Alright for Christmas I'm trying to get an external HDD so I can stream all of my digital media through my xbox because I don't have acess to Windows Media Center. But I was wondering do Xbox's take kindly to external hdd? meaning are most compadible with the 360 and are able to read the files ok? Or will I have to convert my videos and mp3's to some other format the 360 can read? Thanks.External Harddrives %26amp; Xbox 360
My friend does the same exact thing, and with all the times we've watched movies like that, we never had a problem. You just have to update your 360 with the media update so it'll play the files.External Harddrives %26amp; Xbox 360
i have a 250gb external HDD and it works fine on my 360 , but some videos dont work sometimes so i have to convert them to a Divx mpeg4 codecs , as for the mp3s you wont have to convert
You don't need Windows Media Center, just Windows Media Player 11 and a home network.
It must be a FAT32 HDD. I think NTFS was invented by MS, but like alot of things they make, their hardware doesn't support it. ''Play for Sure'' comes to mind. The 360 can read divx files. For video, its supports
- H.264 %26 5.1 AC3 audio inside of a .AVI
- Divx/XviD %26 Stereo MP3 audio inside of a .AVI
- WMV %26 5.1 WMA inside a .WMV
- H.264 %26 LC-AAC audio inside a MP4
Most of your legal content will probably allow you to choose a WMV file that's 100% compatible. Most low quality content will be 100% compatible DivX .avi. However, the majority of other stuff is gonna come in a container called .MKV, which is not supported. However, most .MKVs are H.264 video and AAC audio so they can usually be pretty quickly converted. However, from my own tests, the 360's MP4 support is barely existent. MP4 offers alot of things that the old standard didn't support:
- Multiple audio tracks
- Subtitles
- It's default sound format great at low bitrate and supports 5.1 sound
The 360 supports NONE OF THAT. If its in your files they won't be playable. If have alot of movie backups that have a commentary track and none of them play unless you remove the commentary. I've got stuff with subtitles that won't play unless I remove the subtitles.However, assuming that you aren't watching foreign films or the subtitles are a permanent part of the image (ie you can't turn them off), you aren't dying for multple audio tracks and you don't mind stereo audio, you can convert MKV to MP4 pretty painlessly and it only takes like 5 minutes.GotSent is a program that makes it darg and drop eay to turn a MKV into a MP4. If something has a H.264 video and MP3 audio inside a .avi, you can use a program called MKV Toolnix (Its drag and drop easy as well) to make it a MKV, then use GotSent to make that a MP4.If you want to make subtitles a permanent part of the video image when they aren't (this will probably be the case if you watch alot of anime or foreign movies)... just call it a wrap and realize you can't watch them on the 360. It takes a INSANELY long time to encode H.264. I'm talking like 2-4 times the length of the actual content (ie a 2 hour movie takes 4-8 hours to encode).
When I bought my 360 I also bought the 60gig hard drive starter pack. When I need more space I was planning on going with a USB external hard drive also. Can get a lot more space for less price. I liked the 60gig as it will definitely tide me over for quite some time and it connects directly to the Xbox. I will have to make space for the external drive and try to keep it away from the 360 for ventilation purposes. And it might be a pain for anyone that needs the USB port on the 360 for something else. I know some people are using a USB keyboard for typing messages if they already have one and don't want to put out the money (yet anyway) for the keypad that connects to the controller. Although someone could get a multi-USB adapter that will add USB ports but most people tend to find that it will degrade the speed of each individual peripheral plugged in.
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