Last week's Xbox 360 Fall Dashboard update added support for the Windows Media Video (WMV) video codec. The feature was a welcomed gain for non-Media Center users who have been limited to photo and music sharing between their Windows PCs and Xbox 360s -- and to anyone who's longed to watch video files on 360 via a thumb drive or CD/DVD.
Unfortunately, licensing fees and digital rights concerns have limited the patch to WMV-support only. Being Microsoft's proprietary format, WMV is neither popular or oft-used, taking a backseat to preferred codecs like DivX and XviD. And so, we're still left scrambling for a solution to getting our video content onto Xbox 360.
Windows Media Center users have enjoyed on-the-fly transcoding for some time, courtesy of Transcode 360. While the developer says he expects "someone to knock up a transcoding solution not too far down the line" for Windows Media Player 11 and Windows Media Connect (read: not Windows Media Center), he suggests that it won't be him doing it.
So, until Microsoft adds support for more codecs or offers up an application capable of transcoding (to WMV) and streaming on-the-fly (okay, that will never happen), we're forced to manually transcode our non-WMV files into WMVs and then, if we wish to stream, point our 360s at the WMV files (on our PCs). That's the solution. Now, we're gonna show you how it's done:
Luckily, Happy Beggar has already taken care of most of the legwork. The site recently compared three (WMV-capable) transcoding applications: VLC, WinAvi 7.7, and Windows Media Encoder. The clear winner, in both speed and quality, was VLC, an open source media player that has a history of proven functionality. VLC is what we'll use for this guide.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Thanks to the slip-up of an artist working on the title, we now have more evidence that a new Injustice game is in the works.
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
So.. Since the fall update USB storage media can play video.
Buy an external HDD with USB 2.0 connection, put the movies on there and connect it to the 360 and PLAY
They're cheap, from 70 Euro's up (160 GB model) to 110 for a 320 GB (overhere in The Netherlands).
The cheapest next gen drive ever ;)
had a 500 GB one for $170 after rebates yesterday! but i just stream from my computer. if you are having problem streaming from WMP 11 you have to click the tiny little arrow below library then click on media sharing and allow the xbox. i had problems with the old media connect, but WMP 11 works very beautifully for me.
also another note for videos, is that you have to put the videos you want to watch in the "my videos" folder.
I've been trying to figure out for the last couple of weeks how to convert .flv to .wmv. I tried using all of the software in the link and the first 15 seconds are converted, but nothing more. Those 15 seconds are further than I've ever got before though, and I was wondering if anyone knows why it would just stop when everything seemed to be going fine. I've already transcoded a couple of movies so I know my computer can do it. Any ideas on how to get this to work?
I've thought about transcoding from .flv to .avi and then from .avi to .wmv, but I'd prefer to avoid this to retain as much quality as possible. Thanks.
I bought an external HD with usb 2.0, but it doesn't seem to work with my 360 for some reason. It's not a problem really, I can share it with windows media connect from another computer and just do it that way, but does anyone know why it would not be working? I'm thinking maybe it's because it shows up as an actual hard disk and not as a portable device, but I don't know. It's a 200gb g-money-maxtor, yo.