Xbox 360 Video Capability, transferring/playing divx/xvid videos Options

[jumbalaya134]

One of the biggest perks that the original Xbox offered for me was the ability to play divx/xvid video files with ease of controls.

Xbox 360 has been so far very lacking in providing that feature.

First, I found only two ways of playing the videos on the 360.

Method 1. Streaming from XP Media Center PC.
Method 2. Downloading videos from Xbox Live Marketplace.

The problem with method 1 is that there are too many restrictions.

1. You need a PC with the Window XP Media Center Edition (can't do it with just Media Connect. At least not yet.)
2. You need a decent network connection for the streaming.
3. You can't play any divx/xvid (Xbox 360 complains that the right codecs are not installed.) Somebody mentioned about the Media Center PC doing all the work of processing and only viewing on Xbox 360 earlier. I don't think that's true since I can play all the Xvid/Divx through the Media Center on the PC but can't play the same videos on the Xbox 360.

The problem with method 2 is that that's the only method of actually downloading videos onto the Xbox Hard drive. I have not had any success in Xbox 360 recognizing either my 1G USB JumpDrive, CF flash card reader, or 80G USB External Hard drive through any of the USB ports on the box.

Of course this is my findings and I'm hoping that there are people out there who have found a way or ways to get the videos to the xbox easier.

My immediate wishes for the Xbox 360 are:

1. Easier way to copy movies to the Xbox 360 hard drive. One I thought of was like a Xbox Live Marketplace emulator on a PC or something to let the Xbox 360 connect to and let me download movies to Xbox 360.)

2. To INSTALL Codecs on the xbox 360 so that I can play divx/xvid videos either directly from the xbox hard drive (if the 1st wish is granted) or through streaming.

My Ultimate wish of course is to have XBMC running on XBOX 360 so that I have ftp and all the goodies running straight from my Xbox 360 and not have to rely on Media Center for my media playability.

There ya go. This has been my rant.

Let me know what you think and also if you grant any of my wishes.

[Foe-hammer]

The 360 will never have anything as good as xbmc (until it is hacked and xbmc is running on the 360, and that won't prob be for quite some time). So keep on enjoying your xbox 1 with xbmc running on it.

[Biznaz]

I don't have a 360 or media center, but you could try frame serving those divx with an .avs, if media center will play avs files.

[CamdogXIII]

convert the movies with movie maker

[Sirdude]

Would of been sweet to get VLC to and get it so it can run on 360

[malhussaini]

I love XBMC and I think that I'll be using it for a long time, but the original Xbox's inability to play HD content is a bummer. Yeah I guess that I can convert those videos to WMVs and use the MCE on my Xbox 360, but that'll take forever.

The original Xbox took about 6 monthes to get hacked, I bet this one will take only 3. Although it poses a much greater technical challenge, the hacking community loves challenges (Ok maybe I'm just assuming seeing how I'm nowhere near a hacker myself)

Hope that the guys over at SmartXX and the others crack it soon.

[GhostCobra]

Stream with VLC, connect to stream via WMC. Voila, on the fly encode. Theoretically of course :S