Streaming Video to X360?

[scooby_dooby]

Well, about 2 months before launch the MS guys were saying that the extender would use any codec's installed on your MCE machine, then this got nixed.

So it was apparently working at one point in time. When you attempt to play a DivX movie you get an explicit error message that the codec is not installed, presumably this is an MCE error message and not X360. The X360 simply mirrors the MCE application as it exists on your PC, right down to the settings and scheduled recordings, it doesn't seem like the x360 'does' anything.

 

[Sis]

I have to agree with BlueTsunami though, they should offer MCE as a downloadable upgrade, or some sort of add-on in the $50 range. There's no reason why they shouldn't.

I believe the primary reason is support costs. Because a lot of the Media Center stuff is hardware sensitive, it's just better (cheaper) to force it through OEM channels, where the hardware can be controlled.

Also, to BlueTsunami: it looks just like Windows XP because it is Windows XP. Its full name is Windows XP Media Center Edition.

.Sis

 

[scooby_dooby]

Ya that's a good point, I kinda had it pegged at not supporting the 'legacy' windowsXP OS. Sure it wil lwork with MCE, but MS is probably concentrating fully on Vista right now, and can't be bothered with doing more work to support an OS they will be killing off anyways, and it would not help drive people to Vista either.

I don't think it's some big attempt to drive MCE sales, but more to drive the upcoming windows Vista.

I do think it's pretty pathetic they didn't allow streaming video from XP by default, but at the same time, since it's limted to WMV either way, it's essentially useless for most people anyways.

Is there any ways MS can build in divX and XVid support into the VIsta OS? Is that likely to happen?

 

[kyleb]

Dvix and such already work fine in Windows Media Center, the problem is only with streaming it to an extender. I suppose it has to do with codec licensing issues.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I don't think DivX works out of the box with MCE actually, I can't remember if I needed to install the codecs for sure, but I'm pretty sure I did.

 

[kyleb]

Yes you need to install codecs, like I said it seems to be a licensing issue.

 

[PG2G]

It'd be pretty nice if they put codecs (those that require licensing) in the live marketplace. I'd be more than happy to pay for divx. Not sure how that'd work with xvid though, it being open source and all.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Yes you need to install codecs, like I said it seems to be a licensing issue.

Right. I thought you were saying that MCE already natively supports DivX (which is actually what you said)

My question was, what's the likelihood that they solve these licensing issues for Vista, so that DivX can be supported out of the box. Slim to none?

 

[kyleb]

What I said was that it works fine, which it does as all you have to do is install the codecs. The thing is MS isn't going to want to sell the codecs for other formats as they have their own formats to support, so no Vista won't change anything there.

 

[scooby_dooby]

There are some bugs in the extender though:

1 - If you FF using the bumper buttons, you cannot play again! You have to get up get the remote and press play. Whoops!

2- FF tops out at 3times, this is pathetic, should have 32x like XBMC

3 - trigger skip by 30second intervals, however holding this down does not continously skip as it should, instead it skips to the end of your file(maybe it's doing a chapter skip), when combined with #2, this results in there being no effective way to quickly FF or Rewind your video file.

An update on these problems I was having. Most of them were caused by teh fact my network was running at 10BaseT, not 100, since I switched fastforward now goes very quickly, definately ~16x or faster.

And the play button, is to press the right analogue stick to the right, they've implemented the play controls to be left = stop, click=pause, and right=play on the analogue stick.

So no problems here anymore

 

[scooby_dooby]

What I said was that it works fine, which it does as all you have to do is install the codecs.

you were responding to a post of mine asking if they could "build them into Vista", to reply "MCE already works fine" is obviously completely missing the point of my question, of course it works AFTER you install the codecs, but that was never the question being asked.