Click Here to visit Embedded Automation - mControl
My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders - Chris Lanier's Blog

My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

Peter Near provide everyone with a sneak peek of Vista Media Center and Xbox 360 Extender’s, now here’s what I have to say about them.

 

I have said in the past that I think the Xbox 360 will fail to be the product the general public wants if it doesn’t (in some way) support MPEG-4 decode.  However, since I wrote that I figured out what Microsoft’s strategy is with not supporting MPEG-4 (DivX/XviD) on the Extenders.  The idea will be to have the PC transcode the content to be DLNA Compliant.  It’s required that a DNLA Compliant device must be able to decode MPEG-2 for video, LPCM for audio, and JPEG for pictures.  However, WMV9 just happens to be an optional format for DNLA compliance.  Current Extenders and the Xbox 360 support all of the above.  So, the concept is that you will purchase an Intel Viiv-based PC that will transcode the content for you, and send it out onto the network.  I would very much assume non-Viiv-based PC’s will also have a path to do this.  I'll be buying a Viiv-based PC for many reasons, however.

 

Gigabit Ethernet would have been nice to see, however it was most likely kicked to lower the overall price.  If transcoding to WMV9 is the goal, 10/100 will be good enough.  But, sending out a few MPEG-2 streams will start to slow the network down.  Powering On/Off with the remote is also a welcomed feature.

 

HDTV support is welcomed and will include DVR-MS records and WMV-HD files.  Once HDTV support is expanded upon, the Xbox 360 will also support those recordings.  Along with HDTV support comes AC3 (Dolby Digital) and WMA Pro 5.1 support.

 

No Visualizations for music is to be expected in my opinion.  That’s just too much unless data is send through the network with little gain.  What would (will?) to be nice if Microsoft could tap into the visualizations that the Xbox 360 will have itself for playing back music.  However, due to the architecture of the Extenders, I’m not sure that will happen.

 

I expect streaming of DVD’s to be an added feature around the time of Vista.  Windows Media DRM 10 for Network Devices can and will provide this feature, just wait for it.  =)

Published Thursday, October 06, 2005 11:21 AM by chrisl
Filed under: , , , , ,

Comments

# Peter Near Covers Xbox 360 Extenders and Vista Media Center

Thursday, October 06, 2005 9:21 AM by TrackBack

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

As a customer and potential xbox 360 customer I still think the lack of xvid/divx support is a big mistake. Most folks use some flavor of it for archiving... Personally I'm not sure I can be bothered to get a 360 as a second extender for the bedroom if I have to convert a terabyte of data to a MS exstension... the tools among other things make this pretty daunting and undesirable. Ah well doubt they will bother to change it now and go for customer friendly.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005 11:41 PM by chrisl

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

I was unaware that the xbox 360 would not play divx / xvid. I was looking forward to it replacing my philips streamium which has never lived up to expectations as it can't handle ac3 or dts sound (what ever philips say).

i am not prepared to go down a transcoding route as I see no point. i dont play games so was looking for a good media adapter essentially that I could use the play from a network share?

Definitely not going to be pushed down the MS route. Will be interesting to see if the 360 will be eventaully 'hackable' link the original xbox using the xbox mdeia centre which does play divx and even bin files etc. If the xbox itself can do the transcoding then could possibly be persuaded buy doubt it.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005 7:50 AM by chrisl

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

Buy a new pc in order to stream to an xbox...riiiight. It's pitiful that the 360 only streams wmv from a media centre PC. Can't see it replacing my chipped xbox 1 with XBMC any time soon.

Sunday, November 27, 2005 5:11 PM by chrisl

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

I have a 360 setup thru Media Center XP. I love the fact that I can stream video into my living room from my pc in another. I have a plasma tv I had to keep in the same back room with my pc before, but now I have it in my living room and can watch movies from my pc. I watch ALOT of movies on my pc and the fact that it doesn't play xvid or divx is a shame, however I use WinAVI to convert the movies in roughly 10-15 mins so it's no big deal. So far I'm really liking the system alot. Well worth the money spent.

Monday, November 28, 2005 7:38 AM by chrisl

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

When PS3 comes out and probably has support for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264. Microsoft will soon learn that they made a mistake.

Microsoft, even though VC-1/WMV9 is good and has been best for a couple of years now the rest of the world is now starting to use MPEG-4 AVC/H.264. Please realize this and support this codec as well as WMV.

Most Gamers may not care, but for many the media features are just as important as the gaming.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005 4:12 PM by chrisl

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

360 is very cool. So far I have been mostly pleased with how it works with my MCE. Even supporting just wmv would be OK if there was a good tool (i.e. complete and fast tool) to convert files. I've tried many and WinAvi works best, but you can't do 5.1.

Files converted to mpeg were working OK, but after the January update the 360 stopped playing mpegs!! I have not found anyone else reporting this problem, but I've tried a bunch of fixes and still no mpeg playback on the 360!

All in all I'm hoping MS continues to update the 360 and fixes problems, bugs and mistakes as time goes on.... PLEASE!!!!!

Tuesday, February 07, 2006 3:55 PM by Duncan

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

Hi, i have read your post and i found it very interesting, can u pls tell me what benefits would i recive if i install media center instead of Windows XP pro, with my xbox 360, i already can listen to music or see pictures in my PC using the xbox360, and i dont really care about wathhing tv or recording tv shows, so is there any bennefit that Media Center can offer me, is it better the interfaze to listen to music, or can i see videos storaged in my pc with media center, I apreeciate your comments, thxs

Wednesday, February 08, 2006 12:23 PM by Alex

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

This proggie now in beta 3, runs DivX/Mpeg straight from ur Media Center two your XboX360.

Maybe not as fine as the Xbox1 solutions ATM, but still it works and installing is easy (almost no tech. knowledge req.).

I do agree that the strategy of MS is flawed in this one. DivX/Mpeg is here for the duration and it wil not go away by simply not supporting it. But hey thx to the help of some hackers it will work in the end, like this proggie does...

www.runtime360.com > for the win (atm)!

Sunday, April 16, 2006 7:55 AM by MaXeD

# re: My Thoughts on Xbox 360 Media Center Extenders

As an XBox 360 owner, I must say that Microsoft has really dropped the ball to a large extent.  Unless you are running Windows MCE, you can't do any streaming video.  Which is horrible for those of us doing PVR by other means.  Also, networked songs cannot be saved to playlists, which defeats the purpose to a large extent.  I understand that whole "it's coming with Vista" thing, but in my opinion that's crap.  I bought the XBox 360 to use with my current Windows PC.  I don't appreciate Microsoft trying to strong arm me into buying yet another over-priced, poorly writtent operating system.  It's all just BS.

Friday, June 23, 2006 12:56 AM by LJ Katz