I want to rip my DVDs to an external HDD and beable to watch them from my xbox 360, but for the life of me I can NOT get it. The only way seems to be going through hours and hours of converting video to .WMV. Is there an easier way? I want to keep dvd picture and 5.1 sound quality and when I use dvd-to-wmv program that doesnt happen and take hours!!! Any help would be Fantastic!!
Thank You

Nope.
WMV (with 5.1 sound), MP4, or H.264 are you only choices via USB HDD or data DVDs.
For streaming, you have a few other options:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=861137

can i just rename it mp4? or wmv? once it's in the .vob file on my hard drive? I gave up on streaming from my pc, I either have to spend hours converting files to .wmv or any program i download wants either windows media 11 or media center 2005. I have windows media center 2002, and it wont let me install windows media 11. I'm begening to feel like this whole streming thing is a sham, it'll only work if you have the latest and greatest. thanks for all your help

Nope. Those are completely different formats.
If you have Media Center 2002, you could install Transcode360 and it will convert the files on the fly for you but I don't know if it runs on MCE2002; that's five years old stuff and the software is of recent vintage. I wouldn't want to bet on the hardware being up to the challenge to start with. I tried MCE2005 on a 1.7GHz Celeron and it streamed WMVs fine; even stuff I couldn't play locally, because the hardware is underpowered. But an on-the-fly-transcoder? Might work but I wouldn't be surprise if it didn't...
Sorry.

I gave up streaming, thats why i bought a external hdd. what options do I have with that as far as video goes? Thank you so much for spending that time helping me with this :) I was hoping by using the external hdd it would work around the media center 2005 thing with streaming. Again, Thank you very very much and any idea's you may have would be great.

I gave up streaming, thats why i bought a external hdd. what options do I have with that as far as video goes? Thank you so much for spending that time helping me with this :) I was hoping by using the external hdd it would work around the media center 2005 thing with streaming. Again, Thank you very very much and any idea's you may have would be great.

The limitation of the video files isn't b/c of streaming from MCE2005, the limitation is in the Xbox360 itself. It will only play MPEG, WMV and some H264/MP4 stuff natively. Anything else, you have to use software, such as Transcode360 from a MCE2005 PC connected and paired to the Xbox360, to stream on the fly. Transode360 can be used to view files such as Xvid/Divx.

To watch ripped DVD's, the Xbox360 will play them natively if you rip it as .VOB and then rename the file to .MPG. Any of the native formats you can watch from the external drive. Anything not native, you'll have to stream and convert from a MCE2005 or Vista PC.