I've been running my Media Center PC on the Windows 8 preview for the last few months and had found that MP4s that had previously worked fine in Windows 7 refused to play via the xbox extender despite working fine if played locally on the PC. I've now installed the RTM release of Windows 8 and found that MP4s now play again, but the quality is terrible. The videos are extremely blocky and full of artefacts. To make matters worse, I've also tried both Shark and the DivX packs for MKV and they seem to have the same issue (MKVs were fine using Shark during the preview). TV playback (both live and recorded) is absolutely fine. I've also tried hooking up the xbox to a second Windows 8 PC and it has the same problem, so it doesn't appear to be unique to one problem machine.
It's early days and so there's not much info about this yet, but I was wondering if anyone else had tried this yet and had either found it was working fine or had seen the same problem.
thanks
Mike
Windows 8 xbox extender blocky videos
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turnma
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foxwood
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It sounds like the videos are being transcoded, and the PC is making decisions about how much compression to set based on available network bandwidth and CPU. Is the XBox wired or wireless? Can you check the CPU utilization on the PC when you start up one of these videos on the XBox and see if CPU utilzation increases?
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rubaducky
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I have the same problem. Shark007 and divx codec acknowledged this problem. Shark007 uses the divx codec pack so until that is updated shark007 will not work. I've tried every codec I could get my hands on and all of them either don't work or result in poor quality.
Using windows 8 pro with xbox entender trying to stream MKVs. Anyone have a working solution?
Using windows 8 pro with xbox entender trying to stream MKVs. Anyone have a working solution?
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werds
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Slightly on the same topic, I heard someone else on another forum complain about how the Metro Media Player played videos just fine but their regular WMP played the exact same files blocky as you described. Might be a connection? Maybe test it out to see if there is a correlation? I wish I could help more, I am dutifully reading as I debate upgrading to Win 8 in the next month or two on all our home PC's...turnma wrote:I've been running my Media Center PC on the Windows 8 preview for the last few months and had found that MP4s that had previously worked fine in Windows 7 refused to play via the xbox extender despite working fine if played locally on the PC. I've now installed the RTM release of Windows 8 and found that MP4s now play again, but the quality is terrible. The videos are extremely blocky and full of artefacts. To make matters worse, I've also tried both Shark and the DivX packs for MKV and they seem to have the same issue (MKVs were fine using Shark during the preview). TV playback (both live and recorded) is absolutely fine. I've also tried hooking up the xbox to a second Windows 8 PC and it has the same problem, so it doesn't appear to be unique to one problem machine.
It's early days and so there's not much info about this yet, but I was wondering if anyone else had tried this yet and had either found it was working fine or had seen the same problem.
thanks
Mike
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Listen97
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Same issue outlined here, http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 186a0bd623 The issue is only in MCE because if you use the built in Player in Xbox or the new Send to Xbox feature the video and audio are fine.
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Listen97
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Another user in the Microsoft Thread found a corrolation in the Audio. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/wind ... 186a0bd623
"Toturdriver replied on November 5, 2012
I stumbled across this possible cause when I noticed I had a few vids that played perfectly on the extender. I compared the good vid to a vid that was playing badly. Both were MKV's using h.264 encoding at 8000k bitrate. Everything appeared to be the same or very similar except for the audio encoding. The good file was DTS True HD and the bad was AC3. I found another vid that played correctly and looked at it. It also was MKV, h.264 and was 6000k bitrate. The audio encoding on it was AAC. I used handbrake and transcoded the "bad" vid. I left it as a MKV using h.264 and left the bitrate, aspect ratio, etc. the same as the original. The only thing I changed was the audio stream which I went from AC3 to AAC. Viola, it worked perfectly. Next I looked at some older AVI's that wouldn't play properly. I used handbrake to transcode them to MKV's and changed the audio from MPEG Layer-3 to AAC. Once again, all worked properly. My best guess is that something changed with DirectShow that causes a problem when splitting the streams. I do hope MS steps up and fixes this because 90% of my library is encoded with AC3 audio and the total library is around 12TB. That would take forever.
Note: So far changing the audio has fixed every vid that failed to play properly. In most cases, it is the only thing I have changed and it is the only thing that all transcodes have in common."
"Toturdriver replied on November 5, 2012
I stumbled across this possible cause when I noticed I had a few vids that played perfectly on the extender. I compared the good vid to a vid that was playing badly. Both were MKV's using h.264 encoding at 8000k bitrate. Everything appeared to be the same or very similar except for the audio encoding. The good file was DTS True HD and the bad was AC3. I found another vid that played correctly and looked at it. It also was MKV, h.264 and was 6000k bitrate. The audio encoding on it was AAC. I used handbrake and transcoded the "bad" vid. I left it as a MKV using h.264 and left the bitrate, aspect ratio, etc. the same as the original. The only thing I changed was the audio stream which I went from AC3 to AAC. Viola, it worked perfectly. Next I looked at some older AVI's that wouldn't play properly. I used handbrake to transcode them to MKV's and changed the audio from MPEG Layer-3 to AAC. Once again, all worked properly. My best guess is that something changed with DirectShow that causes a problem when splitting the streams. I do hope MS steps up and fixes this because 90% of my library is encoded with AC3 audio and the total library is around 12TB. That would take forever.
Note: So far changing the audio has fixed every vid that failed to play properly. In most cases, it is the only thing I have changed and it is the only thing that all transcodes have in common."