Media Centre.

[stooby]

I have created myself a games room/office in the attic of my house, but at the moment am using my 360 to stream video and music to my tv. I now want to put the 360 in my 'office' but still want to stream to the tv downstairs. So, as I have an old computer kicking about which is a single core pentium 4, 512mb ram, I was thinking maybe install media centre on there and use that. But, as I have never done this before was wondering a couple of things..
1) Will it need a graphics card as I think it has a really shitty card in there atm if there is one at all?
2) Will it run alright on 1/2gb ram?
3) Will the cost of new bits exceed the price of another 360?

Cheers
Stu

 

[McBunny]

you need card with hdmi out idealy and one that will offload the decoding of the video from the cpu
2gb would be better

i wouldnt bother with windows media center really

+ the cost of a bluray/hd dvd drive

 

[fulhamfcboy]

If your not too fussed about HD the cheapest and best way to get a media centre is to buy an old xbox mk1, replace the hard disk with a 300GB jobbie, and install XBMC. Apart from the lack of HD Ive still yet to see a better alternative.

 

[David]

er...

well IMO...you need to work out if you have vga input, if you do, provided you have media centre on the pc, you should be able to set it up just ilke a monitor, if not, you need to work out what graphics card you have.

Provided you're not bothered about hd video, it should be fine as it is really...

 

[Keydogg]

I have just bought a 10m HDMI v1.3 cable with a DVI > HDMI converter for my graphics card. This lets me use my tv as a monitor (as david said) and will easily do 1080p input for my tv, its fantastic and cost pennies to do!

10m HDMI cable - £17.99
DVI- HDMI converter - £4.99

All you need is a reasonable graphics card with a DVI (£70-80) output and a half decent computer (2GB ram would be easily sufficient).

P.S. Over a distance of 10-15m the HDMI is is a better option than VGA.

 

[David]

my only conern is that the processor might cause the hd stuff to lag / skip but see how u go

 

[stooby]

I have decided to just buy another 360, after looking at the old pc last night its not worth the hassle upgrading it. cheers anyway.

 

[Keydogg]

a 360 doesn't stream HD stuff but ok

 

[McBunny]

yes it plays back 1080p footage from the pc very well

 

[Adams_16v]

iv been using a P4 3.0ghz, 1GB ram, 250gb HDD with crappy Radeon 9200 graphics for a while now and its been spot on.

I'm building my parents a proper setup over the next few weeks, and im going to order some new kit for myself. I've priced theirs up for around £400 with a good spec and with this case:

i love this case though!

 

[Keydogg]

yes it plays back 1080p footage from the pc very well

What format? The usual format for HD content on PCs is mkv which microsft wont offer support for. Anyone who uses news groups etc will know that this format has the best quality:size ratio and virtually everything is encoded in it afaik.

 

[McBunny]

it doesnt matter what its encoded in as long as the bitrate is high enough plays wmv hd just fine iirc thats vc1 based as used in bluray and hddvd nativly

but using tv versity it plays them all aslong as the pc decoding it is fast enough

 

[David]

convert the container, easy. mkv2vob, job done.

 

[Keydogg]

I've heard there's a noticable loss of quality when transcoding but I haven't tried it myself. What do you guys think?

 

[McBunny]

you will get digital generation loss pretty much no matter what you do even if you keep the bitrates the same as the original source it happens with all digital media

im not denying the 360 isnt the best way to do it. having a media pc is by far the best way to do it

 

[Dafthead]

Windows XP + XBMC = WIN

 

[David]

not noticeable at all...and half the time it doesn't need to transcode it, just recode the audio stream to a compaitble formate and mux them back together.

 

[McBunny]

then you get degradation of the audio stream

 

[Keydogg]

not noticeable at all...and half the time it doesn't need to transcode it, just recode the audio stream to a compaitble formate and mux them back together.

Hmm, I didn't know that!

Question - with a 360 can you have HDMI lead producing the picture and the component cable plugged into an amp for sound? (Obv the white and red phonos) Or with HDMI does the sound have to be through the HDMI?

 

[McBunny]

no it would use optical usually but yes i suppose you could use phono if you stripped off teh casing liek you have to do for optical if not using teh xbox hdmi cable