Streaming video from PC to TV

Dan29

Hi all

I want to watch .avi videos stored on my PC (upstairs) on my TV (downstairs). I have a LAN which is a combination of wired and wireless.

I guess I need some sort of media streamer? Any suggestions welcome!

Would prefer to spend about £100 but I believe an X Box 360 will do the job for about £200 if I decide to blow the budget?

Thanks in advance
Dan

custardy

xbox 360 is limited in its media formats tbh
for me i would recommend a chipped/softmodded xbox running xbox media centre

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_project.htm

Dan29

custardy wrote: »

xbox 360 is limited in its media formats tbh
for me i would recommend a chipped/softmodded xbox running xbox media centre

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_project.htm

Thanks for that. If I connect the XBox to my wireless network using a bridge, will 54Mbps be fast enough to stream standard-def video?

wacko911

Ditto the Xbox (original)

You can pick them up for 30 quid or so on ebay. I have 2 in my house, 2 in my g/f's and all my family have them also for excatly that - Streaming media.

54Mbps is more then enough bandwidth.

Only drawback is Xbox will not play HD content that is 720p or higher, but will upscale to 720p or 1080i a SD source.

mostly

the 360 will now play divx & xvid, with a bit of re encoding it'll do hd divx but not mkv.
You could also go for something like these http://svp.co.uk/category/media_center_enclosures
but a modded xbox would be your cheapest and a very good option.

Coveredinbees!!!!

I use my xbox with executer chip. I normally dump the video on to the xbox hard drive via the media centre then play it from there. Apparently the 360 will play divx now but I don't have a XP media centre on my PC so I can't stream from it which is F'ing stupid.


I have installed a 10M cat 5 cable under the floor as it was cheaper than a wireless thingy (yea I'm cheap)

M3_Sussex

Coveredinbees!!!! wrote: »

I use my xbox with executer chip. I normally dump the video on to the xbox hard drive via the media centre then play it from there. Apparently the 360 will play divx now but I don't have a XP media centre on my PC so I can't stream from it which is F'ing stupid.


I have installed a 10M cat 5 cable under the floor as it was cheaper than a wireless thingy (yea I'm cheap)

All you need is Windows Media Player 11 and set it up for sharing. This is what I use for streaming AVI and DIVX files to my xbox 360. If you play DIVX files you need to change the file extension to AVI before the xbox will see it.

Dan29

custardy wrote: »

for me i would recommend a chipped/softmodded xbox running xbox media centre

http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/info_project.htm

Thanks for all the replies. I now have a secondhand chipped X Box running X Box Media Centre and I can either FTP .avi files from the PC to the X Box or play them directly from the PC's hard disk (although I have to disable Zone Alarm to do either of these things).

I won't say it was the easiest thing in the world to set up, but now it's working it's by far the best solution I could have hoped for for the money, so thank you again.