Best way of streaming H264 .mp4 files to TV...

pinkteapot

I used to watch DIVX files quite happily on our TV, either by burning them to disc and watching them in my DIVX-compatible DVD player, or by streaming over TVersity from our PC to my XBox 360. All was well.

Now video files are .mp4 instead (H264 I think they're called - or X264). Our PC (Win Vista) refuses to stream them over TVersity to the 360. The video is very 'jerky' to the point that it's unwatchable (maybe something to do with TVersity's transcoding?).

As an alternative, I've been copying the files to my Win 7 laptop and streaming to the Xbox using Windows Media Center (deleting once watched as the laptop has a small HDD compared to the PC, which is our video/photo repository).

However, this is driving me up the wall. The 360 takes ages to connect to the WMC laptop. Even when it does, it often loses the connection (sometimes mid playback) for no apparent reason. Sometimes it takes a couple of reboots of the laptop and 360 to get the connection, so it takes 10 minutes to start watching something!

Any suggestions? Ideally I want to stream from the PC again, to save having to copy files to the laptop every time. However, I don't know if the jerkiness when streaming over Tversity is a Tversity problem or the PC being too old/low spec for this new file format.

We only have the Xbox 360 to stream to, but I'd be happy to pay for a media streamer (Western Digital one or similar), if I could be sure that the videos would stream from the PC...

S0litaire

Take a look at the "Raspberry Pi" (it looks complicated but it's not that bad!) ^_^
http://www.raspbmc.com/about/

Their is a version of XBMC (Media centre) for the R-Pi so install that with a External USB Disk and you have a small NAS that plugs directly into your TV and with a wireless Keyboard & Mouse (or compatible Remote) you have a media centre that can handle upto 1080p video

pinkteapot

I started looking at that yesterday when someone posted about the Raspberry Pi on the Grabbit board. My techie level is that I set up streaming as outlined above and I run a website. I started reading about the Pi and got scared by it!

Would I plug the Pi into the TV and stream to it from the PC? (In which case, which streaming software would I use given that TVersity isn't working)

Or, would I put the video files on the Pi and then plug it in to the TV to play them...

S0litaire

The R-Pi is a PC it's it's own right it has a HDMI and Composite outputs so can plug it directly into any TV.

Then you can either share a folder on your laptop and the XBMC software on the R-Pi can stream from it. Or (better idea) get a external USB drive and let the R-Pi be a small NAS/Media server storing your videos their.

Take a look at XBMC.org you can install it on your laptop to see if you like it.

SunnySusie

Just a quick note to say that the Raspberry Pi works great for this kind of thing. It is low powered but it can handle HD video just fine.

You can find out more here.