What's better a Media Center Extender or a Wireless Media Streamer

[Grommit]

Looking to feed Media from my PC to my TV so what's better a Media Center Extender or a Wireless Media Streamer. ?

 

I have Vista Ultimate on my home PC ..

 

Looking at

 

D-Link DSM-750 Wireless N HD Media Center Extender

 

or

 

.:: Niveus Media, Inc ::. Tomorrow's Digital Home, Today!

 

or

 

Maplin > LinkTheater™ Wireless Media Streamer

 

or

 

Maplin > 320GB MR1 HD Media Centre and TV Tuner

Edited April 11, 2008 by Grommit

[john]

How bout an Xbox 360? kill 2 birds at once, MCE Extender and a HD Gaming console?

[EduTech]

How bout an Xbox 360? kill 2 birds at once, MCE Extender and a HD Gaming console?

 

i like the way you think john i was thinking the same thats what i do and its great...

 

James

[Grommit]

Well I really don't want an X Box...

[Little-Miss]

Sorry for digging up an old thread.

 

Was looking at getting something similar for xmas, but funnily enough my fella wants a xbox 360. So i would be killing 2 birds with one stone. Could you explain how it works? So how do you steam your pc content to the xbox?

 

Thanks

[Little-Miss]

C'mon EduTech, i get the feeling you'll be a good one to answer this lol!

[john]

Basicaly your PC is left on and it loads the MCE Bit from your PC to the xbox, so it just makes the XBOX become a normal style MCE Unit but without you having a PC on your TV. I stream my recorded content from my PC to it with no problems, access music, videos etc all via that, or as its Xbox, you can stream media through the xbox part of the xbox anyway.

[EduTech]

Ok sorry for the delay was out this evening.

 

Basically, the xbox360 media center extention connects to either a Windows PC Running Windows XP aslong as File Sharing and Media Sharing is active, this does work better if it is windows media center verision of XP or a verison of Vista that has Media Center installed such as Ultimate.

 

Basically what the xbox360 MCE does is gives you access to shared media on a pc such as Video's, Music and Photo's all this does is stream the content accross the Local Network giving you the fuction to watch downloaded movies for example on your TV which is attatched to your xbox360 (normally the one in your living room) so that you dont have to watch it on a small PC monitor and gives the rest of the family the priverlidge of watching your cool movies etc.

 

Pretty straight forward, sure someone as smart as you understands that anyway basically works like anything else just gives you the function to watch content over your local network.

 

Unfortunatly at the moment there are certain file types it does not allow you to play over the network .AVI being one of them which is pretty unfortunate as most downloaded movied do come in this format.

 

i think to be honest it just depends on the codec that is required by the file.

 

The New Dashboard which is being released on the 19th November will actually expand this function and give you more of a variaty of file extentions to use on the media center opening this up to more avenue's.

 

Hope that helps, any problems or quires feel free to PM/Email me.

 

James.

[Little-Miss]

Well now i know what Santa is bringing my fella!

[EduTech]

ooo shall we get someone to delete that just incase he see's

 

Oh and appoligise if that message was a little over the top, look at the time.. think i was writing it in my sleep lol.

 

James.

[Little-Miss]

Blimey, well i'm very grateful for your early morning post! Thank you very much indeed.

 

I think he already knows anyway lol, so i'm not worried.

 

Shame about the AVI thing. You think new dashboard will sort it?

[ninjabeaver]

I've got my 360 linked to my Vista Ultima and works fine. Now I've not tried this, but can I point Vista Ultima Media Centre to another HDD (external or another PC) with a huge capactity and still use the 360 to view whats on there in the lounge?

[EduTech]

- Yh it is a shame about the AVI issue, but i have been told this should be fixed in the new dashboard. funny thing is i have a PS3 aswell, which is connected to my media server at home and it plays .AVI. if it does not get fixed in the new Dashboard i will let you know and try and get a patch released for this.

 

- Where ever your shared media is point (normally My Video's in your documents) the xbox will pick it up. so in media center if you change the DIR to your 2nd hard drive for my video's for example the xbox will pick up the new path.

 

Hope that helps

 

James.

[EduTech]

Yh that can be done, but in my case i have a server anyway so i just attatched a large hard drive and installed this programme which now lets it act as a media server.. bit like media center on a server. so it dont really effect me.

 

although i dont think everyone wants an xbox sitting around the house.. :\ depends on what kind of person you are really.

 

James.

[Little-Miss]

Well, i'll get the XBOX first, then have a play with other things i could do..

[DSapseid]

I can play avi's over my xbox 360. At least i think it was an avi. It just asked me install an optional video codec that was about 4mb that came down over the live. Will check when i get home.

[EduTech]

There are various codec's that are available to download. i dont think the AVI one has been released yet! that i am aware of anyway.

[MikeW]

I use the TVersity Media Server on my XP machine to stream .avi 's to my xbox - works well