Now that I've finally got a HD TV I'm trying to work out how to output some HD stuff I've downloaded on to the TV using the stuff I have i.e. not having to spend out anymore money
Is it possible to directly connect a PC to the 360 rather than going via a (wireless) network? The laptop has XP on it but I could load Media Centre on it.

Why not connect the laptop to the TV I hear you ask, well I don't have a way of getting the sound out of the laptop and to be honest it struggles with playing the HD stuff.

Matt

 

My 360 and MCE PC are both directly wired to my router and everything plays fine. Wireless was virtually impossible to get working and poor when trying to play anything intensive.

You should be able to connect to straight to your PC if you wish too.

 

You don't need media center installed if all you want to do is stream video. The new WMP11 will do that for you. With XP you don't get the media center fron end, but it might be worth trying first (especially if it save you having to do a re-install).

 

Whoops meant to say that I've tried WMP11 and whilst it does work, what I'm after is a way to play divx and avi's and I think Transcode 360 only works via Media Centre?

What I was meant to say was can they be directly connected without having to both go to a router which is in the middle of the house, 360 is too far away to wire (mrs hates wires!).

Sooner MS enable divx and avi file playback the better!

 

So what does WMP11 do? And where do i get it?

 

Windows Media Player 11, and you can get it from Microsoft...

Download details: Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP

Basically it allows you to share video (wmv), audio, and pictures with the 360 without having to have media center installed. I've played with it a little at it seems to work fine.

Don't know about a direct connection. You'd have to set up come sort of internet connection sharing, and even then I'm not 100% sure it would work (never tried it - got mine connected to a router as well). You could always use one of those ring main networks. Not need for any wires then and it'd probably be faster than wifi...

 

But how many people have movies in WMV format

That said, there is a way round it to play AVI/MPG files but it's not as straight forward as playing WMV

 

Cross over cable with static IPs should do the trick

 

You can now stream AVI files to 360 without owning a media pc, TVersity can trick the console into thinking the source format is WMV (or one of the formats supported by the 360) by using transcoding. Check out Playing DivX and Xvid content on Xbox 360 – An easy guide! :: TweakTown for a guide on how to do it, it's a bit fiddly but does work.

 

I use DVDx to encode my DVD's in WMV to be streamed to my 360. Works very well even with my PC wirelessly connected to the router and DVDx is free!

 

Agreed, Tversity is great once you get it set up and running...

TVersity Website

 

Tried getting TVersity going last night. Running fine on my PC, set up the shares etc etc.... go into the 360, reconnect the PC (after diconnecting it) and it doesn't find any movies still?
Reset everything as the guide suggests but it still doesn't work?
TVersity is deffo running on the PC as well.
Will try again tonight

 

i'm getting exactly the same problem. i've allowed port forward through my router & also allowed the service to run through my firewall.. just can't get the xbox too seem my pc I wonder if the lastest xbox ms patches have done anything to stop this type of thing??

 

I had the same problem, check that Tversity has compiled the shares. If it's still compiling ( little spinning icon in the top right hand corner ) it won't let you connect from the 360.

2.1. Attempting to access the media library from a target device while the media server is refreshing the library, tends to fail

This is a known issue. Currently browsing the library during a refresh is likely to fail. This means that web browser will give you the 404 message and UPnP / DLNA devices will produce some other error message. Waiting till the refresh operation is done will solve this problem. If you would like the server to abort the current refresh operation, you need to restart it since currently the GUI does not have an abort refresh feature.

 

Mine had deffo completed the library refresh, strange cause I followed the setup instructions to the letter and everything went as it should (port forwarding etc) just that the 360 refuses to see the videos on the PC (it can see the music directory - but it could see that before installing TVersity