Home Theater Woes

[Atherakhia]

Wow, never knew it could do that. I've always treated it as a stand alone kind of game player. I'll need to read up on how to do it and mess around with it.

I don't know how the streaming works from the PC, but can it pick up anything? Like can I stream it formats that it would not normally play like MKV for example?

 

[Atherakhia]

Well just gave it a couple hours on my xbox360 to find out how it all works. Only method I could get to work from their website was the vista media center method. The windows player method didn't work at all from what I could figure out.

Also wouldn't recognize anything since I don't have anything in wmv format. It could see the AVIs I put infront of it, but couldn't play them due to a codec problem. Told me to log on to xbox live to download, but I haven't used xbox live for 6mo and don't intend to buy back in for an update.

Any way to get better codec support through the xbox? Or only method to convert files from whatever to wmv/mpeg2?

I haven't tried the PS3 as it's packed up for the move in a couple months and don't feel like unpacking. Is the PS3 going to lead me into the same problems though?

 

[Patrick Wolf]

For the audio portion, see audioholics.com.

In truth, nothing can give you surround sound except for physical speakers that literally "surround' you. A soundbar is simply a conveniant way to improve the stereo sound coming from the TV. They can simulate surround sound, but it's just that; a simulation.

Floor standing speakers may look impressive, but in the lower price spectrum you'll almost always get a significantly better price/performance ratio with bookshelves. Just get some stands.

If you want cheap, but awesome, check out my review of the B2030P at Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Truth-B2030P-S...owViewpoints=1

And if you're in an apartment and have a subwoofer. You need a GRAMMA Isolation Riser.

 

[vshah]

Well just gave it a couple hours on my xbox360 to find out how it all works. Only method I could get to work from their website was the vista media center method. The windows player method didn't work at all from what I could figure out.

Also wouldn't recognize anything since I don't have anything in wmv format. It could see the AVIs I put infront of it, but couldn't play them due to a codec problem. Told me to log on to xbox live to download, but I haven't used xbox live for 6mo and don't intend to buy back in for an update.

Any way to get better codec support through the xbox? Or only method to convert files from whatever to wmv/mpeg2?

I haven't tried the PS3 as it's packed up for the move in a couple months and don't feel like unpacking. Is the PS3 going to lead me into the same problems though?

you don't need a gold LIVE membership for the codec updates. the silver (free) membership will work just as well. so create a silver ID for free, then it will download the update automatically when you try to play the file.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I haven't tried the PS3 as it's packed up for the move in a couple months and don't feel like unpacking. Is the PS3 going to lead me into the same problems though?

No. The PS3 does a lot better with different file types. That said, there is also a great piece of software called "PS3 Media Server" which you can run on your main system. It will pretty much do everything automatically for you. It will even transcode file formats that the PS3 does not handle properly (like FLAC audio for instance) into a format that is supported (and does it on the fly).

The PS3 supports the following out of the box:
Video: MPG, MP4, AVI, DivX (except v3.11), AVCHD, WMV
Audio: WAV, MP3, AAC, ATRAC, WMA
Photo: JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG

PS3 Media Server will allow you to play MKV, FLV, OGM, dvd iso and VIDEO_TS files (and much more).

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/