360 Newb with networking/media centre questions

charltonfan1 · 15 Dec 2008 at 15:32

Just got my first xbox and have some questions about the best way to set things up.

The 360 is connected using the ethernet cable to my wireless router (o2 standard one). We have a PC running Vista Ultimate and Laptop running Vista Home Premium (both connected wirelessly to the router) with media on them that we want to play on the TV. The media includes .avi's and some mp3's mainly.

When i run the Media Centre setup on either of the computer's it gives an error toward the end and cannot connect.

If i manage to sort out the connection problem, can the xbox natively play avi files? If not are there any good online guides i can follow to get this working?

The wireless network is running at 802.11g speeds if this makes a difference?

Many Thanks

Blue Cypher · 15 Dec 2008 at 15:36

No the xbox cannot play .avi files though media centre, however if you use windows media player as the way to connect to the xbox it uses whatever codecs the media player has so anything it plays will play on the xbox. Go to the Xbox website and type in windows media player, will give you a guide on how to connect though it.

davetherave2 · 15 Dec 2008 at 17:36

charltonfan1 said:
Just got my first xbox and have some questions about the best way to set things up.

The 360 is connected using the ethernet cable to my wireless router (o2 standard one). We have a PC running Vista Ultimate and Laptop running Vista Home Premium (both connected wirelessly to the router) with media on them that we want to play on the TV. The media includes .avi's and some mp3's mainly.

When i run the Media Centre setup on either of the computer's it gives an error toward the end and cannot connect.

If i manage to sort out the connection problem, can the xbox natively play avi files? If not are there any good online guides i can follow to get this working?

The wireless network is running at 802.11g speeds if this makes a difference?

Many Thanks

First things first have you run the pcsetup stage of the xbox live connection. if not then go to here.
http://www.xbox.com/pcsetup

follow the instructions on there and it should get you sorted.

The xbox can play some avi files if they have been encode with xvid.

My advise is to install tversity on your media sharing machine and then it will play pretty much everything for you.

this can be downloaded from http://tversity.com/

there are various plugs you can download for media center such as transcode 360 but I find tveristy is now the best alround solution and it is relatively simple to set up.

Now with streaming I always prefer to use a wired network but as long as you have good signal strength your wireless network should work fine. Be aware that if you are streaming hd then this may be an issue both from a encoding (if going down the tveristy route) or from a network route.

Also if you can tell us what the error is when you are setting up the mce (media centre edition) machines that would help.

The setup you are running is this the xbox to mce connection or just the general mce configuration?

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any more.

Kyle009 · 15 Dec 2008 at 18:16

Can definitely recommend the tversirty set up. Tried for ages with Media Centre and it just doesn't like my DivX files that I've created. Tversity streams them on the fly.

rp2000 · 15 Dec 2008 at 20:18

charltonfan1 said:
Just got my first xbox and have some questions about the best way to set things up.

The 360 is connected using the ethernet cable to my wireless router (o2 standard one). We have a PC running Vista Ultimate and Laptop running Vista Home Premium (both connected wirelessly to the router) with media on them that we want to play on the TV. The media includes .avi's and some mp3's mainly.

When i run the Media Centre setup on either of the computer's it gives an error toward the end and cannot connect.

If i manage to sort out the connection problem, can the xbox natively play avi files? If not are there any good online guides i can follow to get this working?

The wireless network is running at 802.11g speeds if this makes a difference?

Many Thanks

If you go the Windows Media Player 11 route, this is a list of all files supported. In reality it will play most divx/xvid files that have been "downloaded" from the internet in last few years. (Your 360 will download a codec update the 1st time you try to play a divx/xvid file, I think).

http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/11/30/december-2007-video-playback-faq.aspx

rp2000

charltonfan1 · 16 Dec 2008 at 00:06

cheers guys. will have a crack at this on Wednesday eve

Substance · 16 Dec 2008 at 00:09

Just a note that if you use tversity although most files will play the quality is terrible compared with WMP11,

I used it for a while but got sick of the lag and the fact that sometimes fast forwarding / rewinding doesn't work properly

Kyle009 · 16 Dec 2008 at 01:21

SuBsTaNcE said:
Just a note that if you use tversity although most files will play the quality is terrible compared with WMP11,

I used it for a while but got sick of the lag and the fact that sometimes fast forwarding / rewinding doesn't work properly

I noticed that some of the HD rips were looking a bit iffy, but you can limit the maximum video resolution and by default its 400x300. I've changed this and the HD rips look much better now.

There is a slight delay on inital load (probably about 1 minute max) but haven't had any issues with rewinding/fast forwarding. I can even chapter skip without any additional buffering.

I am using a wired network which may be why.