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Xbox 360 Media Connectivity

Started by The Honx at 10-19-2009 9:39 PM. Topic has 25 replies.

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10-19-2009, 9:39 PM

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Guide:Make your 360 to a Streaming-center for all video formats

Hello everyone,

Since a lot of people are asking about how to make your 360 to a all-around "streaming-center", for any kind of video formats, sound files or pictures, I thougt why not make a Guide. So here are 2 ways to do that.
Tversity (Streamingcenter) - Streaming to your XBOX 360

Introducing Video and setup video (31mins long) for Tversity.

Although impressive when working well, media sharing with Windows Media Player 11 is unreliable. It can prove very tricky to set it up to work with an Xbox 360, and other non-Microsoft hardware can be just as tricky.

A very popular alternative is TVersity. Available from TVersity.com, this free application manages your media sharing from your PC, allowing you to view video, listen to audio and check photos, podcasts, standard RSS feeds and more from the comfort of your living room. Configurable with games consoles, some set-top boxes, mobile devices and a range of home theater devices, TVersity is easy to setup, simple to use, and allows you to view all popular video formats.

TVersity also comes as a paid "Pro" version that adds premium online content into the mix - US users can access video from Hulu while UK users can view BBC iPlayer content. ESPN, MTV, E Online, Comedy Central, Marvel, VH1 and many others are also available, with more planned.

Minimum System Requirements

TVersity comes in two flavours, Free and Pro. The free version has a low set of minimum requirements that should suit pretty much any PC still in use today - however as described above the Pro version provides access to premium content for which a higher PC spec and fast internet connection is required.

The basic system requirements are:

Pentium III 700 MHz or better
256 MB of memory or more
100 MB of disk space
Windows XP / 2000 / 2003 / Vista (no information as yet on Windows 7)
DirectX 9.0 or higher
Windows Media Player 9.0 or higher
Audio enabled on the computer running the software

Recommended hardware meanwhile is as above with the following changes:

Pentium 4 2.8 GHz with support for Hyper Threading
2GB of memory
4GB free hard disk space

Note also that for transcoding to WMV (Windows Media Video format for viewing on Xbox 360) Windows Media Player 11 is recommended; the alternative is for WMV encoding to be performed via ffmpeg, which can cause some lag.

Why Windows Media Player? This might come as a surprise, especially given the trouble the application can cause when trying to use it for media sharing. As it is, Windows Media Player is a useful media transcoding application and as such is a vital tool for getting a wide range of video formats converted and displayed on your TV.

Streaming of SD content recommended(for no lags or buffer) uploadspeed: 400kbp/s-800kbp/s(at 800kbp/s it's HQ)

HD content: 720p 1500 kbp/s - 2000 kbp/s. 1080p(Full HD) 2500 kbp/s-8000kbp/s (depends on if you've got it split or how the file is encoded)

      Step 1. Uninstall every codec you have on your System (XviD, DivX, K-Lite Codec Package...)
             2. Download and Install TVersity 1.7 beta(click on version 1.7 direckt laden) it should start to download after a few seconds (DO NOT Install the TVersity Codec Pack - uncheck the box at the end of the installation)
             3. Download and Install FFDShow Rev.1751 (During the installation, set 2.0 Stereo Speaker - otherwise it won't work)
            4. Download and Install Haali Media Splitter
            5. Download and Install AC3 Filter 1.46
            6. Restart your computer.
            7. Startup TVersity and go to the Settings Tab and click on General, normaly everything should be setup by itself, cause of the plug and play function Tversity has, (IP adress, recognizing your homenetwork....) but if not you just type in your IP-adress in the IP-adress field.
            8. Go to the Transcoder Tag. Set "When to Transcode" to "only when needed"; the "Maximum reselution" to as high as you went them to be.
               "Windows Media Encoder(for XBOX 360 and Windows Mobile devices)" can be set to 4 differente settings it goes; speed-quality. That means the first one encodes fastest with less good quality and the last one slowest with best possible quality.
               "Connection Speed and Quality". Here you just pick want you are going to use. Wireless Lan or Lan, quality, speed or Average.
             9. Now after you did that you go to the "Library" Tab and put everything in there that you want to have.
             10. Turn on your XBOX 360 log into your account, go to any Library video,music or pictures(what every you want to see) and then you should see the TversityMediaserver at the bottom of the list, where you choose wheter to play content from the disc harddrive or pc it should be 4th at the bottom.
            11. Now click on that and then you should find your movies, pictures, music in the "Folder" file.
            12. Now enjoy watching all your movies, listening to all your music and viewing all your pictures on your BIG quantum singularity TV. I tell you it's awesome especially when showing your friends.

              GOTSENT - converting your MKV's to MP4(supported HDformat for the 360)

Actually this is pretty easy to do but it takes time to convert so that's the catch.

A little info on GOTSENT, with GOTSENT you convert your MKV files to the supported MP4 format, but you loose your 5.1(which most of the mkv files have) sound, because the MP4 format for the 360 doesnt support it doesnt support that(I think).

Average time on converting mkv's to MP4's a 1GB(40mins) episode in 720p takes about 8-15mins to convert if you dont want to encode it again(which gives you 100% of the mkv quality and 5.1 sound I think, without encoding you get about 98-99% which is as good as 100% to me xD, cause encoding takes A HELL LOT MORE TIME). A movie 4.5GB(720p) takes about 20-40mins(without encoding) and finally a FULL HD 1080p takes about 1 hour - 1 1/2, depends on your PCpower.

              1. You download GOTSENT.
              2. Install it.
              3. Open it and press "File" there you can browse for the file you want to convert.
              4. "Output folder" there you choose the foldere the new file will be saved.
              5. Choose your target either PS3 or 360, set priority to "High", if you have subtitles you can also embed them.
              6. If you want 100% of the mkv file quality and 5.1 sound you have to encode it to either h264 or h264(HQ), personally I can't see a difference between a not re-encoded MP4 file or an re-encoded one. But just so you know if you re-encode it will take several hours to convert 1 movie.
              7. Well after you converted it you can either use Tversity to stream it to your XBOX 360(tversity has now not to encode on the fly so it doesnt need as much uploadspeed as it would need with encoding-on-the-fly) or you just copy it to an external hard-drive and hook it up to your 360 and watch the movie.

I hope this is helpful to you people in need. If anyone knows about this already please feel free to leave comments behind, of how to do it better or with other programms. Also if you find any mistakes pls leave comment. If there are any problems or questions pls comment aswell.

Have a nice day.

Play it right or go and buy yourself a -------- PS3, cause they play it all wrong! myspace.com/thehonx

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10-19-2009, 11:42 PM