Permissions and a re-cap
Permissions
One other problem I had was with file permissions for some files in 'My Videos'. This is for any file type, not just DivX and XviD. Even without streaming, I could not play some .wmv files and they were giving me a 'Disk Error' screen. And when trying to stream a DivX or XviD file using the AddIn above, it just opens the progress dialog for a second, and then immediately closes it. The problem was that the media center extender user account was not getting permission to view these files. What I had to do was manually select these files as a group and then view their properties - security tab. this would pop up the dialog below.
Say 'Yes' to that dialog, and the file permissions should end up looking like the following. Because this was getting annoying to debug, the AddIn now writes a log file to : C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\mceDivX360.txt. Look for the name of the file that did not play and this exception text : System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access is denied.
Video
This shows a video of the /mceDivX360 AddIn being used. The DivX format Aeon Flux trailer being played was downloaded from www.divx.com.
Click image for videoConclusion
That shows how to install and use the /mceDivX360 plugin to stream DivX (and XviD) videos from your Media Center PC to your XBox 360. So now you can watch all sorts of porn (not hot coffee) and bootlegged movies on your XBox 360. This is a little trickier then I wanted it to be. The user has to be particular about what codecs they have installed, apps that might interfere with a Media Center Extender session by opening a window and they have to make sure that file permissions are correct for the videos they want to view. The good news is that the quality is great and I haven't experienced any skipping. The network usage isn't that bad either, because I've been testing it on an 802.11g network. Both the MCE box and Xbox 360 are wireless with 'Very Good' to 'Excellent' connections nor does my PC seem to run that much slower when encoding is taking place.
Source
Here are the the installation steps and the source code.
• Install Windows Media Encoder and the Windows Media Encoder SDK
• Check your codecs. I'm using DivX 6.1 (plays XviD too) and AC3 1.01a RC5
• asxFiles.zip - unzip both files 'My Videos' and edit the .asx to include your ComputerName or IpAddress
• DVD_Quality_Video.prx - copy to C:\Program Files\Windows Media Components\Encoder\Profiles\ (change settings if you want)
• mceDivX360Install.msi - run the installer (you still need to do the steps above) make sure you install it for 'Everyone'
• (instead of installer) / mceDivX360 Source.zip - unzip and run deploy .bat. NOTE: that the code is for VS.NET 2003, .NET 2.0 is not currently supported by MCE.
If you use the installer, make sure you change the radio button to 'Everyone', else it will not be visible to the Xbox 360 Extender.
Updates
Might do an update after I get some more time to play around with it. Otherwise feel free to take the code and run with it. Maybe somebody can figure out a way to extend this to support fast forward and rewind. When Vista MCE comes out, we'll definitely be able to do this better ... because the SDK gets much richer!
NOTE that this probably could be modified to save the reencoded files to disk (with or without streaming at the same time).
Alternate Solutions
If you don't like streaming, then you can convert your files using software like the Videora XBox 360 Converter. It takes some time to convert and the files will be larger, but it works great from the couple videos I tried out.
And after you convert the vids, you can use bits from the kiosk disk to burn them to a DVD which can be played on the X360.
Advantage to the streaming approach is you don't have to wait for the entire video to be encoded before watching it, nor do you create a 2nd (larger) video file to manage. Disadvantage to the streaming approach is that you don't get to fast forward or rewind. You can pause by pressing down on the right button ... but just not for that long. Haven't been able to use it that long, but I paused a movie for about 30 minutes and when I came back it played for about 5 minutes, skipped 3 times back to back, and then it skipped about 8 minutes forward in the stream to start playing again.
Also, if you like petitions, then there is a Divx Petition for the Xbox 360 . Generally, I don't sign petitions, too close to begging, and I only beg if women are involved.
Future
No clue what's next? Later
HEXUS.links: Check out casey's homepage at www.brains-N-brawn.com.
