360 Media centre or PC?

[funkyg]

I have an Xbox 360 and original Xbox under my TV at the moment. I had been using the original for XBMC, as it's brilliant for all my media. However, I'm trying to dump this in favour of using the 360.
I currently have TVersity running on my laptop, which is great for when I'm at home but no good during the day when the missus wants to watch Charmed or some other such shite.

Anyway, I've just got a hold of a nice ultra slim desktop PC and I was thinking of sticking TVersity and a fat hard drive on it to stream onto the 360. Thing is though, is it worth the hassle? My TV has VGA in so I could just put the PC through the TV, and get a swish Gyration mouse to control it. The PC is quiet and looks OK too, well better than the original Xbox anyway!

What would you guys do in this situation?

[liveseytowers]

I say install XP MCE 2005 on your new PC, bang it behind the TV and get a MCE keyboard and Remote. Its just so much easier than streaming to the 360, every film will play on your PC no problems but theres nothing more annoying than streaming a film and your connection drops. And the 360 is noisy. And if your Mrs is going to use it then she can just use the remote to watch what she wants etc so she'll like it too

Or if you have Vista on your new PC i think that has the media centre as well?

I gave up along time ago to stream media through the 360, just not worth the hassel if you can have a PC in the front room.

[Tuneap]

The 360 is designed to connect to Vista's Media center and works very well over a wired connection, enabling you to access your live TV, recorded TV, your music, pics, etc... But it is very noisey and winds me up when watching quiet films/late at night...

[CominAtcha]

Depends what you're looking to watch.

If it's HD stuff and not .WMV, then use the PC.
If you just watch Xvids and the like or watch HD stuff in .WMV, might as well use the 360 for something, as the games are crap.

[adeingolf]

Depends what you're looking to watch.

If it's HD stuff and not .WMV, then use the PC.
If you just watch Xvids and the like or watch HD stuff in .WMV, might as well use the 360 for something, as the games are crap.

Excellent advice as I do the same!

More and more films are getting converted to WMV-HD and with the last 360 update, x-vid and divx files play fine - all from the 360 dashboard.

Setting up sharing through WMP11 is a piece of piss, I dont even bother with Media Centre now (I have vista) except sometimes if im going to play a lot of music to see the "pretty album covers" as she puts it

[funkyg]

and with the last 360 update, x-vid and divx files play fine - all from the 360 dashboard.

Unfortunately I got banned just before I got round to installing the media updates, so I can't play the files natively on my 360 and have to use TVersity or some other media sharing.

To be honest I got the the PC setup direct into the TV last night and it looks brilliant (and it's sooooooooo quiet!) so I'll stick to the PC for vids of all varieties and the 360 just for games.

Thanks for all the input guys.

[beansontoast]

I think you can update the dash by disc, have a read around here - I'm sure I read it recently

[funkyg]

I think you can update the dash by disc, have a read around here - I'm sure I read it recently

Hey!
Yeah you can do the dash update, I was on Live at the time and got that. But the codec updates have to be downloaded to your Xbox due to DRM rights.