Click here for Media Center Info on M$ Site

As a pre-curser to the Xbox 360 I have been looking at the Xbox Media Center Extender kit.

As it comes built into the 360 I have decided to beef up my PC with a TV card and get start using it as a TiVo style device when the 360 is out.

To check it would all work as I thought I looked on the M$ site for info on the version that is out for the origional. It does ALL the things I would want:

- View TV on xbox
- Pause/Record/Shedule TV from xbox
- Play videos/audio from PC (sadly it seems only MPEG/WM videos and not DivX etc are supported)

However, the FAQ:
http://www.MS.com/windowsxp/mediace...evices/faq.mspx

Claims that the extender DOES NOT support HD video.

Which put me off BUT surely I mean SURELY the 360 version WILL allow for HD video AS all J Allard barks on about is the HD-ERA?

I assume (only assume) that the 360 version will eventually allow me to:

- View/Record/Etc HDTV from my xbox 360
- Watch HD-DVDs from my xbox 360 (from a HD-DVD in the Media Center PC)
- Watch HD-Video from my xbox 360

As well as all the other features the current xbox extender has.

If it doesnt do all of this fancy crap I may as well get a small form factor PC and use that as my Media Center rather than stream the Media Center GUI from my beefy/ugly-none-living-room-friendly PC right?

Does anyone know what is going down with the 360 version of MCEx???

Anyone else hoping to do the same please add

I don't know if it will play back DVD's from the MCE. They may leave that feature off since DVD playback is built into the 360.

The 360 should play back whatever format the show was recorded in. So if it was recorded in HD, it should play back in HD.

I'm really interested in seeing how well it will play back live TV. I have an MCE setup with dual tuners just for this situation.

The current Extenders cannot stream HD since they are 480i. Media Center does support HD.

In a video MS streamed Star Wars HD via MCE to the 360. It works and they proved that it worked well (pause, etc).

What you probably cannot do is stream a ripped DVD to the 360. You can stream a windows media video so if you encode your DVDs as windows media they will stream.

I have a MCE PC in my family room. The 360 will be replacing it. All I will loose is the ability to play ripped DVDs, and I will find a way to make that work (WMA or someone will mod it).

That's what I'm doing. I'm going to move my MCE PC to the back room, probably the computer room, and just use the 360.

My MCE PC is going into our basement.

You do realize that we are doing exactly what MS wants, right?

I actually got interested in the 360 because of it's extender functionality. I am a gamer but I've never been a hardcore console guy. I am more of a keyboard/mouse person. I am going to see if the 360 can change that.

Your right. I suppose they would never leave out that feature with all the HD guff they have been touting



I doubt I would want to do this. BUT when I said about playing DVDs from Media Center I meant HD-DVDs in the future when my PC will have a HD-DVD drive, the 360 will not. I ASSUME that this will be the only way to watch a HD-DVD through the 360.

Anyone here use the current Xbox Extender?

How is it with specificaly TV feeds?

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/mcx_xbox_review.asp

OUCH!

This is a review of the current extender on Xbox. It really slates it by the end of the review:



Sure the 360 version will be better as its built in and in theory should run smoother due to the extra power. But I am starting to get put off

It doesn't make sense to compare the old Xbox extender vs the 360.

From what I have seen in the videos of the 360 extender, it looks exactly like my Linksys extender in my bedroom. It works flawlessly.

Re: HD-DVD, based on MS' recent support for HD-DVD and their comments about streaming, I think they want to stream HD-DVD content from your PC to the 360.

This was my thinking too.

Its the only way they can support HI-Def DVD movies on next gen media.

And thanks for restoring my faith in the media extender