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Windows 7 Streams Media To the Xbox 360 and PS3 Seamlessly

Posted by Soulskill on from the let's-see-this-on-the-big-screen dept.

HardcoreWare reports that the release candidate for Windows 7 contains improved video codecs, and does a much better job of streaming media to popular consoles out of the box. "No longer will you have to install special REG files to 'trick' Windows into streaming video to your PS3 or XBOX 360. And no longer will you have to use UPnP media servers like TVersity that transcode video, severely reducing quality and cause unnecessary CPU load on the server."

10 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Not so new... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    WMP11 has long supported streaming to the 360. I have WMP11 on my XP laptop, and it works like a charm....

    1. Re:Not so new... by Kokuyo · · Score: 1, Informative

      What about the PS3, then? I find this step rather interesting. Microsoft often does not acknowledge their competitors even when those are market leaders. That they do so now, IMO, just points out how shaky they feel about the Vista situation and Windows 7.

    2. Re:Not so new... by XDirtypunkX · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can stream to the PS3 from WMP11. In fact, you can stream to any device that implements the right set of UPnP media functionality. There are even a reasonable number of digital media receivers that offer this functionality from 3rd parties too, meaning you don't have to deal with either MS or Sony, which is a plus in my book.

  2. Re:Odd article by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 4, Informative

    UPnP serves up the plain ol' media to the client.

    However, some UPnP servers are smart enough to know some UPnP clients can't decode certain files, so it, in real time, transcodes to formats they know are readable by most clients.

    --
    Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  3. No transcoding if natively supported on console by beef3k · · Score: 4, Informative

    I stream video and audio content to my PS3 via TVersity (and MediaTomb on a linux box) all the time. There's never any transcoding involved for files that the PS3 natively supports. How exactly is a Windows 7 machine supposed to serve alien formats to a PS3? The ones "tested" in the article are all natively supported. There's no way for the PS3 to play back content in formats it doesn't support unless the host computer transcodes the media.

    1. Re:No transcoding if natively supported on console by Astronomerguy · · Score: 2, Informative

      Obviously you don't download much content via BitTorrent. There are many BBC shows that I can't get on North American TV e.g. Richard Dawkins' specials on Darwin, evolution, and atheism; BBC's "Horizon" series (like PBS' "NOVA", some shows shared), sir Patrick Moore's "The Sky at Night" etc. Also many NOVA shows that I missed. I now have a large collection ready on demand to watch, no digging for a DVD. My wife copies her movie and hobby-related DVD's to the server. Again, no fumbling for disks. Concert films? Dozens. All high quality and ready to watch on a moment's whim. We also have satellite TV and a PVR, but even with 100's of channels, we may watch 3 or 4 at most, and even then not so much. On-demand what we want, when we want it is the ticket, and having them on the media server is the vehicle. Have torrents, will travel to the couch to watch.

    2. Re:No transcoding if natively supported on console by Theoboley · · Score: 2, Informative

      I'm watching TV Shows that i've missed over the past week, or Shows on channels I don't have access to, I.E. Top Gear via BBC, or True Blood via HBO.

      There's little to no effort with setting these things up.

      I Installed Tversity, and within seconds of turning on my ps3, I can be watching an episode of whatever I want to watch. No fuss, no mess.

      I have recently though, bought another external hard drive, hooked it straight to my ps3 and watch movies, tv and whatever via that. Haven't had problems with codecs not working or whatever. And if i do, i just re-encode the files to something that will work with the ps3 while I'm at work.

      --
      Stupidity only gets you so far, then you've gotta try
  4. Sounds awfully like trying to sell old features... by XDirtypunkX · · Score: 2, Informative

    As long as you have a compatible router, Windows Media Player 11 streams via UPnP with very minimal setup. You configure media sharing in your library, then you allow the devices you want to see your media.

    In fact, the process for me was this simple:
    1) Install a bunch of codecs (divx/xvid) for the formats I wanted to stream.
    2) Go to "Media Sharing..." under the library tab in WMP11 and tick the "Share My Media" box, then allow the 360 and the PS3.
    3) Connect from the Console.

    There is no need to put in special .reg files for this functionality. In fact, all you need is a codec that will allow you to load the files into your library on your PC. Unlike TVersity, Windows Media Player won't transcode stuff that's not supported, it will just refuse to play on your device.

    The big thing here is that they're actually adding support for the other codecs out of the box and maybe making the process more automated.

  5. Re:Odd article by k-macjapan · · Score: 5, Informative

    And that is why I will not stop using PS3Mediaserver(http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/). It is by far the best UPnP client for PS3 and is catching on with Xbox360 users as well.

    It is an open source project that is updated quite frequently. For anyone still using Tversity I would highly recommend giving this a shot. It transcodes all basically all formats for viewing on the PS3.

    The official forum for PS3Mediaserver = http://ps3mediaserver.org/forum/ You can find beta builds here and interesting conversation.

  6. Re:how is this a good thing? by Amphetam1ne · · Score: 2, Informative

    Mine are set up in ASUS P2-M2A690G Barebones, as at the time they were the only acceptable looking AMD compatable systems with HDMI out. There may be better ones out there now, so go take a look and see what's about. Inside it's running AMD Athlon X2 4800+ / 2x1GB PC6400 / 80GB Seagate Baracuda. It handles the decoding of 720P video just fine through XBMC Windows. The ram and hdd are probably overkill, but halfing the quantities would only have saved me £10, and you never know what things you might want to use a system for in the future.

    I mostly use the MCE Remote for input, as it's cheap, good quality and well supported. I've got the basic MS Wireless desktop KB/M combo as well, but they don't work well beyond about 1.5m range and fall off very quickly if not in line of sight. You probably want to look at a good quality Logitech wireless desktop set if you want more range.

    On the other box I don't run a keyboard at all, just the Logitech MX-Air, which is awsome but very expensive for a mouse. In the rare cases that I do need to type on it, I use the on-screen keyboard from accessability options.

    While these boxes will serve as general purpose PC's if required, I'd try and keep them as clean as possible so that you can have better startup times and less chance of TSRs and services suddenly trying to do somthing while you're watching a show and causing stuttering or hitching in the playback.

    I don't know any specifics about the subscription service that you'd want to use, but most likely it's either fully web plugin based, or uses a propriatory player. Either way it's doubtfull that you could access it directly from XBMC, although there are python scripts that will let you run external programs from inside XBMC which you could make use of.

    Hope that helps.

    --
    I only buy pepper spray that's been tested on anti-vivisectionists.