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[Evox117]

If you have XP you cant stream Media to the 360. You need a Media Center PC in order to do that. It will ONLY stream from a MCE PC.

[snuff1175]

media center has a few more features.  you do need a media center pc to use it, but you don't need media center to stream music and videos.  you can now use windows media player 11 within xp.  you have to enable sharing under library in wmp.

[fsa3]

I ask the questions because I am about to purchase a new computer and am not sure how much I should 'fight' for MCE.

Any thoughts on that are appreaciated.

[acribb]

With Windows XP and WMP11, videowise, you can only stream WMV files.  It won't let you stream any other format of video files.  

With Tversity, you can stream all video types and it will transcode them all to WMV files real time on the fly.  The transcoder in Tversity worked so-so on HD movies, such as TS or MKV files.  If you have the latest and greatest dual core processor, you may be able to transcode HD files realtime, but even with that processing power, the results will be mixed.

With Media Center 2005, you can stream TS files with HDTV Pump installed.  This allows you to stream TS files without Transcoding.  You use Transcode 360 to transcode everything else such as avi files and mkv files.  This was the option I went with, mostly because I am almost exclusively only interested in streaming High Definition material and avi files.  Media Center 2005 will give you a cleaner look and nicer interface than the other 2 options above.

Bottom line, it you want to stream HD content, go with Media Center 2005.

If you don't care about the quality of your video, and you have a standard definition TV setup, then go with Tversity.

[fsa3]

Sounds like Media Center it is!!

Thank you for the info.

last question, what is a TS file ? :-)

[MaxP]

QUOTE(fsa3 @ Dec 27 2006, 09:29 PM)

last question, what is a TS file ? :-)

.ts stands for transmition stream.
the format much HD content comes in.
always massive in size and 1080 most of the time.

i personaly dont like the real time transcoding for divx/xvid
and you do get a lot of 720p content in divx/xvid

i tend to try and convert any of these files to WMV.
currently uising Encode360 and seems ok for these sorts of files.

[dvsone]

I really do want to play all my media through my 360 but I still can't get away from my Xbox1 + XMBC (Xbox Media Center) combination.

I play a lot of DIVX and XVID content all of which is stored on my PC hard drives in compressed rar files. XMBC allows you to network to that media and play it without unzipping the files, a beautiful feature it is. XMBC supports every media type I've thown at it. Audio & Video lookup support that grab thumbs and applies them to your files, and gives you information about that album or movie. I can even have My Pictures used as a screensaver on my TV. Plus heaps of other features.

If you softmod an xbox it would only cost you 80 dollars to have it setup, plus maybe a long network cable and dvd dongle so you can use the xbox remote or universal remote.

Only down side is you have to manually switch on the xbox, you can't do it via remote. There is mods to fix this issue but I've never seriously looked into it.

For a cost effective media center, definitely Xbox1 + XMBC is the way to go!

Edit: Oh yeah and it can upscale video to 1080i

[acribb]

QUOTE(dvsone @ Dec 27 2006, 09:58 PM)

I really do want to play all my media through my 360 but I still can't get away from my Xbox1 + XMBC (Xbox Media Center) combination.

I play a lot of DIVX and XVID content all of which is stored on my PC hard drives in compressed rar files. XMBC allows you to network to that media and play it without unzipping the files, a beautiful feature it is. XMBC supports every media type I've thown at it. Audio & Video lookup support that grab thumbs and applies them to your files, and gives you information about that album or movie. I can even have My Pictures used as a screensaver on my TV. Plus heaps of other features.

If you softmod an xbox it would only cost you 80 dollars to have it setup, plus maybe a long network cable and dvd dongle so you can use the xbox remote or universal remote.

Only down side is you have to manually switch on the xbox, you can't do it via remote. There is mods to fix this issue but I've never seriously looked into it.

For a cost effective media center, definitely Xbox1 + XMBC is the way to go!

Edit: Oh yeah and it can upscale video to 1080i

Xbox 1 cannot display native High Definition content, such as downloaded HD movies or TV Shows.  The P3 processor in the original XBOX is not powerful enough to handle the resolution that true HD video calls for.  It will somewhat upscale standard definition DVDs.  That is the reason I went with the 360, because of it's HD streaming capabilities.  However, if you are not interested in HD, then Xbox1 with XBMC is DEFINITELY the way to go.  It is way more flexible for the media types it can handle and for it's excellent usability.

I am hoping that we will the Xbox 360 working with a new version of "XBMC 360" some time in the future.

From xboxmediacenter.com FAQ:

QUOTE

Q: Does XBMC and Xbox support HDTV (High Definition TV) resolutions?, and HDTV media?
A: Yes and no, but the answer is a little more complicated than that, you see: Xbox/XBMC can output 480p/720p/1080i (if you have a High Definition AV Pack/component cable) and upscale all low-resolution videos (like retail DVD-Video/Movies) to 720p (1280x720 pixel progressive) or 1080i (1920x1080 pixel interlaced) in hardware (linear upscale/upconvert). So XBMC have no problems with upscaling example DVD-video (720x480 NTSC/720x756 PAL) movies to HDTV 480p/720p/1080i. XBMC is even capable of playing native HD video (video/movies with native resolutions higher than 720x576) like 720p (1280x720) and 1080i (1920x1080), however there is here a big snag/limitation and that is that a standard Xbox only has a 733Mhz Intel Pentium-III CPU (processor) and that does not have the processing power to decode those native HD video resolutions, and that means you would only get maybe 10fps (frames per seconds) displayed which would appear so jerky because of all dropped frames that it will be un-viewable. The only solution if you want to play videos with native HD resolutions on Xbox is to buy or upgrade to a non-standard Xbox with a much faster CPU (processor), (like example the DreamX-1400 from FriendTech which has a 1480Mhz Pentium-III that is at least capable of decoding native HD videos that are have up to 720p in native HDTV video resolution. FriendTech do offers trade-in). Note! XBMC does not yet have DVD-menu support so note you only get video on DVD-Videos. Note! You must enable/setup your HDTV settings in Microsoft dashboard, (on NTSC Xboxes).
 To make this even clearer XBMC capability on a standard Xbox (with Intel 733Mhz PIII CPU):
 - 720x480 pixel video output to 480p HDTV (720x480 progressive) = OK! (eg not upscaled).
 - 720x480 pixel video output to 720p HDTV (1280x720 progressive) = OK! (eg upscaled).
 - 720x480 pixel video output to 1080i HDTV (1920x1080 interlaced) = OK! (eg upscaled).
 - 1280x720 pixel progressive video output to 720p HDTV (native 1280x720 progressive) = FAIL!
 - 1920x1080 interlaced video output to 1080i HDTV (native 1920x1080 interlaced) = FAIL!
Note! All above that state FAIL don't actually fail to play, it's just that the Xbox CPU is to slow to decode/render the high resolution so it will drop so may frames that is will be un-viewable.
PS! There are not many standalone DVD-players out there that can even upscale normal DVD-movies to 720p or 1080i and those that can are much more expensive than a modded Xbox ;-P
FYI; Microsoft® & DivX® recommend 2.4 Ghz PC + 384MB RAM for 720p MPEG-4 playback!