maandag, maart 02, 2009

Streaming HD with OSX


I downloaded my first HD movie on my OSX Mac with SABnzbd+, and it appeared to be in PS3 format. I wondered how i could stream it to my Xbox360 to watch it on my TV, or even just play it on my Mac, and found this link mentioning some promissing solutions:

Boxee (worked best for me at least being able to view the PS3 video on the Mac, i haven't been able to stream it to the TV or 360. Perculiar: you use your userid/password you created during online signup to login to the local client).

I also tried: Plex, XBMC, Perian, MPlayer and VLC.

Michel pointed me to Twonky and EyeConnect. Not free. And Twonky is Windows only. Since i hadn't found a better free solution, I gave EyeConnect a try.

EyeConnect didn't stream to the Xbox. EyeConnect on my Mac detected the Xbox on the LAN, but the Xbox didn't detect the Mac/EyeConnect. Elgato, makers of EyeConnect clarified: "The Xbox 360 does not use UPnP AV to discover content over the network. It uses a separate, Windows-based standard. It can connect using the Media Center on a PC, or via specialized Mac software like Connect360. EyeConnect is solely an UPnP AV server - the Xbox 360 does not use that format, so it won't work with EyeConnect. Many other devices do use UPnP AV (DLNA), like the PlayStation 3".

So i tried Connect360. 1st i ran into an error when starting Connect360: "A required port appears to be in use, please free ports 1900 and/or 9335 if you wish to use Connect360". On the website it said it might be in conflict with EyeConnect. Tried to deinstall that: still the error. Opened up terminal and looked what was using port 1900 (through the command "sudo lsof -i :1900"): EyeConnect! Found a de-install-script, ran it: still the error. Started Activity Monitor, killed EyeConnect-processes: Connect360 started! Now both the Mac and the Xbox360 'saw' eachother, but Connect360 only looks in the iTunes folder(s). My movie was in a different location. I tried to add the movie to iTunes, but iTunes did not report being unable to add it to the library AND did not add it. Don't talk to me about the Apple being super intuitive all the time: it has LOTS of non intuitive elements!

Anyway, looking for another solution, i found Rivet. Gave THAT a try. And YES, it allowed me to specify another location. BUT: only at this point i found out the Xbox360 doesn't play this movie format :-). No MPG-support on Xbox360. Thank you Microsoft!

(image source: Apple.com)

3 opmerkingen:

  1. Convert any fileformat to any fileformat?
    http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

    Takes a couple of clicks to get through the final download but this prog does the job. YOU decide which format it should have.

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  2. Thanks Michel, i know Super. I was looking for a way to directly stream the PS3 HD to my TV (or Xbox 360). I don't want to do the extra convert step. But if that is what is left, i'll give Super a try on this file (haven't used it on PS3 HD video before).

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  3. Anoniem6:26 p.m.

    There is not really a PS3 format. The PS3 is sometimes a bit picky when it comes to the various video codecs that are currently in use. Usually the movies converted for optimal playback on the PS3 are in x264 format, which is considered to be the best codec by a majority of people.
    I am using [url=http://www.nullriver.com/]Nullrivers' MediaLink[/url] to stream from my Mac to the PS3. It works pretty good. On the odd occasion that the movie is in an unknown format, I use [url=http://handbrake.fr/]Handbrake[/url] to convert it. I try to avoid PC software ;)
    For one thing I need to boot up Windows in VMWare though, when I have an MKV movie. The PS3 doesn't support those, and there is no good way to mux them on OSX. MKV2VOB for windows does it in a few minutes, and VOBs play very well on the PS3.

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