Media Centre/Player

[Nigel]

I currently have a PS3, xbox 360 and Laptop with Vista Media Centre on it. I want to use one of the above to play media from (mainly DVD's). Which one would you chose to use? The PS3 and Xbox are both connected via Hdmi to my amp and the laptop isn't currently hooked up. PS3 is connected to LCD upstairs and Xbox to Plasma downstairs.

What format should I encode my DVD's to retain 5.1 and at as close quality to the original DVD as possible (whilst retaining a small file size)? Is there a format that works on all 3?

Am I right in thinking both the PS3 and Xbox 360 shall read directly from my external hard drive? My ideal scenario would be to add everything onto the drive and then just swap it between the 2 consoles.

I've confused myself researching this, so hoping someone can clear it up for me.

 

[David]

i believe xvid and divx works on all three.

You'll find you need to format the external drive to FAT32 before you plug it in.

 

[McBunny]

build a media pc its easier lol

im sort of joking but also serious

 

[Nigel]

I'll have to reformat my drive then, didn't realise they couldn't read ntfs. Ball ache.

I'd build a media pc, but the PS3 doesn't get used apart from Bluray so I'd rather try and use that rather than wasting more money.

 

[Nik]

build a media pc its easier lol

im sort of joking but also serious

After messing around with the 360 media centre extender and transcoding from my PC, I did exactly that.

Sooo much easier and means i can also play PC games on the TV if i want.

Will cost a bit though depending on spec, but you could sell the PS3 and put a blu-ray drive in the PC instead.

 

[pablo_ni]

nas storage drive + PS3 or XBOX and sorted. rip them on the laptop and drop them onto the NAS over the wifi and ready to roll.

this is what Im looking at doing anyway.

 

[Nigel]

^^That was my inital idea, my external drive is a 1tb mybook world edition that can be connected to the router via ethernet, but I can't get the xbox or PS3 to see it.

What do people rip there DVD's to?

 

[McBunny]

me i rip to mpeg2 in a mkv container as it can handle multiple subtitles and audiostreams

i dont recode anything all my dvd rips are roughly 6gb in size

 

[nosey-bonk]

Check out Tversity media center, its free. I play all my different div/mpg/avi ect files from my laptop on my ps3 and no need to convert the files as it does it on the fly while sending data.

Simple

 

[Stevo_Nimbus_R27]

If you format your external drive to mac format you can over come the file size limitations of fat32 on the xbox360. Fat32 only reads filesupto 4 gig so if you wanted to watch HD WMV movies you're stuffed. Use a piece of software called macdrive in windows to format and read you mac disk.

 

[PinkoCommie]

Check out Tversity media center, its free. I play all my different div/mpg/avi ect files from my laptop on my ps3 and no need to convert the files as it does it on the fly while sending data.

Simple

I use TVerstiy to stream to my Xbox360.

It's great, it will directly stream xvid/divx/mpeg and transcode anything that the xbox can't nativly play.

simply install, point it at the folders you want to share, let it catalogue the files and it's ready to go.

 

[pablo_ni]

only drawback is you need the laptop on?

PS3/Xbox will also pick up windows media centre libraries too. Not tried it on the Ps3 tho.

 

[McBunny]

tbh everything sux compares to a pc but its horses for corses really

 

[Stevo_Nimbus_R27]

tbh everything sux compares to a pc but its horses for corses really

Exactly right.

Just build a Media PC, it's cheap as chips and you'll never look back.