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Oh XBox 360, how do I love the! Let me count thy ways … but watching downloaded movies is not one of them.

With the recent fall update for the XBox 360, Microsoft has opened you its Media Client to allow it to connect to third-party UPnP Media Servers. Which is awesome, except for the fact that the XBox 360 only supports WMV (and MPEG) encoded movies. I mean seriously, no “person” voluntarily uses your media formats Microsoft. And with the 360’s horsepower, there shouldn’t be a problem here to decode these things in software. What’s a gamer to do?

Thankfully a group, with a little piece of software called TVersity, recently added transcoding capabilities and support for the XBox 360 Media Client to allow for transcoded videos to be streamed to the XBox 360 on demand. As the little man rejoices and struggles to get it all to work, I write a guide on what I needed to do to unlock this desirable capability.

Note: The programs and versions used in this guide are:

Uninstall Everything

It is highly recommended that you reinstall Windows Media Player, even if you already have 11 installed. Don’t ask why, but many people who were having trouble have gotten it to work by reinstalling everything. To do this, go to Control Panel -> Add or Remove Programs. First, uninstall any programs that start with “Windows Media”. Secondly, go to the “Add/Remove Windows Components” tab and uncheck “Windows Media Player” (click Next to uninstall). I recommend restarting your computer once this is all done.

One of the things that I have noticed in my testing is that TVersity is extremely picky in its codecs. Therefore, (and this really isn’t optional) uninstall all exisiting codecs and codec packs from your system. Yes, that means DivX, Xvid, ffdshow, and/or any packs that contains codecs. If you have no idea what a codec is, chances are you have never installed one. However, it is best to look for programs with the aforementioned names in case your or someone else has installed one.

Prerequisites

TVersity works best with Windows Media Player 11 and Windows users can download this program for free from Microsoft’s website. The install is fairly straight forward and shouldn’t need explanation. On a side note, WMP has come a long ways since its earlier days and version 11 is a very well polished, fast media player. After having used Winamp my entire life, I was almost swayed to actually start using Microsoft’s latest media player. (Almost, being the important word here as nothing beats the old Winamp/VLC combo)

Next, your going to need the proper codecs to decode your movies for transcoding. After playing with a couple codec packs, I have had the best success with the K-Lite Codec Pack Full. When installing this pack, during the installation customization phase, be sure to uncheck the first DivX and XviD checkboxes as TVersity prefers to use ffdshow to decode its videos. Since ffdshow already decodes these formats, its best to not install the seperate codecs. (Remember, TVersity is picky with its codecs. I was unable to get it to work with the official DivX and XviD codecs.)

Installation & Setup

Next, install the latest version of TVersity from the official website. This is also very straight forward, but requires some setup before using.

When the installation is done, stop the Media Server by going to All Programs -> TVsersity Media Server -> TVersity Tools -> Stop TVersity Media Server. Next, edit the file C:\Program Files\TVersity\Media Server\profiles.xml using notepad and find the line:

        <transcodetarget audio="audio/L16" video="video/x-ms-wmv" photo="image/jpeg"
                         onlineAudio="audio/mpeg" onlineVideo="video/x-ms-wmv" onlinePhoto="image/jpeg"/>

To the end of this tag, add actualSizeMatchFileSize="true" to produce the following:

        <transcodetarget audio="audio/L16" video="video/x-ms-wmv" photo="image/jpeg"
                         onlineAudio="audio/mpeg" onlineVideo="video/x-ms-wmv" onlinePhoto="image/jpeg" actualSizeMatchFileSize="true"/>

Restart the media server by redoing the previous instructions, except selecting Start TVersity Media Server instead.

You can launch the TVersity frontend by the icon on your desktop or All Programs -> TVsersity Media Server -> TVsersity Media Server. From within this program, you can modify the TVersity trancode settings from the Settings tab on the main screen, and clicking on Transcoder on the left. For a typical setup where you have a moderately fast computer and your XBox 360 is connected via a network cable, I would recommend the following settings:

  • Select: Transcode only when needed
  • Uncheck: Decrease the bitrate if it is too high for my network
  • Select: Optimize: Quality
  • Select: Connection Speed: Wired (100 mbps)
  • Select: Connection Quality: Excellent
  • Select: Compression: Minimum
  • Enter: Video Resolution: 1280 x 720
  • Uncheck: Decode the media as fast as possible without taking into account its bitrate

Click save in the bottom right to save your changes.

Don’t forget to add some test content - I would recommend adding DivX, XviD, MPEG 2 & 4, and WMV encoded videos to make sure everything transcodes properly. TVersity also supports MP3s and SHOUTcast streams, which are nice to stream while gaming.

Connect the 360

To connect the XBox 360 to TVersity, got to the Media blade and select Videos. On the device page, select Computer. It’ll give you some direction on how to install Windows Media Connect, which you can promptly ignore and select Yes. The 360 will search for your TVersity Media Server. If it can’t find it, make sure your computer and 360 are connected to the same network, through a switch/router (don’t direct connect / crossover), and that your firewall is either disabled or allows incoming network traffic on TCP port 41952.

Once connected, you should be able to see the list of shared movies added to TVersity. Selecting a movie and playing it should start the movie after a short (< 10 seconds) time. If you get an error saying that the media format is not supported, or a black screen with nothing happening, then you likely have a codec problem and should go back to the first (Uninstall Everything) step and start over. Be sure to try out all your differently encoded content before freaking out to see if it is only one codec that is giving you trouble. For me, I couldn’t get XviD content to decode because I installed the XviD codecs from K-Lite instead of using ffdshow to decode it.

You should also note that due to the way your videos are transcoded, you can not fast-forward / rewind videos. TVersity also seems to have a bug where the XBox 360 Media Player will not end immediately after a video is done. Small things to overlook for streaming media to your XBox 360.

Other Thoughts & Conclusion

If you have Window XP Media Center Edition, and think TVersity is too much of a hassle, I would recommend looking into Transcode 360 as from what I have heard it is easier to setup, but not as nice to use. Or else you can look into VLC360 (which I have not).

The unfortunate thing about all of these solutions is that it requires a Windows XP (or Vista) computer in order to work as there currently is no Linux based solution. I have been looking into this however, and based on my time from playing around with TwonkyVision’s TwonkyMedia, I believe it is possible that with a little bit of CGI scripting you could have it transcode videos on-the-fly using either VLC, mencoder, ffmpeg, etc. I don’t have the time to play with something like this but, if someone is willing to give it a try, let me know how it turns out!

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