[techsteveo]

If this has been done before, it's not very well known. Having 2 Xbox 360's and a new Dell MCE 2005 PC, I decided to try the MCE extender bit. After searching I found a little program that turns DVD's to MPEG2 files complete with AC3 track. The program is called Magic DVD Ripper. Great little program. Anyway, here are the steps and requirements....


- MCE 2005 PC

- .net framework 1.1 installed

- My Movies MCE plugin

- Xbox 360(s)

- Magic DVD Ripper (will rip to MPEG2/AC3, will compress)

- MPEG2 decoder (from Power DVD or whatever you use for DVD's)


It couldn't be easier to setup....


- Install My Movies

- Install Magic DVD Ripper

- Rip a dvd (I only rip the main title)

- Fire up the Xbox 360 and click the Media Center button (go through MCE setup to connect the PC and Xbox 360)

- Click My Movies and watch your ripped DVD title complete with AC3 and original uncompressed image quality!


I may need one more 360 in the bedroom so I can have a whole house dvd setup!

The cool thing is, I can do the same with my music and pictures.

One caveat, I tried to do this with Vista and it was very sluggish. Apparently My Movies does not work with the 64 bit Vista.


-techsteveo

 

[jagouar]

yeah i dont think mymovies is working with vista well yet.... i think vista will get a new ui (to look like the rest of vista) and could be very very cool since you can no mimmick the mce ui.


For now I ripped all of my hd movies to dvr-ms files because for some reason the extenders work really well with dvr-ms files and they can contain the 5.1 soundtrack and store the movie info in the xml file. I wouldnt be suprised if dvr-ms is the native file type for the vista version of mymovies because it can store all of the info in the dvr-ms file and then you could just have the mymovies application read it similarly to how recordedtv reads the dvr-ms files.

 

[emillika]

What version of My Movies are you using?


Thanks.

 

[techsteveo]

I'm using version 2.10 of My Movies.


jagouar, how/why do you rip to dvr-ms? Isn't that DRMed? Doesn't it convert the MPEG2 to the new format, losing video quality? The MPEG2 rip I'm doing keeps the same exact file size as the dvd.


Also, I prefer the MCE 2005 UI to Vista's MCE UI. They changed the UI color back to blue in Vista (from green) but it's still not as simple. It's also very slow. My current setup will stream the MPEG2's wireless to the 360 with no lag.

 

[jagouar]

dvr-ms is basically mpeg2 with the guide data integrated into the file.... and its not really drm'ed (just a ms propreitary format) but since it stores the data about the show in the dvr-ms file it would be pretty easy (I would think) to pull that data back out. DVR-MS is the recorded tv format so thats how it can show you all of the info about the show (title, descroption, hd/non hd, channel etc).

 

[slaxer07]

A little of-topic but figured you all may be able to help.


When using Vista ultimate and 360 as the extender. The 360 won't play the full movie and you can't fast forward. On the selection screen it shows the correct length of the movie but once you start to play it and if you hit fast forward to display slider the length of the movie is wrong and will also change periodically.


I have tried several different ways of ripping and including magic dvd ripper just like you explained


Any help is appreciated.

 

[kneedragger]



Quote:
Originally Posted by techsteveo /forum/post/0


If this has been done before, it's not very well known. Having 2 Xbox 360's and a new Dell MCE 2005 PC, I decided to try the MCE extender bit. After searching I found a little program that turns DVD's to MPEG2 files complete with AC3 track. The program is called Magic DVD Ripper. Great little program. Anyway, here are the steps and requirements....


- MCE 2005 PC

- .net framework 1.1 installed

- My Movies MCE plugin

- Xbox 360(s)

- Magic DVD Ripper (will rip to MPEG2/AC3, will compress)

- MPEG2 decoder (from Power DVD or whatever you use for DVD's)


It couldn't be easier to setup....


- Install My Movies

- Install Magic DVD Ripper

- Rip a dvd (I only rip the main title)

- Fire up the Xbox 360 and click the Media Center button (go through MCE setup to connect the PC and Xbox 360)

- Click My Movies and watch your ripped DVD title complete with AC3 and original uncompressed image quality!


I may need one more 360 in the bedroom so I can have a whole house dvd setup!

The cool thing is, I can do the same with my music and pictures.

One caveat, I tried to do this with Vista and it was very sluggish. Apparently My Movies does not work with the 64 bit Vista.


-techsteveo

I have been testing alot of stuff to stream movies to the xbox. For free programs I found a program called VOB2MPG. This pretty much does what it says. It takes 10 minutes at the most to convert a ripped movie to .mpg. With this file you can stream 6 channel AC3. You won't get full FF or RW, but you get 30 second skips. I can live with that.

For a program that you wanna pay for VideoReDo does the same thing VOB2MPG does but it seems more reliable than VOB2MPG.


techsteveo-- How long does it take to rip and compress the dvd? There is a free program at http://thegreenbutton.com/ that people have been using that does the same thing Magic DVD Ripper does. http://www.dvd-wmv.com/ . Check it out.