrdbycracku: Another, related, question for xbox 360 uesers.

What do you use the 250GB hard drive for?

I guess you store games there to save the inconvenience of changing disks and it stores games bought on-line which don't have a disk. How much space does a game take up, anyway?

But it seems like a massive amount of space if you're not storing music or movies there.

Does it get filled up? If so, with what?

Just curious really.

Depends on the game. On average most 360 games will take up between 4GB ~ 6GB in HDD space. Then you have DLC, Xbox live arcade games stored on the HDD. Pretty sure, one can store music on the HDD. Also Zune marketplace movies and music on the HDD.

Do whatever you want to do man.

toyonut

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#471900 21-May-2011 14:24

Yeah, pretty much as above. Just for installing games and copying music. Also as more games need more space than a dvd holds, you need to install 2 dvd's to hard drive to play the game (Forza 3, fallout + expansions, probably increasingly others). Plus Microsoft is now doing movies through the Zune service which can be a couple of GB in size.
Good call on the cable, I find that at least one end of the process needs to be wired to give good performance. Running a laptop and the xbox off wireless G would not even stream xvids cleanly all the time. Both were quite far from the router though.

*Edit* I have used up a fair amount of the 80 GB mine came with and I only have a handful of games and no music or movies.

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samsam

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#471906 21-May-2011 14:42

how do you stream MKV to the xbox 360? do you need to convert if first or should it just work? I have tried doing it from media center but it doesnt play the files

billgates

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#471912 21-May-2011 15:01

samsam: how do you stream MKV to the xbox 360? do you need to convert if first or should it just work? I have tried doing it from media center but it doesnt play the files

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=45&topicid=57636

Do whatever you want to do man.