Ever since I got in to Media Center DVD playback and now Blu-ray and MKV playback on extenders has really really frustrated me! In the fact that they don’t support it!
I still can’t believe in this day and age, that we are unable to natively play ripped DVD’s on extenders. I was amazed MS even gave us native DIVX/XVID support in 7MC MCX on the XBOX 360. After 18 months of moaning about it I was happy to see they eventually did it and I’m sure other people were waiting a hell of a lot longer than I was.
It’s not a technical limitation but must be political one with the big Hollywood content providers, but as a comsumer I don’t care frankly. I’ve purchased my DVD and Blu-ray’s discs, I should have the right to consume them in my home with my family anyway I choose and on any device.
What are the current options for DVD playback on extenders ? Transcoding where the VOB’s are remuxed on the fly to MPG. Transcode 360 is a life saver no doubt but it’s just not reliable enough for my liking. Transcode 360 can be used with MC, My Movies and Media Browser and gives it more scope over the newer Vaders’s transcoder which only works with the Vista Media Center native DVD Library, I could never get it working on the native 7MC Movie Library and am not aware of anyone having done so ?
So transcoding in my mind is flakey at best and not 100% reliable. Then there is talk of this new native transcoding in 7MC. The ideal idea is that anything I can play in 7MC on the PC can be transcoded to the extenders natively. I have yet to have seen this in action. I’m not sure anyone really knows how and when or if this native Win7 transcoding occurs? What’s the process that runs?
It certainly doesn’t transcode my MKV’s or DVD Vob’s to my extenders so is it even there? And the newly added DIVX/XVID support on the XBOX 360 MCX seems native to the XBOX side to me via a dashboard update which re-appeared in the 7MC MCX the first time when trying to play DIVX/XVID on the 7MC MCX.
What are the other options then? The best I have found for DVD is remuxing the container to DVR-MS using Video Redo Plus for seamless DVD playback (Main Movie Only) on extenders with full FFWD capabilities. And TSMuxer to remux MKV’s in to M2TS files which 7MC natively supports.
It’s still all a mess it’s still way too much hard work for the average guy in the street when will it ever end ???
6 thoughts on “Transcoding VS Remuxing? MS where’s the native support? Have your say!”
I agree that remuxing is the best option. T360 has too much processing overhead, is slow to play (15-20 seconds) and has the lack of navigational features.
I begin with DVD Shrink to rip to a single VOB. Then I use VideoRedo to “QuickFix” it to DVR-MS. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. I am looking to script the whole process with VideoRedo soon (i.e. Rip, Join, Convert).
Now, if only the movies would resume like in Recorded TV, The WAF would be at an all-time high!
My dream would be ripping software that created dvr-ms or wtv files. These files would of course be created in the folder needed so that they’d show up in either Recorded TV or DVD Library complete with metadata.
The program would ideally remux the original video when possible, but be able to detect when the source isn’t compatible and transcode it.
I’m working towards something using a two step deal, but so far I haven’t been able to archive it.
Seems to me that lack of support is a business deal 100%. MS can’t afford to upset possible partners or whomever. We talked a bit about it during the Sage vs Media Center show. Smaller companies can support these things because they’re not big enough to draw attention.
I’m looking at ways to convert mkv and other files over to mpg or wmv. Seeing that VideoRedo will take formats to dvr-ms gives me hope though. As long as I keep my surround sound and resolution I’ll be a happy guy.
Will Videoredo or TSMuxer support subtitles? Non English speaking users are really left in the cold. I’m converting my movies to WMV (with subtitles), but it really takes a lot of time, and subtitles from DVD, look awful, all edgy. If I use an srt instead of the original DVD subtitle it looks a bit better. About the big company thing, Samsung, Sony, Philips, Toshiba, they’re big companies too, and they support srt subtitles, and some of them, might even support mkv, I don’t know.
DVRMSToolbox can easily convert from just about any format to and from dvr-ms and wtv. There are many built in profiles for this, but it isn’t that hard to build custom ones.
I am a HUGE fan of T360 but nothing beats native playback.
I have high hopes for native playback of .avi and .mp4 on Xbox 360 extenders but it is not there yet. Divx / xvid is horrendous in the recent W7 builds and HD mp4 content playback is not stable enough for me to drop the Xbox 360 dashboard just yet. As for DVD streaming / remuxing to extenders I have tried it but I just don’t bother anymore. Without the ability to have menus and other features available I would much rather just encode the main movie to a suitable format such as dvr-ms or mp4.
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I agree that remuxing is the best option. T360 has too much processing overhead, is slow to play (15-20 seconds) and has the lack of navigational features.
I begin with DVD Shrink to rip to a single VOB. Then I use VideoRedo to “QuickFix” it to DVR-MS. The whole process takes about 15 minutes. I am looking to script the whole process with VideoRedo soon (i.e. Rip, Join, Convert).
Now, if only the movies would resume like in Recorded TV, The WAF would be at an all-time high!
Regards on the good commentary above.
My dream would be ripping software that created dvr-ms or wtv files. These files would of course be created in the folder needed so that they’d show up in either Recorded TV or DVD Library complete with metadata.
The program would ideally remux the original video when possible, but be able to detect when the source isn’t compatible and transcode it.
I’m working towards something using a two step deal, but so far I haven’t been able to archive it.
Seems to me that lack of support is a business deal 100%. MS can’t afford to upset possible partners or whomever. We talked a bit about it during the Sage vs Media Center show. Smaller companies can support these things because they’re not big enough to draw attention.
I’m looking at ways to convert mkv and other files over to mpg or wmv. Seeing that VideoRedo will take formats to dvr-ms gives me hope though. As long as I keep my surround sound and resolution I’ll be a happy guy.
Will Videoredo or TSMuxer support subtitles? Non English speaking users are really left in the cold. I’m converting my movies to WMV (with subtitles), but it really takes a lot of time, and subtitles from DVD, look awful, all edgy. If I use an srt instead of the original DVD subtitle it looks a bit better. About the big company thing, Samsung, Sony, Philips, Toshiba, they’re big companies too, and they support srt subtitles, and some of them, might even support mkv, I don’t know.
DVRMSToolbox can easily convert from just about any format to and from dvr-ms and wtv. There are many built in profiles for this, but it isn’t that hard to build custom ones.
I am a HUGE fan of T360 but nothing beats native playback.
I have high hopes for native playback of .avi and .mp4 on Xbox 360 extenders but it is not there yet. Divx / xvid is horrendous in the recent W7 builds and HD mp4 content playback is not stable enough for me to drop the Xbox 360 dashboard just yet. As for DVD streaming / remuxing to extenders I have tried it but I just don’t bother anymore. Without the ability to have menus and other features available I would much rather just encode the main movie to a suitable format such as dvr-ms or mp4.