Xbox360 as MCE Extender

HEADRAT · 11 May 2006 at 14:35

Hi,

Well I finally got some time to give my MCE2005 some love, so on my Xbox 360 I can now:-

Play DIVX : http://runtime360.com/category/blog/transcoding/

Play HD *.ts files : http://www.dvbportal.de/projects/hdtvpump/

Stream DVD's : http://www.mymovies.name/

basically everything I could do on my dedicated downstairs MCE.

I'm now using my Xbox 360's (one in the living room, one in the bedroom) as clients and my MCE2005 (which is housed in my upstairs study) as the server.

Wicked

HEADRAT

Needles · 11 May 2006 at 15:17

Impressive, most impressive obi wan has taught you well

House · 11 May 2006 at 16:05

How does the transcoding perform? any stuttering?

A few more details of your set up would intrest me as im considering this.

HEADRAT · 11 May 2006 at 16:12

OK I will stick some more details together tonight, my main rig is now acting as my MCE (AMD 4400+) so I have plenty of horsepower so transcoding seems fine.

HEADRAT

Metalface Mark · 20 May 2006 at 19:54

HEADRAT said:
OK I will stick some more details together tonight, my main rig is now acting as my MCE (AMD 4400+) so I have plenty of horsepower so transcoding seems fine.

HEADRAT

Thanks headrat, im trying it out now with my dell core duo 1.66, ill see how it goes.

JUMPURS · 20 May 2006 at 20:17

Is there a way to bypass the need to MCE yet

i am sure there are people feverishly working on a way to do it lol

Metalface Mark · 20 May 2006 at 20:24

Well, it works a treat, my laptops on my dining table, and its wirelessly able to transcode a divx perfectly well - thanks for the headsup headrat, its a shame it cant auto set to transcode each thing without selecting transcode, but its a minor hassle for what has saved me the money on buying a seperate HTPC.

McDaniel · 20 May 2006 at 20:40

HEADRAT said:
OK I will stick some more details together tonight, my main rig is now acting as my MCE (AMD 4400+) so I have plenty of horsepower so transcoding seems fine.

HEADRAT

Yup mines fine also 3500+

it takes no more then a minute at most to encode something

Puzzled · 20 May 2006 at 20:44

VLC360 is pretty good as well (Download Here )

Has it's own file directory, but it does tend to cut a couple of seconds from the beginning and end.

I haven't tried Transcode yet, does it lose any of the content?

Nismo · 20 May 2006 at 20:46

Oddly enough this is exactly the same think I have been tinkering about with today too

JaFFa · 21 May 2006 at 02:01

InwardSinging said:
Well, it works a treat, my laptops on my dining table, and its wirelessly able to transcode a divx perfectly well - thanks for the headsup headrat, its a shame it cant auto set to transcode each thing without selecting transcode, but its a minor hassle for what has saved me the money on buying a seperate HTPC.

Could you not plug the laptop into the tv ?

davetherave2 · 21 May 2006 at 02:26

gald to hear a fellow mce and 360 user is getting the full benefits from their equipment. I have had this working for some time and after a few teething issues with codecs, transcode and finding some hi def ts files I have never looked back.

Plus just to give you a heads up my mce 2k5 system is running a p4 2.4 oc'ed to 2.8 seems to cope perfectly fine when encoding stuff for streaming over the network.

d123pw · 21 May 2006 at 11:19

I'm using my 360 as an exteneder aswell, far more than i do for game at the mo.

For transcode i dont think you really need a powerfull PC, i run mine on a XP-M, and noticed no difference when clocked down from 2200Mhz to 1600 (for power conservation and heat benifits) and the missus can still watch videos on the PC with no probs while its transcoding to the 360.

The only grip i have with it is fastfoward/rewind is a little hit and miss, sometimes if you skip abit it impossible to get back where you were, but for useability/interface & quality its leagues above my KISS 1500 network player...

Edit: Its all running on a 100mbit wired setup.

MouseMat2004 · 21 May 2006 at 11:37

I've been using mine since the day I got Transcode 360 to work. Used to use the Xbox but as I found with my HD STB, the higher res actually improves the quailty no end, it looks so much better when running native res.