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Run Windows MCE Applications on Xbox 360
BlueMoon writes "A user of the GA-forum found out the Media Extender on the Xbox 360 allows to stream Windows MediaCenter applications over network on your Xbox 360 console. While the applications themselves will run on the MCE PC, it'll stream the interface/input to the Xbox360/PC. Simple MCE apps like those modified browsers to pull down news stories, stock quotes, sports scores etc., as well as several internet radio clients worked fine. Mini-games like a Tetris clone and some card game crashed, but then again ... that seems to be a normal behaviour for the 360."
Well, I have been using my 360 as MCE extender. And everything works fine for me.... But my problem is that when you have recorded tv that gets streched out to 720p it looks sooo terrible. Once i bumbed up the video quality, it seems better. My other problem is that I usually like my usual 4:3 channels to strech on tv, and cannot seem to find a way to do that.
However I find it funny that the submission blames MS/360 for a crash in some third party product.... And I have not had any issues with my 360.
I am also a big Windows Media Center fan, but there is one huge problem I have encountered. No HBO. I get HBO as part of my service (Dish Networks), but WMC won't let me watch or record it. It's puts up a blue 'Content Restricted' screen, which is apparently some implementation of the broadcast flag. It's not just preventing me from recording it, but from watching it at all. Well, I can turn to that channel and get about 10 seconds before the content protection screen comes up. This is seriously hurting the product. I had a Tivo, and wanted to switch to Media Center to avoid monthly fees, but if I can't record Rome or other HBO shows to watch later, than there is no real reason to stick with MCE.
If anyone knows of a fix for this I'd appreciate it. I've check out thegreenbutton.com, but I haven't found a solution yet.
I tried MythTV, but not being a Linux user I had no idea how to fix a lot of problems. Tivo was great, but I do like having one central machine where content can be instantly streamed to the extenders around the house, and I really like not paying a monthly fee.
Same here. To put things into perspective, MacInTouch has the results up for a reliability survey of the iPod. The iPod models with the highest failure rates are:The worst model has a reported failure rate of almost 30%! Yet somehow Apple seems to still be doing well, people still want to buy iPods. But when it coems to Microsoft, Slashdot can't wait to post every negative story they can find. It must take a lot of effort to hate so much. Yes, I get that Slashdot doesn't really like Microsoft.. so shut the fuck up and ignore them.
I have an MCE machine that I use as a gaming machine downstairs in my basement, and did not want to keep the PC in the living room. I don't use the TV tuners (I have an HD DirectTivo) so all the MCE box does is stream music and movies to my TV. I had my movies encoded to the Nero Digital format here which worked well. I could even get those files to play in MCE (although seeking did not work at all, much less chapter seeks) so I generally used the Nero player.
I was hoping I could do something, at least, with these files, on the XBOX 360. Well, needless to say, they aren't supported (it doesn't work) and pretty much the only thing I could get to work that I had was an WMV file. Heck, even a DVD, ripped to the hard drive, which worked in MCE, does NOT work on the XBOX360. Gave a message like "sorry, you can't do this over a remote desktop connection". Looks like its using the RDP protocol to stream sound and video.
Well, after some figiting, I got a movie encoded to WMV and it worked fine, once I mucked with the aspect ratio. Too bad the encoder is slow as heck, Nero's was much faster. Saw some interlacing problems with the final copy as well, but thats probably just pebkac.
agressiv