Stream nearly everything with Xbox 360 Media Center.

[Nick]

Want to stream all your media through your Xbox 360?

Xploder Media Center promises no more complicated hacks, installing odd bits of software from all over the net, sacrificing chickens and dancing around the living room naked by candlelight (doesn’t everyone do this?)

Check out this CES 2007 Headline for more info.

[kempez]

Have you got one to test Nick?

I wanna know if it works ok...

[Noli]

It could actually make the 360 worth buying for me so do let me know too! Can it stream 1080 .ts (transport stream) files for instance? H264 and mpeg2 or 4 1080 too?

Given mixed reviews of their xploder PS2 upscaling deinterlacing software I will remain cautious until in depth previews allow me otherwise.

[daniel_owen_uk]

Will be interesting to see if this is a 360 install or PC install, I think transcode360 will do divx etc, but all the decoding is done on the PC and not the 360 (meaning us with slow PCs can't enjoy high bitrate h264).

Shall be keeping an eye out though.

[daniel_owen_uk]

Well it's downloadable, and thus it's impossible it's a 360 install, which means all it does is transcode.

Tversity will do this for free.

[t_aitch]

I would also like to find out what this is like.

Im currently torn between the Evesham iPlayer and the Apple TV when its released.

But if the software for this is good, then it might be worthwhile for me getting a 360 for around the same price with this software.

Do you think Hexus might do a review on this?

[kempez]

If I were you I'd get the Cisco version of that Apple product, it will be 100% more reliable...it's Cisco

[t_aitch]

I take it that its this product below:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/...d805ace6f.html

Looks very interesting, but cant find out much information about it on the UK site. I particularly dont want to spend anything more than £200 on a streamer, and because its cisco, its likely to be expensive.

The iPlayer for me is worth the £300 as it upscales freeview to HD, and has the 80gb drive.

[t_aitch]

Bah, i just read this:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: Windows Media Centre software is REQUIRED for this product to function. This is the fully-functional Windows Operating system and NOT Windows Media Player (included with Windows XP). Please ensure you have Windows Media Centre running on your PC before purchasing this product.

[daniel_owen_uk]

EVA8000 from netgear looks like my favourite so far.

That said we will see what it's chipset is, my bet is sigma 8622 and that isn't going to cut the h264 mustard.

[Michael]

I can't see the point? The 360 can already stream video and mp3 and such, you can simply browse your Windows Media Library via the Xbox simply by being networked to it... I can do so in Vista Ultimate fine.

ALTHOUGH, pictures don't seem to show up, but that's about it, and I haven't explored the issue.

[Lee H]

I can't see the point?

It's to enable the playback of files such as divx and vxid on the fly without messing and converting them back..

Many of us have had a few issues doing this hence the chicken sacrificing comments

[t_aitch]

That netgear looks bang on the money.

Let just hope the prices arent ridiculous. I can see them being pretty cheap as the Apple TV is only £199, so they cant be more than that surely.

[daniel_owen_uk]

$349= about £250-300 I think.

[t_aitch]

A big fat no to that then thanks