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they seemed to have positioned the Xbox as an adjunct to a separate Windows Media Center PC and not as a stand alone unit (which is not what I want).

bigstrat2003 wrote:

Streaming video files from your PC to your 360 is dead easy. [...] set up the media center (can be a bit of a pain, but hardly the epic pain in the ass you claim), install Transcode 360 on your PC

From the Transcode 360 page:

This software is designed to run on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.

For one thing, this operating system is no longer available, and it was available only preinstalled on a new PC. The page doesn't say one way or another whether it still works on Windows Vista Home Premium. For another, the original poster doesn't want to stream from a Windows Media Center PC.

As others have mentioned (but I will repeat, because depressingly few people know about it), you just need the free Transcode 360 app to watch any format not supported by the Xbox natively.
http://runtime360.com/blog/
TVersity is supposed to do the same thing, but I haven't used it.

Try those out and see if you still need the AppleTV (did you keep your receipt?)

transcode 360 does this, although the project hasn't been updated for sometime.

http://runtime360.com/projects/transcode-360/

The problem is rewind/forwarding doesn't work too well.

Transcode360 will take care of your transcoding needs.

Even though the 360 only plays WMV and MPEG2 video, audio gets transcoded automatically if you use the 360 an extender. Most of my music is stored as LAME encoded 192/256 kb VBR MP3's and the 360 in the living room plays them just fine. I don't know what the media extender software does internally - you probably do lose some quality as the XP or MCE pc transcodes your music on-the-fly. Video can be transcoded using other apps like Transcode360: http://www.runtime360.com/ I haven't tried this myself though.

I don't know, I wish they would do what XBMC does and play any video format instead of just DRM WMV. If they would do that the 360 would be perfect. At the moment it feels crippled in that one regard.

While it's not a perfect solution you can use tools like http://www.tversity.com/home or http://runtime360.com/category/blog/transcoding/ to convert just about any media file into WMV in realtime to stream over a network.

Eric

#1

Transcode 360 is available for Vista here: http://runtime360.com/2006/12/12/new-blood-and-tra nscode-360-for-vista-released/

Works so far. It isn't perfect to (seeking is a bitch, but it works somewhat). If you just watch & pause, there are no problems.

#2 The remote isn't 125 US$. I really do wonder where you looked, or at what product you looked.
See here: http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-360-Universal-Media-Rem ote/dp/B000B6MLSM/ref=acc_access_vg_ai_7_title/103 -0982751-6499833

25 US$. Expensive, but okay.

#3 Yes, kinda sucks. Have the same problem.

http://www.runtime360.com/ is free software that will transcode your xvid and divx files to wmv in realtime. You install it on your media center box and you can play your divx files from your 360. Sure transcoding will cost you some picture quality, but its a decent solution until Microsoft decides to come around.

It's not quite as seamless, but if you're using Media Center, you can install transcode360 on your MCE PC and select 'transcode' from the more menu when browsing videos from the device. Works great for me, apart from the few extra remote presses to play the clip.