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Xbox One Will Play Media from USB Devices, DLNA Servers
New submitter Mauro sends word that Microsoft has announced upcoming Xbox One support for streaming media both from attached USB devices, such as flash drives, and DLNA media servers. Compatibility with a broad list of media formats will be added by the end of the year, including .MKV files. They also followed up last week's announcement of a digital TV tuner with an interesting twist: it will be able to stream broadcasts over a local network to devices running the Smartglass app, which is available on Windows, Android, and iOS.
Pirate media support: Why i bought an XB:OG in the first place, why I meh'd out on 360/PS3, and why I might just grab an XBO. Now just let me run linux on it!!!!!
PS3 had this support, but it was dropped in PS4. I hope this move will prompt Sony to re-add support.
That's a nice idea, but even tv's that cost less than 200£ can play mkv's and mp3's from a USB stick. My Samsung tv can stream straight from any PC in the same LAN [As long as a certain samsung app is installed in that pc].
Can my hospital detect DLNA in my blood to identify my blood?
Even my Windows ME box can do these things. No joke.
Will the XB1 support Cinavia, or not? This is likely to be a make-or-break thing - if Microsoft puts in a Cinavia detection algorithm, and there's no way to bypass it, I can see a great many people who might otherwise spring for an XB1 instead moving off to find another platform (homebrew running XBMC, most likely.)
I'm tipping that they won't make any explicit references to Cinavia, and just hope it flies under the radar - until somebody tries it and finds out, one way or the other. But even more fun: even if they don't have it at release, doesn't mean it won't be added in a subsequent firmware revision...
I'm pretty sure the Xbox 360 could read h.264 files from a USB thumb drive. I remember watching a movie off one at a friends house. It's been well over four years now. Is that no longer the case with the console since the last major firmware update for the unit?
Life is not for the lazy.
That you've been dreaming of for the last ten years. I personally want my console to play games very well, not do lots of media stuff OK. I have a PC for a reason.
Just because you don't have use for these features doesn't mean they're not useful to a lot of people. My PC is in my office, with a normal monitor, while my television and consoles are in a larger room with couches, suitable for family viewing. Playing a digital collection to this screen either requires me to hook up a laptop every time or have some device that can do the job. If a console (or the TV itself) can do it without me having to go out and buy or build a special purpose streaming device, all the better. I'm sure this scenario describes a lot of people.
Seriously, what is the major malfunction of device makers that basic, guest share Samba support is never put into these devices? Everyone has it, everyone comprehends it. Just let us access a damn SMB share as a list of files and play things.
No one anywhere, ever, cares about the clusterfuck that is DLNA.
I have a no-smart-tv (LG) and it can read any USB drive (including HD)
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
So, am I actually to understand that, in 2014, the Xbox One is not currently capable of playing standard media formats such as MKV and that to this point, a console owner has been unable to play media off a flash drive or DLNA?
Well done, MS. Keep fuckin' that chicken, guys.
DLNA is better as it is less bandwidth and power hungry and does not require as much hardware at each end. I use the Windows 7 DLNA from my pc to my Samsung TV and my networked home theatre all the time just fine. It just won't play MKV through it. The Windows 8 one on the other hand sucks as they have yanked a bunch of the compatibility. Miracast does solve a problem of sending your actual screen contents but the two are not really the same thing, they can be used as the same thing but really one is for passing out media files where you can still use the device, the other is casting the screen to a bigger screen which can be handy but in many cases just means you should have been using a different device to start with.
It can read h.264 just not in the MKV container. MP4 is fine though just like it is when using DLNA push to the Xbox One. I do wish they would remove the Xbox watermark from every video it plays though, I know I own a freaking Xbox already.
You can play most media formats over DLNA, you just need to push the file to the Xbox One that acts as a DMR, there is no pull interface on the device which is stupid. It can't play MKV, just like Windows Media player.
There are a few transcoding DLNA servers that make things much nicer (though far from perfect) on the PS3. The benchmark is PS3 Media Server. http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/ (it'll work with other clients, too, but it was designed for transcoding and streaming to the PS3).
Yes, it would. People using Vorbis aren't using WMA. Microsoft has patents on WMA, and makes money from every device supporting it. So it's in their best interests not to promote Vorbis: It may not cost them directly, but it cuts into their profits from WMA.
I think the problems stem more from everyone involved trying to make sure that their patents would be required in some way.
We're going backwards, how is it possible that the 2 biggest living room power houses (xbox and PS4) cant even play media from a USB...
capitalism, jeeeeej
Why DLNA, in this day and age? It's garbage, with a "lowest common denominator" approach to media files, with only 8.3 filenames and very few supported formats. It's like the companies got together to grudgingly agree a simple standard that would mean they didn't have to do any real work with each other, just a bare minimum that would just about allow interoperability and a minimum of effort to implement.
Gotta ask for a source for "only 8.3 filenames" - nothing in the specs I've read states this, and I've never seen any DLNA software with such a limitation in the last decade.
And yes, there is a defined lower end for media support, but nothing keeps anyone from supporting additional formats. I've played 1080p h.264 video with surround-sound DTS in an MKV container using DLNA software, just as I've played .ogg files and various others ....
Anyways, why DLNA? Because it is nice and simple and does what people want? Well, perhaps not what YOU want, but you also seem to think it only supports 8.3 filenames for some quite-strange reason.
Sigh, what a pathetically ignorant post.
It's not as straightforward as just implementing the ability to read FAT, it's about making sure people can't just copy downloaded games onto a USB drive and make multiple copies and pirate games that trivially whilst making sure they can use USB storage for games if they want to take them to their friends. It's about making sure you can't trivially manipulate a game copied to a USB device to cheat and so on and so forth.
Like it not, the reason there is so much more investment in console games by publishers is because it gives them access to a platform that is much freer from piracy and cheating (yes it exists, but most people don't chip their consoles because it often prevents online access and gets your online profile banned etc. meaning it's far more costly for cheaters/pirates to engage in that meaning there's less of it overall - though that is changing with Steam taking over most of the PC gaming world).
Microsoft has to protect that, else it loses everything that separates the console world from the PC world. Whether you agree with DRM or you're an open source everything hippy it matters not, the point is fundamentally that there's far more that Microsoft has to consider than just implementing the ability to read/write from a USB drive so to just say "Oh all they need to do is implement support for FAT" is completely wrong and shows a painful lack of understanding about the console market.
You seem entirely oblivious to the fact the 360 was in the exact same situation - worse, the 360 even had it's own bespoke memory cards originally. Support for USB devices came far later on on the 360. They haven't removed anything because the X1 is a completely new system with a completely new architecture requiring completely new software, it's not a simple in-place upgrade of the 360.
"Why DLNA, in this day and age? It's garbage, with a "lowest common denominator" approach to media files, with only 8.3 filenames and very few supported formats."
What the fuck? have you created a DOS 5.0 DLNA server or something? What you describe isn't the reality of any DLNA server or client I've used including that bundled with Windows and the client bundled with even my cheapest TV.
On video game consoles, it is the custom not to "allow general computation". The console maker uses cryptographic means to block the execution of unapproved computer programs for two reasons: to ensure to console buyers a baseline level quality across all software published on the platform, and to ensure a royalty to the console maker. A lot of people are willing to pay for the convenience of being able to choose software without having to worry about extremely low quality.
That's because the HTPC we've been dreaming about is just that: a PC. Just find a small, quiet PC, plug its video out into your television's video in, and put a wireless keyboard and trackpad on your lap or smartphone-based remote control in your hand. Now that integrated graphics have surpassed the GPUs of the previous console generation (since roughly Ivy Bridge), you can even game on it if you put a keyboard and mouse on a TV tray or you play games listed on the first of several Google Search results for pc couch multiplayer. Hairyfeet, can you chime in?
Right, so it's not a technology issue, and never was.
I'm so tired of technology being crippled in the name of copyright and DRM it's not funny -- the copyright lobby has more or less decided we can't do anything without their permission.
I'm aware of that, and again, I've always assumed it was because of corporate greed.
At the end of the day, the Xbone is a very anti-consumer piece of technology, and I simply will not buy one.
I will buy a spare for my beloved 360 before that ever happens.
Microsoft can shove their DRM, copyright protection, and POS system up their collective asses.
Will they care even a little that I'm doing this? Absolutely not. Do I expect others likely are making the same choice? Definitely.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
DNLA sucks. I can run a DNLA server (plex or windows media, doesn't matter) on a pretty awesome box and it will still suck. Transcode beforehand to h264 aac MP4 and you can play it on lots more devices, and you don't run into problems on the server side with multiple clients like you do with DNLA... but you do have to set up a webserver of some kind (although NAS often comes with a simple http server nowadays, and my router can do it too)
As much as we all hate to admit it, home computers are STILL not really up to transcoding on the fly for multiple clients (or sometimes even single clients).
Plus if you just go ahead and transcode beforehand, you can play the file in a browser, (including xbone), ipad, android, Roku, an ancient PC or whatever.
about 10 years ago I was looking forward to a time when I didn't have to pre-transcode... and I assumed it was 10 years off... now I would guess we are about 10 years off from that point.
Well it depends what you class as a technology issue - I'd say that trying to make an application portable but not copyable is quite a technological challenge. That doesn't mean it's politically ideal but I can see why they're going down that route. This isn't really like PCs where companies try to bolt DRM onto an open architecture, this is about an architecture that is explicitly closed, being kept closed, because sometimes that's the intention - no one's pretending consoles are these great open devices, if you're staunchly anti-DRM then consoles never were and never will be for you but that doesn't mean there isn't a market for them and it doesn't change the fact that the market exists in part because of that DRM - there is a market for systems that are closed and fairly cheat free as a result.
"At the end of the day, the Xbone is a very anti-consumer piece of technology, and I simply will not buy one."
I'd argue it's actually less anti-consumer than some of the older consoles, certainly they've done away with things like online passes and shit this generation. I don't really understand why you have so much love for the 360, but so much hate for the X1 when the X1 is an all round improvement in terms of freedoms. The X1's DRM is actually a big improvement for the consumer on the 360s - cross profile content sharing works far better for example.
Microsoft made a lot of mistakes early on with the X1, but there was a complete reversal since the announcements and it's release (hell, you can even buy a Kinectless version now so all the NSA is spying on you through it nonsense is long dead), it's now a much more consumer friendly system than the 360 was and as consoles go, though consoles in general aren't exactly consumer friendly, so it's not exactly a high bar it has to surpass anyway.
My XBox 360 hasn't been plugged into a network in several years, and the XBone isn't backwards compatible with my existing library of games.
Microsoft has sent so many mixed messages about this platform that I don't know what to believe about it any more.
I don't care about DLC, I don't care about on-line gaming, I don't care about multi-player, I don't care about pretty much anything they said was a "feature" of this new console. It brings zero value for me.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
PS3 supports DLNA "just fine" (there are a few stupidities and flaw in how it is implemented, though).
That there is a lack of support for specific file-formats (MKV and some types of MP4 most notably) has nothing to do with DLNA, and everything to do with Sony just not implementing any kind of support for those specific formats.
If you get the result that some files play sometimes, I suspect you have a "low end" NAS (Synology? ARM/MIPS processor?) and it is trying to transmux the files, but either failing this or failing to do it fast enough for the PS3's timeout.
Try PS3MediaServer on your computer; sorry, no suggestions for your NAS outside of TwonkyServer, which will normally not do any transcoding/transmuxing.
Why don't USB flash drives bigger than 32 GB just use the Universal Disk Format? Linux can read and write it, OS X can read and write it, Windows Vista and newer can read and write it, and it doesn't appear to have the same patent issues as exFAT.
You could always split up your feature-length motion picture into a file per chapter. But I don't think NTFS is even publicly documented by Microsoft. I wouldn't be surprised if its internals use a bunch of concepts borrowed from VMS and OS/2.
You need plex, then all files will be compatible regardless of what they start as. Trying to do it any other way is truly painful.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Is innovative !
Empire Four Kingdoms hack tool
Sure, but my point is that by the time it's a year into it's lifecycle the X1 will have been patched with all the things it was lacking such that it can do everything the 360 did and then some, whilst being actually less of a pain in terms of DRM.
If all you use your 360 for is offline gaming and viewing media then the X1 will do all that too, so the only real thing that matters about it is whether it has any games you want, if not then there's really no big deal.
Personally I'm a bit of a console whore as I have a PS4 and a Wii U as well (on top of the 2x 360s and my Wii and PS3). I actually like all of them, probably less excited by the PS4's games line up right now - The Order just isn't my thing, and frankly despite the Wii U's deficiency of games the games it does have are actually excellent such that it's still got more excellent games - i.e. those deserving a review ranking of 95%+ than the PS4 and X1 combined even though the PS4 and X1 have more games overall. I've found actually owning the consoles that you get a completely different picture of them than that painted by fanboys and the press.
Rather than a traditional PC, it's probably a small box running Android. Some of the newer ones are pretty spiffy, and support apps for XBMC, Netflix, Hulu, and all the other goodies.
The biggest thing that seems to be missing from Android devices: disc-based playback. I've yet to see one that will play any optical discs, let alone Blu-Ray. This doesn't make much sense to me as many blu-ray players already come with Netflix apps etc on some proprietary crappy/buggy UI (I need to pull the plug on mine periodically when Netflix stops working). It would sure be nice to have everything in one box.
There are some devices which purport to have "full blu-ray menu support" using Android, but when I investigated further they only support rips and lack an optical drive :-(
My first guess about the lack of Android app support in any Blu-ray Disc players is Oracle v. Google. BD-J menus use Oracle Java ME, while Android uses Dalvik.
What filesize limit? I have a nice big DVD disk image far in excess of 4GB. I remember downloading ncftp in my UMSDOS Linux mini-installation specifically to get around the 32-bit limit that the binaries that came on my circa 2004 Slackware CDs had.
Daniel Klugh