Adventures in 360 hd-streaming (Guide to get it working)

[Howard_Casto]

Now that I've finally got a 360, I am determined to retire the old classic xbox from my living room (which is currently modded and running XBMC).  The media streaming options on the 360 are quite impressive, once you get them working and use a few work-arounds.  The problem is getting the dang thing working.  I hooked up my 360 the 25th and I've been working off and on since then and just today I've finally gotten everything working.  I'm now able to stream every single file type I had on my xbox to the 360, including odd ball ones like mkv and divx with ac3 audio.  In addition, I can now stream full 1080p movies in any format without lag!

So here's how I did it:

1.  If you have wmp11, zune media player or windows media center then FRIKKIN DO NOT USE THEM TO STREAM!!  Ironically the m$ products pretty much don't work, or don't work well with the 360 even though those are the products you are supposed to use.  If you have media sharing turned on in any of these then go ahead and turn it off, it'll interfere with what you need to use. 

2.  Get yourself a copy of Tversity and install it.  Don't worry about configuring it for now. 

3.  Install the tversity codec pack along with the program.  You'll also need fddshow and the haali media splitter for Divx and mkv files respectively.  (Search google for them to get the latest versions.)

4.  Note:  This step is CRUCIAL for good streaming of non-wmv formats!!!   At the start menu go to run and type "services.msc" to bring up the services settings.  Look for the TversityMediaServer service and go into log on.  You want to select "this account" then click browse.  In the box type the name of your administrator account for your computer and click "check names".  It should fill in the path for you if it finds the account so press ok.  Make sure you also put in the password when you return to the dialog box.  (Note I found out that if your admin account doesn't have a password set then this won't work, so be sure to set a password via user settings in the control panel if you don't have one!)

5.  Go ahead and load up Tversity.  Go to the sharing tab and click the "+" button to add a folder.  You want to add the folders for all of your music, pictures and movies.  (Note only the root folder is needed, it'll scan sub-folders).  When adding the folder, click the advanced tab and make sure only the necessary media types are checked at the bottom.  This will greatly reduce scan time later.  Note that you can add rss feeds, podcasts and aother online media as well!  Go ahead and go to advanced/ recreate media library when done.  Now go get a sandwich or something.  Seriously man, if your music collection is as large as mine, it can take up to 40 min for this first scan.  You'll see a little circle animation in the top right corner, when it's done scanning it'll go away.

6.  Now we need to tweak things...... Note that I couldn't get full codec support at full 1080p until I set these settings EXACTLY as described.  Go to the settings tab and click on transcoder at the left.  UNCHECK the "decrease the bitrate" box as this feature seems to always think your network is too slow for hd content even though it should play just fine on a "quiet" network.  (Important Note!  I discovered that certain hd mkv files work best if it IS checked, so you might have to play with this setting depending upon the file types you prefer.)  Set the video resolution to 1920x1080 (hd resolution).  If you don't do this then hd content will play, but it'll be down-sampled to a horrible 400x300 pixels.  Make sure the "use directshow" box is checked and set the encoder type to "Microsoft Mpeg-4". (You can use any of them, but this one takes the least amount of resources.)  Make sure "decode media as fast as possible is checked. 


Ok, in theory you should be done.  Enjoy being able to now stream ANYTHING to your 360, even more things than on the classic modded xbox!!!

Troubleshooting
============

Media doesn't play and I get a generic "file not supported" error on my 360:

You need a codec installed on your pc.  Generally google searching "tversity" and the name of the file type will yield the best codec to install.  Once you get it installed, fire up tversity and try to play the file within the program.  If it plays then the codec is working, if you get an error then it isn't. 

Media seems to play, but all I get is a blank screen on the 360:

See step 4.  Tversity needs special permissions to decode a streamed file, if it doesn't get these permissions then you just get a blank screen. 

Playback is choppy:

First off, playback inside tversity itself is always choppy as it's a crappy flash based player, but it should be ok on the device you are streaming it to.  Make sure you "quiet" your network before playing hd content.  By quiet, I mean turn off utorrent or any large downloads on all connected pcs and devices.  Hd content takes a lot of bandwidth when it's being converted on the fly.  Of course there is always the possibility that your pc is struggling to convert the videos.  This is unlikey as what tversity tries (keyword tries) to do is "wrap" the file instead of actually converting it, which tricks the xbox into thinking it's a wmv file and this doesn't take much processing power.  It might have trouble if you have a lot of applications running though.


Subtitles and Dual-Audio Problems:

You should be able to change the audio and turn on subs via the playback menu on the 360.  More exotic subtitles, unfortuantely aren't always supported.  Fortunately, most fan-subs are available in many formats, so you can often download new subs for your video without having to download the whole thing again. 


Protected video files won't play:

Duh, drm + m$ = bad.    Download a cracker program for the file. Don't ask me where or how (even in pm). 


Tips
====

Make sure you have the latest version of tversity and your 360 has the latest updates installed.  Full file compatability has only been possible since Dec.  30th!

Do NOT setup tversity to auto-refresh your library.  I found that music files take a long time to scan (maybe because of the tags?) and it's best to re-scan manually when you know you've added files.  My music folder generally takes a few MINUTES to re-scan, while my video folder, which is actually about the same size, only takes a few seconds.  You re-scan an indiidual folder by right-clicking on it in the sharing tab and selecting refresh.  Of course another option is to simply not share music. 

Start using hd videos instead of standard def files.  The real beauty of this system is you can now play lots of nice hd content at 1080p, which is even higher than the hd content you download from xbox live (generally only 720 p).  The popular hi-def mkv files will indeed work.  That was the whole reason I went through this.    Hd wmv is natively supported as well. 

If your netwok can't handle 1080p then use 720p files.  This is unlikey to happen, but hey, 720 is better than nothing.   

When something doesn't work, check this guide and avoid user suggestions elsewhere on the net like a plague.  This took me so long to setup because a lot of the advice on the net is outright wrong.  I simply collected up the good advice and put it in this guide. 

[ahofle]

Nice tutorial.
Are you able to play h264 1080p files with this setup without hiccups? 

[Howard_Casto]

That's mpeg 4 part 10 right?

I don't have any 1080p files in that format.... all of mine are divx6, mkv or wmv9. 

If you can link me to a sample file I'll try it, but it should work fine considering I have some standard res mepg4 files and they don't even convert when they are streamed. 

[ahofle]

Yes, I believe so.  It's usually found with an .mkv or .ts extension.  If you have newsgroups, check the alt.binaries.hdtv.x264 group.
I'm going to have to seriously look into this (damn you for making me spend more money ).

[emerica]

excellent tutorial 

I played with TVersity before but never was able to stream to the xbox. Always received an error on the xbox. I do have a quick question though, are you running a wireless or hard-wired network to the 360? I was using wireless and perhaps that is my problem.

[Howard_Casto]

Ok somewhat bad news.  The mkv files encoded with x264 choke big time.  720p does fine though.  I need to point out that I do have 1080p mkv files that are working though, they probably use divx or somethng instead of mpeg4. 

It could be my router though.... pretty sure it isn't 100mb but 10. 

I'd guess that it's still possible regardless, I'm just going to have to tweak more settings.  (UGH)


I haven't found any ts samples yet, but my guess is, if they are encoded with x264 then they'd do the same as ts is essentially a dvd menu wrapper and not a real codec.

Doh!  Stupid mistake by me. I you read this before disregard what I said as x264 works just great!  Mkv and wmv files don't "like" each other and that was causing the issue.  I changed my decoder setting to mepg4 instead of wmv 7 and it worked just fine.  I tried my 1080p wmv9 samples and they still work as well, so I'll update the guide accordingly.

[Howard_Casto]

excellent tutorial 

I played with TVersity before but never was able to stream to the xbox. Always received an error on the xbox. I do have a quick question though, are you running a wireless or hard-wired network to the 360? I was using wireless and perhaps that is my problem.

Hard wired.  I've been told that the wireless method chokes the bw too much to do hd content.  There is a tutorial to get around that though, but it requires buying a dedicated router for the 360.  Errors usually come from bad codecs or improper configuration though.  A wireless connection should work just fine, it'd just be slower.  There are a few ports that need opened for tversity as well, I'll add them to the guide tonight.

[emerica]

thats what I figured. 

 Looks like I might have to move the router or run some network wire to the console. The fun never ends.

[JackTucky]

Cool guide Howard.

=J

[ahofle]

Doh!  Stupid mistake by me. I you read this before disregard what I said as x264 works just great!  Mkv and wmv files don't "like" each other and that was causing the issue.  I changed my decoder setting to mepg4 instead of wmv 7 and it worked just fine.  I tried my 1080p wmv9 samples and they still work as well, so I'll update the guide accordingly.

Wow, that is great news -- thanks for testing.  If you don't mind, what CPU are you using to stream this stuff?  From everything I can tell, that h264 codec is the future of HD compression, but my Athlon 3000+ XP is just a tad too slow to play those 1080p files (very slight stutter every few seconds).  Maybe I need to play around with the decoder settings or something (I don't think I've tried directshow).

[Howard_Casto]

semperon 64 3400+

Just a note that windows media player outright cannot play hd content... it's too bloated with filters.  Windows media player classic is the only player I've found to do a good job on my system.  Even winamp chokes.  Also remember that your computer is probably choking on the rendering of the file, not the decoding of it.  This means if you stream it to something else it'll probably be ok.  My pc barely plays some of my more exotic files but they play just fine on the 360 or even the classic xbox.

I don't think h264 is gonna catch on to be honest, at least not for a LOOONG time.  The main reason is because these types of super files are mainly only used by people who umm... "aquire" content via torrents and such and divx. xvid and wmv9 do a similar job in terms of quality only the file size is much smaller.  Also, as you've noticed, it takes a lot more processing power to play them.  You rarely see x264 releases in anything other than 720p mainly because the various set-top solutions drop too many frames on playback.  This is the reason ogg never caught on over mp3 because while the ogg file gives a slighty better compression with higher quality audio, the difference isn't THAT great and the processing power required to playback an ogg file is typically 3 times that of a mp3.  I do see a lot of mkv files out there, but at least where I'm looking they are either highly compressed, only 720p or using something other than h264 for compression. 

[Howard_Casto]

Just an update... my .ts sample FINALLY finished downloading and I'm having trouble with it.  Basically I can't find a codec to get it to play right on my computer.  So if anyone knows of a good .ts codec link me to it. 

[Comp1demon]

VLC media player plays .TS files fine for me - not sure if I had to instal a codec for it - I think VLC has wehat you need.  Try it.

PS: Great tutorial, once I set up TVersity - what do I do on the 360 end of things? - Nevermind I figured it out.

OK I have a Drive - DRIVE P: on my PC - On the Root is a Folder called TV SHOWS  - in that folder is a FOlder for each of my shows and has the MKV,x264, or Xvid shows in them.

Xbox 360 only shows all my files in one lump sum mess - how can i get it so when i go through the 360 interface I can select the SHOWS FOLDER then go into it and Select the SHow?

Thanks so far - gonna go play with it more.

[Sir Auros]

I've stopped bothering to stream videos to mine. I'm still using G stuff for my wireless network, and I'm not sure my PC's wireless card is functioning 100%.

[Howard_Casto]

VLC media player plays .TS files fine for me - not sure if I had to instal a codec for it - I think VLC has wehat you need.  Try it.

I appreciate it and I'll try that one on the odd chance that it comes with a good codec, but it doesn't work that way.  A fully directshow compliant codec is required for tversity... just getting ti to play on a media player isn't enough.  Windows media player classic plays them on my system (badly) but apparently it's built in support as it doesn't play in tversity. 

Xbox 360 only shows all my files in one lump sum mess - how can i get it so when i go through the 360 interface I can select the SHOWS FOLDER then go into it and Select the SHow?

Heh, no it doesn't unless you monkeyed around with the hierarchy settings.  You are probably going to "all videos" instead of "my videos" and then "folders".  You can setup a custom hierarchy in tversity's settings to get rid of the other views if they bother you, but personally I like it that way.

[boykster]

For .ts file playback using directshow - I believe what you need for tversity - check out hdtvpump

http://www.dvbportal.de/projects/hdtvpump/

 

[Comp1demon]

OK - WIerd Stuff...

I downloaded TVirsty and Installed the COdec Pack.
I also downloaded the other 2 codecs you specified from free codec.com.
Installed everything and rebooted.

Xvid and Divx just hang.

X264 give me a file type error

Only thing that works is WMV (which would work without Tvirsity.)

More help would be appreciated here if possible. I have a ton of x264 content I was saving for my Tvix - in a few months - but If i can get the 360 to play this stuff (I save a ton of cash.)

I figured out the Folder thing - - - thanks!!!

COuld you take screenshots of your current Tvirsity settings and post them please - would make things a bit easer for me and others.  I got it for the most part.

Also MY ethernet network goes from PC - to Router  - - from router to Hub -  From hub to the rest of the house.  All wired, do i still need to open ports?  If so which ones?

ALso not sure if you can post them here, but links to the proper codec packs to install would be nice too.

Thanks in adavance - great tutorial so far!

Do you have to have the lasted Dashboard installed from M$ (fall update 07) cause I haven't logged into live in months - I didn;t get the update that allows me to play Divx Naitvely on the 360.

[Howard_Casto]

Do you have to have the lasted Dashboard installed from M$ (fall update 07) cause I haven't logged into live in months - I didn;t get the update that allows me to play Divx Naitvely on the 360.

Yeah you need that and it's probably the cause of your problems. Tversity doesn't convert most divx files because the 360 now supports them. 

Also last night I was watching some stuff and ran into yet another oddity.  Remember when I said my divx hd stuff did fine with the mpeg4 compressor?  Well, I spoke too soon.  MOST of it works well with the mpeg4 but I had a few that would hang and I had to switch back to wmv 7 to watch them.  I think this is a tversity issue because as we all know there are 2 dozen versions of divx and xvid but they all have the avi extension and often even if you don't have the proper codec installed a player will try to play them anyway (and either crash or play it badly). 

So right now I'm looking for a converter that'll convert my problem files fairly easily when I run across them.  Probably a mkv2wmv utility would be best as everything but hd mkv files play when the compressor is set to wmv.  If I can find something that works fairly well without a ton of settings to set I'll write us some middle ware that'll scan harddrives for new videos and convert them if necessary, so conversions on problem files could be done at night while you sleep. 

Oh and one last hiccup. Anybody know the difference between divx 6 and divx 6.1?  I didn't think it'd be a big diff, but apparently it is because I had a copy of shrek 3 encoded in divx 6.1 and it choked like nobody's business.  NIVO has pointed me to some better codecs to try so I might go ahead and play with them.  I'll keep you guys posted if I come upwith anything else.   

[Santoro]

Very nice Howard... this looks to be my next project.

[Comp1demon]

OK, I got things working but I have questions.

Im using a 1080p 52" aquos TV.  MY dashis at 1080p and I run 1080P from an external HDD and it looks fantastic.

Why does everything I stream look like crap?

MY divx / Xvid look horrible... All box pixealted.... 

The 720p MKV and X264 stuff even looks kind of bad.

I changed TVERSITY output to 1280 x 720 (so i get only 720p) as nothing i am streaming is any higher bitrate.
I tried WMP7 and 8 encoder options.  Both work, the Mpeg 4 gave me errors with X264 and MKV + Divx.
I even changed my dash to 720p.

Nothing works all my mkv and x264, looks like crap - '

I have a DreamX Xbox 1480 mhz processor - and I can play MKV and X264 on there, but it drops a ton of frames - it's like it's playing at 1/2 speed - but atleast I can get an idea of image quality and all my Xvid, divx, and X264/mkv stuff looks nice and unpixelated.

Advice?

Explanations?

Thanks,
Kris

[BORIStheBLADE]

I spent alot of time trying to stream files to the 360. I ended up giving up on it because The fast forwarding would only work right with a WMV. I would get a network congestion box on the screen no matter if it was wired or not and anything but WMV while trying to fast forward. Even with .MPG's which is a supported file.
The other thing is the 360 is too loud when your trying to watch a movie.
To top it off MS( ) allows some files to be used in the regular dash and totally different ones used through the media center dash.

I'm waiting till it gets hacked. I hope it works out for you.

[Paul Olson]

Has anyone tried using a usb hard drive to play these files on the 360? I read that it is possible on x-s, but I would like to hear how good it is before I spend the money to try it. My old xbox and xbmc are starting to show their age; just not doing well with HD at all. I think plugging a drive into the usb port should give better playback than streaming, but I could be wrong.

[Howard_Casto]

Has anyone tried using a usb hard drive to play these files on the 360? I read that it is possible on x-s, but I would like to hear how good it is before I spend the money to try it. My old xbox and xbmc are starting to show their age; just not doing well with HD at all. I think plugging a drive into the usb port should give better playback than streaming, but I could be wrong.

Well it would... if the 360 dashboard supported all the hi-def formats (which it doesn't).  The 360 supports divx/xvid avi files, a few versions of mpeg and wmv.  With the except of wmv, it is QUITE stright about how files have to be encoded before they are supported.  So you have the option of converting everything to wmv and then sticking it on a hd but most hd files won't play as-is on the 360. 

Boris, I feel your pain, but most of us don't really care about fast-forwarding as the 360 supports auto-resume and we enjoy watching an entire movie. 

Comp my suggestion would be your codecs on the pc end are bad as the only issues I've ran into are excessive buffering.  Keep in mind you are comparing apples to oranges.  A hacked xbox classic running xbmc natively supports most of these formats while the 360 needs tversity to convert many of them.  It is rather frustrating because the 360 media section is supposed to be based loosely on wmp 11 which can support anything with a codec installed.  M$ is just being really slow about adding support for more files, probably due to piracy and their own vod service built into the marketplace.

Just for the record, You kinda got jipped on the dreamx upgrade.  There isn't that much difference between a 700 mhz processor and a 1.4ghz one as the only thing that really supports the higher processing is xbmc and the 700mhz will play pretty much everything, except for hd content, which needs far more processing power than even 1.4ghz to play. 

[Howard_Casto]

I ran across this tutorial this morning:

http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/Xbox_360_H.264_Conversion_Guide_page1.html

I might try it on a few of my problem videos to see if it helps... I'll keep you posted.

[BORIStheBLADE]

So you guys know exactly what the 360 will natively play.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/systemuse/xbox360/digitalmedia/videoplaybackfaq.htm#avi

[Howard_Casto]

Well what m$ claims it can play natively and what it actually plays natively are two totally different things.  For example, the 360 supports divx/xvid and mpeg4 but I've personally found that it only actually plays about 30% of my files that use those codecs.  The problem is certain characteristics of the codecs setup must be stuck to rigidly and others not so much.  Resolution and bit rate don't seem to matter to the 360, bu if you have certain embedded subs, 5.1 audio, or ogg encoded audio (which for whatever reason is often used by fan encodes) the files won't play. 

The same goes for h264 content.  It's supposed to play natively, but I've yet to get one to work.  Keep in mind I've tried methods other than streaming as well (usb hd and burning to dvd). 

[HaRuMaN]

I tried this method...  it would not work for me until I opened TCP and UDP ports 41952 in both my Windows firewall and router.

Now that I've done that, it works great!  Thanks for the great write-up, HC! 

[Comp1demon]

IM probibly going to give up on Streaming to my Xbox 360.  While I can see how good Tversity CAN BE. It is not there yet.  I have to admit - I think some of the issues are my fault and I will probibly try again later on - im just fed up for now.

AS for my DreamX - the 1400 MHZ xbox is just enough Extra Juice to play back SOME MKV files with only 2-5 frames dropped for a full 46 minute tv show - I don;t even notice the Drops.  But I agree - its not enough for X264 and other HD formats.

AS for Playing COntent off of a Hard Drive.  I will give you all some advice.  I do this for HDWMV files.  There are alot of people doing HDWMV content, both legally and DOWNLOADABLE (Torrent, rips ect..).  Streaming this content is just not worth it.  I personally have a solution for those who are looking to play back full 9GB movies that are encoded to HDWMV.  Get a 2.0 Self powered USB drive )like WD passport drive).  Download the trial version or Buy MAC DRIVE 7.  This application will allow you to format the Passport (external USB Drive) with HTS (HTF) Partitioning for a Mac.  It will also allow you to interface the Drive with a Windows Machine and Dump content on it (HDWMV FILES!).  The reason you need to do it this was is this.  Xbox 360 does NOT recognise NTFS formatted drives only Fat32.  Fat32 can only hold 2 or 4gb files (i forget) this is not enough space for a full HDWMV in one sold file.  Since the Xbox 360 has ipod support - it sees the portable drive as an Ipod and will let you play back any size HDWMV.  I have 2 (250gb) drives fill of content.  I just plug them into the USB port on the front of the 360 - go into VIdeo Tab/Blade and select Portable device and WALA.  There is no lag, off sync issues nothing.  Perfectly fast enough to play it - remmeber the HD DVD Drives uses a USB 2.0 interface too - so a HDD which is faster than a HD DRIVE should have no issues playing HD content off a Drive.  Just make sure you use the Mac Partitioning.

Good job all....

[Zeosstud]

Howard (and anyone else),
                                             Encode360 is the program you want for converting .mkv files to .wmv  I have 180 or so movies on my Windows Home Server machine that stream to 2 different Xbox360's in the house and various other pc's and what have you, works well.  I loved tversity, when it worked, been using it for alonetime.  Something got goofed up and for whatever reason, no matter what I did, I could no longer get .mkv's to stream, this was right around the time divx got added to the 360, so I just gave up, built a Windows Home Server box and when I come across a .mkv file I just run it through encode360 and out pops a nice .wmv

http://dcunningham.net/encode360/

Zeosstud

[Howard_Casto]

Thanks man!... yeah I've been having similar problems.  Everything but mkv is working just fine, but mkvs seem to randomly work and not work with tversity if th are hi def.  The wierd thing is they worked initially?

[Zeosstud]

Howard,
               I wish I could be more help, I wish I could just give you the setting and bang magically Tversity would work, 100% of the time, with everything we throw at it, but I cant.  Not many people have spent more time trying than me I promise and I am not a complete goof with this stuff.  Tversity is absolutely awesome when it works, but once something get off I just cant find an answer.  Here is the funny thing, after reading your post I decided to give it another shot, and right this second it is in fact playing .mkv file for me again.  I had issues with sound in the beginning on this install but removing the latest ffdshow and rerunning the tversity install and letting its version of ffdshow install seems to have solved the problem for now.  Who knows how long it will last, certainly not me.  Encode360 however has been pretty solid for me.  The only thing that seems alittle odd is that when you finish encoding a movie and then setup and encode another the estimated finish time is crazy long.  If you shut your machine off, encode the same movie, the time will be normal again..  Thats something I can deal with.  Best of luck to everyone streaming to their 360's it really is awesome when it works.

Zeosstud

[emerica]

hey Howard or anyone for that matter... a quick question. What are you using to convert dvd to divx? Also is it possible to upconvert regular dvd to hd divx or h264? 

I know there is a ton of info out on the web but there is so much to choose from. Its making my head spin at the moment.

[Howard_Casto]

hey Howard or anyone for that matter... a quick question. What are you using to convert dvd to divx? Also is it possible to upconvert regular dvd to hd divx or h264? 

I know there is a ton of info out on the web but there is so much to choose from. Its making my head spin at the moment.

I don't use anything to convert regular dvd to divx because the 360 plays dvds.    I'm sure it is possible to upconvert, but why in the blue moon would you?  The dvd is only 480p, absolutely nothing is gonna change that and the 360 already puts a blur filter on video when it's stretched, essentially achieving the effect that an upconverter does. 

[somunny]

For some strange reason, I have always assumed that you needed to have Windows Media Center installed as your OS to use these 360 features.  Must be all the subliminal MS brainwashing. 

Nice writeup.  As soon as I hardwire my 360, I'll be back in here getting it set up.

[HaRuMaN]

For some strange reason, I have always assumed that you needed to have Windows Media Center installed as your OS to use these 360 features.  Must be all the subliminal MS brainwashing. 

Nice writeup.  As soon as I hardwire my 360, I'll be back in here getting it set up.

It's worth it... I've been streaming fan-subbed anime to my living room HDTV...  *drool*

[BORIStheBLADE]

For some strange reason, I have always assumed that you needed to have Windows Media Center installed as your OS to use these 360 features.  Must be all the subliminal MS brainwashing. 

Nice writeup.  As soon as I hardwire my 360, I'll be back in here getting it set up.

You need Media center if you want to use the media center frontend on your 360. It basically makes it look like your PC running media center

[Zero_Hour]

FYI,

Once you have TVersity configured per this writeup, you should be able to stream to the PS3 as well.
I don't have many video files to test with (yet), but I'm streaming xvid, audio and photos to my Playstation via TVersity without a hitch.

I've been meaning to try out the Media streaming functionality of it for the last month. Howard's write-up finally got me motivated. 

[emerica]

The dvd is only 480p, absolutely nothing is gonna change that and the 360 already puts a blur filter on video when it's stretched, essentially achieving the effect that an upconverter does. 

I was looking for a way to upconvert video but didn't realize that the xbox used filters to essentially make the video look better. I was under the impression that you could make a dvd appear upconverted on a pc through ffdshow (when playing on a pc) and since TVeristy is using the ffdshow codec, I assumed that I would be able to upconvert video files.


Sometimes I do convert dvd so that I can make compilation dvds for my trips into long island to visit my family. I do this so that I can put more than one movie on a disc and not have to swap out disks while sitting in gridlock. The kids don't like sitting in hours of traffic with nothing to do to but sit in car seats.
 

[Howard_Casto]

Up-conversion is actually a lot simplier than people tend to think it is.  Ever played high-end video games?  Ever turned on antistropic filtering?  That's essentially all that upconversion is.  The 360's video player is based (loosely) on wmp 11, which is direct-x based, which of course, uses such filters by default. 

I can understand what you are getting at with the dvds, I was just rather confused because this is a thread about the 360, and while I can certainly understand the need to do so in certain applications, most people have their 360 in the living room right next to the dvd collection. 

If you aren't concerned about hdd space, and we are talking about a pc here, I'm not so sure I'd use divx.  It might make more sense to do some sort of a loss-less rip.  Which that being said, generally the default settings on dvd ripper programs do pretty well, but I don't really use any so I can't reccomend one over the other.

[emerica]

dvds aside...

I finally hard wired my 360 and now TVersity works like a charm. I've only tried a few videos, mainly avi files from hi8 conversions I've made, but so far so good.

One thing I did forget to do was the account password. Without putting one TVeristy would not show up on the 360.

[camsauce]

I spent alot of time trying to stream files to the 360. I ended up giving up on it because The fast forwarding would only work right with a WMV. I would get a network congestion box on the screen no matter if it was wired or not and anything but WMV while trying to fast forward. Even with .MPG's which is a supported file.
The other thing is the 360 is too loud when your trying to watch a movie.
To top it off MS( ) allows some files to be used in the regular dash and totally different ones used through the media center dash.

I'm waiting till it gets hacked. I hope it works out for you.

I'm with you on the loud part.  It's okay when you're playing games as they are almost always at a constant volume but with the dynamic range of movie soundtracks it's easy to get distracted by the noise.  I don't like having a PC on all the time to act as a server either.  I've got a nice little 1TB NAS box that houses all my movies and music and it works like a dream with XBMC but will not work with the 360.  My fingers are crossed for XBMC on the 360 or SMB support.

[BORIStheBLADE]

I spent alot of time trying to stream files to the 360. I ended up giving up on it because The fast forwarding would only work right with a WMV. I would get a network congestion box on the screen no matter if it was wired or not and anything but WMV while trying to fast forward. Even with .MPG's which is a supported file.
The other thing is the 360 is too loud when your trying to watch a movie.
To top it off MS( ) allows some files to be used in the regular dash and totally different ones used through the media center dash.

I'm waiting till it gets hacked. I hope it works out for you.

I'm with you on the loud part.  It's okay when you're playing games as they are almost always at a constant volume but with the dynamic range of movie soundtracks it's easy to get distracted by the noise.  I don't like having a PC on all the time to act as a server either.  I've got a nice little 1TB NAS box that houses all my movies and music and it works like a dream with XBMC but will not work with the 360.  My fingers are crossed for XBMC on the 360 or SMB support.

I'm keeping my eye on a the Appletv and the popcorn hour.

http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/

This streamer is having a good start so far. For all the formats it can stream it only cost $180.00. Right now they are back ordered for a while, but I'm keeping an eye on them.