Streaming Video to 360

sparkymark75 · 18 Jan 2007 at 14:50

I was thinking about streaming HD content to my 360 from my Media Centre PC. However I'm not convinced the spec of my PC is up to it.

Then I began to wonder, when your streaming video to your 360, does the PC just send the data via the LAN and the 360 does the rendering/processing or does your PC do the processing?

Nismo · 18 Jan 2007 at 14:53

Pretty sure its your PC doing the work when streaming, although I may be wrong. I would have thought your PC would be capable if its reasonably decent sepc, only really intensive HD stuff would tax it.

sparkymark75 · 18 Jan 2007 at 15:28

Nismo said:
Pretty sure its your PC doing the work when streaming, although I may be wrong. I would have thought your PC would be capable if its reasonably decent sepc, only really intensive HD stuff would tax it.

Once I get my Media Server/PC moved from wireless back onto cable, it will be streaming 1920x1080 HD so if it's the PC doing the processing then I think I'd probably have to upgrade my PC.

My gut feeling was that it was the PC that did it but someone said they thought it was the 360.

Phil99 · 18 Jan 2007 at 15:30

If it's already in WMV-HD then it's just a case of disk reads and network transfers being the only 'strain' on the host PC, but if you're transcoding from something like h264 to WMV-HD it'd thrash the hell out of even the latest PCs.

sparkymark75 · 18 Jan 2007 at 15:38

It would be in a format that the 360 would understand, e.g. WMV-HD, TS, etc

Rhys · 18 Jan 2007 at 16:08

if it is WMV can't you just put it on External USB drive and run it from 360 without the need to stream?

sparkymark75 · 18 Jan 2007 at 16:15

Rhys said:
if it is WMV can't you just put it on External USB drive and run it from 360 without the need to stream?

Does the 360 recognise external USB drives? I have one but never thought to try it :rolleyes:

Sclodion · 18 Jan 2007 at 16:15

mparter said:
It would be in a format that the 360 would understand, e.g. WMV-HD, TS, etc

WMV / VC1 only. 360 wont read a transport stream.

But if its WMV, then its only network traffic, theres no transcoding on the PC needed.

Demon · 18 Jan 2007 at 17:45

My Brother has set up a 360 as a media streamer for his Projector setup.

Basically he uses Media Centre and HDTV Pump (To allow .ts files to be streamed)..

With that setup, all data is being streamed and rendered at the 360..

The 360 can decode/render WMV/WMVHD and MPEG2, all HDTV does is 'present' the .ts as a pure MPEG2 (Or something like that).. no rendering at the PC, so your Media Centre PC doesn't need to be top spec..

You can use transcode360 to transcode divx files on the fly and stream to the 360, and for normal res DivX/XVid it doesn't need a fast PC, however I think it would take a very fast PC to transcode 1080p divx on the fly!..