Help with Vista Media Center/Xbox 360!

[Chris Gohlke]

For a while now, I've been ripping my DVD's to network storage using Handbrake (using the PSP profile). This profile gave me reasonably small file sizes that played on pretty much all my devices. As a plus, I could throw them on a thumb drive and plug them into my 360 to play.

This week I purchased a new desktop, an HP m9040n, with Vista Premium and the whole Media center setup with TV tuner, etc. I assumed (wrongfully) that I would be able to now stream all the movies I'd ripped through the media center interface and watch them on the 360. Apparently that is not the case.

Is there any way to get Media Center to play these files? Strangely, on the PC, I can play them in Media Player, but not in Media Center.

Vista has been a royal pain to get set up the way I want and this is the last major stumbling block, so any help is greatly appreciated.

[Chris Gohlke]

Bump, and BTW, these are .mp4 files that I am referring to.

[Jason Dunn]

I haven't tried really tackling the MPEG4 stuff myself, because the pieces are all bit wobbly...I'm a bit confused by the fact that you can play h.264 in Windows Media Player but not inside Media Center on that same PC. Or are you talking about Media Center extender on the Xbox 360? Because that's not supported - something to do with the decoding and streaming happening on the PC and not on the Xbox, so the Xbox can't bring the coded to play. Or maybe that's not what you're talking about?

You'd think I'd know this stuff down cold, but I think I'd gotten used to Microsoft's WMV bigotry and thus haven't really tried to integrate h.264 content into the my XBox ecosystem.

I wish I could be more help - I'd suggest front-paging this issue, maybe some people will read it there and chime in. Or jump over to The Green Button and see what their community has to say.

[Chris Gohlke]

Have checked out Green Button. Unfortunately, it is a no go.

If I take an MP4 and put it on a thumb drive and plug it into the 360, I can play it just fine. If I try to play it from my PC using the 360 as an extender, it does not work.

[Jason Dunn]

If I take an MP4 and put it on a thumb drive and plug it into the 360, I can play it just fine. If I try to play it from my PC using the 360 as an extender, it does not work.

Yeah, it's some sort of codec thing - the Xbox has the h.264 codec for native playback, but when you're in Media Center Extender mode it's not streaming the file in native format, so the codecs on the Xbox don't come into play. It might work if you use the Xbox 360 to browse a shared folder directly...

[Chris Gohlke]

Yeah, that does not work either. From the reading I did online, it is a common frustration, because it should work. The opinion was that it was purposefully crippled.

[Jason Dunn]

Yeah, that does not work either. From the reading I did online, it is a common frustration, because it should work. The opinion was that it was purposefully crippled.

Well that sucks! :mad: