How to serve videos on computer to an xbox 360 or PS3

[TheForce]

I have both an XBOX 360 and a PS3 in my home theater. I do not have an HTPC.

I have a number of videos using various codecs that I would like to play in my home theater. One codec is the VLC in avi files.

Is there a good way to get either of the devices in my home theater to play these video files? I have both connected to the lan but have never attempted to connect them to my computers for file transfer and playback. Is anyone doing this sort of work and if so what is the best way to achieve the end goal of playing these videos in the home theater, short of connecting up a home theater PC to my PJ and sound system.

 

[diogen]

VLC is not a codec and neither is AVI (unless you are talking uncompressed couple hundred GB files).
Those files are most likely MPEG4/Part2 (aka DivX/XviD) in an AVI container that you play using the VLC player.

Both, 360 and PS3 can handle DivX. How you transfer them to the console I dont know as I have neither.

Keep in mind that AVI can have audio/video in a variety of formats, just like MKV.
Use MediaInfo to check those.

Diogen.

 

[TheForce]

Thanks for your encouragement.

I decided to venture into the XBOX360 first since I suspicioned that it would be compatible with my Vista Media center console on the PC.

In XBOX I saw that I needed a key code to get started so I simply followed the instructions on screen and within a few minutes I had connectivity to my shared folder of videos. In that folder I had some avi's and wmv files. The wmv files would play on the xbox. But the avi would not and I got the error code message that I needed to update my XBOX with xbox live so I signed on and followed the instructions. I was impressed how easy it was. Easier than updating the codecs on a PC! All I had to do while logged on was to attempt to play the video and the proper codec was downloaded. As you explained, it was an mp4 codec. Took a few seconds and the second time I tried to play the avi ( that only plays on a VLC player.) the video played perfectly.

I am real happy this worked. Now I can access media from my business PC's and play them in my home theater without the need to play the sneaker net game with DVD's.

The next experiment will be to attempt to play HDTV.

 

[FunkyBoss]

I started doing this a few months back with a Windows 7 machine hooked into my network serving movies and TV shows to my XBOX 360 using Windows Media Center. It works pretty well so far. There's a plugin called 'Media browser' for WMC that gives a relly slick "cover flow" GUI to it all and will even pull metadata about the movies/tv shows from the internet.

The only real downside I have come across so far, is when playing these mp4/divx/xvid compressed movies, it's very slow and clunky to try and fast foward/rewind through them.

 

[TheForce]

It's been working great here for the first night I used it. I served up 4 TV shows in HD. While certainly not Blu Ray quality, it is good as Dish Network locals in HD.

I have an xbox 360 traditional IR remote control and have that programmed to my HT Master 800 remote so the XBOX functions like another home theater source. I did the same with the PS3. IT sure is nice getting this xbox functioning to access the media content from my video edit room direct to the big screen now. One other issue, all the programming I've watched so far has been in DD2.0. I don't have any files with DD5.1 yet. Maybe soon.

 

[BuddyBoy]

There's a whole class of devices called Digital Media Adapters that are designed to be part of your home theater and access digital media over the network that resides on your PC or dedicated server. These devices include:

• Home Theater PC running XBMC, SageTV, MythTV, or similar
• Inexpensive set-top box like the Popcorn Hour A-110
• Xbox or other (Linksys DMA2200, D-Link DSM750) acting as Media Center Extender
• Xbox running XBMC
• PS3 running as DLNA client

There are dozens of other less commonly used clients, like Sage TV extenders, too many to list.

I've experiemented with all of these over the years and have settled on cheap set-top boxes running Syabas's NMT middleware with YAMJ. This solution works for my needs but it isn't for everyone.

Not my YAMJ, an image I found by searching for YAMJ on Google:

 

[Ramy]

When you turn on your 360, your Vista box should automatically recognize that there is an extender device turned on. It was easy for me to setup too.

 

[TheForce]

right, ramy

The only peculiar task was I got a key code from the xbox that needed to be set on the Vista PC before the files in the shared folder were accessible. All the instructions were on popups so I just followed the directions.



The reason I decided to venture into this was because I got hooked on the TV series 24 several weeks ago. I started to watch from season 1, episode 1 and got to season 4 and Blockbuster was missing some DVD's in the sequence. I know you can download with bit torrents many tv shows and movies but never did this before. At first, I was content to simply watch the missing stories on my PC but then it occurred to me that I should be able to get this on my 120" FPJ in the home theater. I figured my XBOX360 was the best bet with the PS3 second. If those didn't work then I planned to add a spare PC to the home theater but by the results I'm getting, I will just be happy to use the XBOX360.


I guess the next phase is to learn more about torrents and how these work. I understand the technical side of P2P but lack the practical side, of getting the content in the right form for big screen viewing, locating the movie and what works best, free vs. pay services pros and cons of each. The first client I downloaded to use was Limewire. It works OK but seems to keep nagging about going to the pro version which costs and I'm not sure the benefit justifies the cost. Maybe some of you experts can guide me in this.

 

[Ramy]

I don't do any torrents stuff. I don't want any viruses on my computer or people knocking at my door with a set of handcuffs. That's just me though.

 

[Mattman71]

You can access your computer's hard drive from your PS3's wireless connection using a program called PS3 Media Server:

PS3 Media Server

I have used it in both Windows and Linux with multiple distributions and it works flawlessly.
The only issue is the limitation of the wireless connection for speed. Watching videos from your computer on the PS3 are often choppy. Solution: Copy the video from the Computer to the PS3. Works very well and only takes a few minutes.

 

[TheForce]

Is the PS3 choppy issue due to the wifi speed?
I haven't tested my PS3 but have everything in my HT connected with a dedicated switch and ethernet 100kbps wire. The movies on the XBOX360 are serving from my Vista quadcore with a raid 3 drive sata server. No choppiness at all.

 

[Mattman71]

Is the PS3 choppy issue due to the wifi speed?
I haven't tested my PS3 but have everything in my HT connected with a dedicated switch and ethernet 100kbps wire. The movies on the XBOX360 are serving from my Vista quadcore with a raid 3 drive sata server. No choppiness at all.

The choppy video that I get is due to the wireless speed. A direct connection would solve the problem, but as I mentioned, just copying the video to the PS3 hard drive works great.

 

[TheForce]

I have some MP4 video that won't play on the xbox 360. Can you play thoseon the PS3?

 

[Mattman71]

I have some MP4 video that won't play on the xbox 360. Can you play thoseon the PS3?

No problems with MP4.

 

[TheForce]

I got my PS3 connected now to the Media center PC and it will play a couple files with MP4 that the XBOX360 won't. I also picked up a software pack from NERO but I'm not real impressed with it. Supposed to do auto conversion on the fly but so far it has trouble with the same videos that the XBOX 360 can't play, yet the PS3 does.

 

[captprice]

I got my PS3 connected now to the Media center PC and it will play a couple files with MP4 that the XBOX360 won't. I also picked up a software pack from NERO but I'm not real impressed with it. Supposed to do auto conversion on the fly but so far it has trouble with the same videos that the XBOX 360 can't play, yet the PS3 does.

Did you find a program that would convert the videos so they could be played on Xbox 360?

 

[diogen]

MP4 is (most of the time) a container, just like AVI and MKV.
In order to stream it to a 360, Windows Media player should be able to play it when double-clicking the file.
Here is a writeup how this can be done although not all people have success using it.
Stream h.264 Video MP4/M4V to PS3 and XBOX 360 from Windows Vista/XP

Diogen.

 

[smokey982]

I guess I need some help getting my 360 to see my PC. Now my PC is a media center PC, and I can see the media center with no problems through the Xbox. But when I try to see videos and such just by going straight to the PC, it can't find it. I followed the directions on the website, which were to open windows media player and check the 360 for media sharing. But when I test the connection through the 360 it says no PC listed.

So how can it not see a PC, but it can see the media center on that same PC?? I know that probably sounds confusing, but does that make sense to anyone?

 

[TheForce]

smokey-
First off, don't consider me an expert, I just had good luck following the instructions.

This is what I did so if you are different in procedure look to that for why you are having trouble:

Hardware-

I have a PS3 and an XBOX360 connected via ethernet (hardwire) to my router.
They both are capable to go on the internet.

I went into the settings section of the xbox360 and got connected and the first thing it said was here's a key code, I recall 2 - 4 digit numbers. And instructed me to go to my PC and enter the key when requested. I wrote it down and went to the media center PC and entered the code after trying to connect to the XBOX360. The xbox 360 was sensed by the PC but would not connect until the key was entered.

Once I did this I had the same problem but remembered to always reboot the computer when in doubt. After a reboot the xbox 360 would see all the shared folders by default. I then searched for additional shared folders I had set up manually and in a few seconds they popped up too.

Did you enter the code on the PC?
Did you make sure your xbox was connecting to the internet before trying to connect as an extender? ( this to be sure your LAN is functioning to the XBOX.)

On the XBOX, there is a main menu for videos. This is where I first checked and where I first saw my PC listed as a sub folder that I accessed and first saw the windows default shared folder show up. I had the 3 sample videos from Microsoft in there.

Hope some of my newbie observations can help you.

Captprice-
I am still having problem with some videos even with the Nero realtime conversion program which isn't as robust as they would have you believe, but, I'm still new at this so maybe it's just me. I have lots more to learn, such as the difference between container and file format. I'm pretty good with traditional video but this stuff is all new to me. They give error messages in XBOX and then the "no icon" after first attempt.

 

[smokey982]

Well I don't have any problems connecting to the internet. My Xbox is hard wired to my router and I'm online every time I play. And I did enter the 8 digit number. After that I could access my pictures found on my computer through the media center on the computer. But that's all that I can see is the media center. I can't access the folders on my computer (videos, music).

So it's obviously found my computer since I can access the media center, but when I try to go directly to the computer it says it can't find any computer.