First and foremost the experience I have had is that blu-ray rips are nothing like standard dvd's because of the variety of audio/video codec combinations that are on disks.

What I have tried so far is:

1) Full Rip w/ AnyDVD, created an MKV out of it with MakeMKV, demuxed and fixed the audio with AudioTool (on dts audio tracks).

On one disk it was already h264 so I didn't have to do anything else, one was VC1 so I had to use ripbot264 to re-encode the entire thing in h264.

So now I have full 1080p mkv's with h264 and ac3 3/2/1 aka 5/1 audio.... using dvrms toolbox I did an mkv->wtv so that now I have 1 mkv and 1 wtv with exactly identical codecs/bitrates/etc...etc...

My win7 mediacenter computer has nothing special on it except the divx preview, I'm on a full gigabit network and using an xbox 360 as the extender.

When I used the divx preview and an mkv it was unwatchable from the get go.

When I used the wtv container it was so close to being watchable that I am convinced that wtv is superior to mkv for h264 on extenders. Now I'm just left fiddling with bitrates but I feel confident that I can get full 1080p with surround working properly on the extender.


If anybody has any tips or thoughts about things like b-frames and bitrates etc..etc.. that you've used successfully I would love to hear it... in about 3 hours I will have a few more revisions to play with and really hope that one of those in a wtv container will be the right combination.

Keep it at or below L4.1 and keep the bitrate under10Mbps and it should work

 Whats the file size created?  I tried WTV but the files were too large.  I'm sticking with dvr-ms for now which works perfectly.

It came out to just about 20 gigs... i have plenty of storage so mainly what i'm concerned about is quality and usability for my family. ... How do you go about keeping it under 10Mbps.. ripbot gives me an option on the 2pass mode to specify a maximum average bitrate but that doesnt seem to me like the same thing as keeping the "peak" bitrate where I want it..

The Xbox is not capable of playing back video encoded at high bitrate, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10Mbps (and that's pushing it). It doesn't offload any of the decoding like your PC does, it uses raw CPU horsepower.

Ok so I've got both the wtv and the mkv done at 12Mbps... the MKV came in at 7 gigs and plays flawlessly.. the wtv also but is 8 gigs.

I have the new Transformers blu-ray disk.  I just riped it off the disk with AnyDvd and converted the DTS audio to AC3 with eac3to.  Then I muxed it back together with Tsmuxer.  It will play on the xbox360 but the bitrate is way too high and this causes it to skip.  I have done multiple blu-ray titles this way and they played fine except this one.  So what I did was this, I took the movie file I muxed back together with Tsmuxer and converted it to WMVHD with windows media encoder.  I encoded it at 10Mbps with the audio at 440kbps, 24 bit 5.1.  It plays flawless.  Now I can tell you that I've converted blu-ray movies to WMVHD and left the bit rate at 15Mbps with no issues except they don't fast forward or rewind good but they play flawlesly.  I say this to say that the xbox360 can handle bit rates up at 15Mbps if it is in WMVHD format.  I don't know about other formats though.  I usually take all my blu-ray titles, rip them off the disk and convert to WMVHD and call it a day, only takes about four hours on my laptop to do.

From the horse's mouth: https://support.xbox.com/support/en/us/nxe/gamesandmedia/movies/videofaq/viewvideoplaybackfaq.aspx

Q: What does the Xbox 360 console support for AVI?

A: The Xbox 360 console supports the following for AVI:

• File extensions: .avi, .divx
• Containers: AVI
• Video profiles: MPEG-4 Part 2 (Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile)
• Video bit rate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 × 720 at 30 fps. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.
• Audio profiles: Dolby® Digital (2 channel and 5.1 channel), MP3
• Audio max bit rate: No restrictions. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.

Q: What does the Xbox 360 console support for H.264?

A: The Xbox 360 console supports the following for H.264:

• File extensions: .mp4, .m4v, mp4v, .mov, .avi
• Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
• Video profiles: Baseline, main, and high (up to level 4.1)
• Video bit rate: 10 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 × 1080 at 30 fps. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.
• Audio profiles: AAC, 2-channel, Low Complexity
• Audio max bit rate: No restrictions. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.

Q: What does the Xbox 360 console support for MPEG-4 Part 2?

A: The Xbox 360 console supports the following for MPEG-4:

• File extensions: .mp4, .m4v, .mp4v, .mov, .avi
• Containers: MPEG-4, QuickTime
• Video profiles: MPEG-4 Part 2 (Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile)
• Video bit rate: 5 Mbps with resolutions of 1280 × 720 at 30 fps. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.
• Audio profiles: AAC, 2-channel, Low Complexity
• Audio max bit rate: No restrictions. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.

Q: What does the Xbox 360 console support for WMV (VC-1)?

A: The Xbox 360 console supports the following for WMV:

• File extensions: .wmv
• Containers: ASF
• Video profiles: WMV7 (WMV1), WMV8 (WMV2), WMV9 (WMV3), VC-1 (WVC1 or WMVA) in simple, main, and advanced up to level 3
• Video bit rate: 15 Mbps with resolutions of 1920 × 1080 at 30 fps. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.
• Audio profiles: WMA7/8, WMA9 Pro (stereo and 5.1), WMA Lossless
• Audio max bit rate: No restrictions. See the question about max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second.

Q: What are the "real" max bit rate, resolution, and frames per second that the Xbox 360 console supports for all the different formats?

A: The Xbox 360 console does not block video from playing based on a maximum bit rate, resolution, or frames per second. Each codec's maximum has been tested using various video playback sources.

Content with a higher bit rate is not blocked, but playback quality may be less than optimal. Use higher bit rates at your own risk.

Q: What are the different ways to play video content on the Xbox 360 console?

A: You can play video from a USB 2.0 FAT 32 removable drive or optical media, and by streaming from the Zune software or Windows Media Player 11.

To learn more, see Play Media on Your Xbox 360 console on Zune.net, or see Use Zune with Xbox 360.

Q: What is the maximum video file size that the Xbox 360 console supports?

A: The maximum file size for an MPEG-4 Part 2 or H.264 file is 4 GB. However, Windows Media Player 11 and the Zune software support streaming WMV files larger than 4 GB.

double post

I have seen that faq before but I believe it is out of date. For example it says that h264 can only be combined with aac but this is just not true, ac3 5.1 works fantastically well with h264.

I wish somebody from M$ would give us up to date specs about real capabilities

Audio is a separate bag, it's accurate for video tho

As far as I unsterstood that faq only relates to the capabilities of the dashboard player.  It doesn't mention anything about formats like VOB, M2TS, etc that will play via 7MC.

I find it very interesting that acgaustin was almost able to get a 20GB WTV file to play on the 360.  That must have been over 20Mbps bitrate.  I don't think high bitrate WTV files have been experimented with very much, so maybe he's onto something.

acgaustin, can you confirm what the max bitrate is that you are able to play a WTV file?  Thanks

That or his PC is transcoding it on the fly

I'm not sure how to tell exactly what the bitrate for the movie was.... not a video expert but if you point out how to do it I will be happy to look, also happy to determine if it's transcoding if you'd like, I assume that would just be evidenced by a huge spike in cpu usage?

 I don't *think* it was transcoding though because it wasnt stuttering but rather skipping frames.

 The 1080p with the 12Mbps cap and 448 ac3 audio plays flawlessly out of a wtv container, mkv was choppy with divx technical preview but it was "The Simpsons" not a high-res action flick.. i'm working on Live free or die hard now but I think that I may just bite the bullet and go to 720p with the 12Mbps cap and 448 ac3.

 Also, for those who didn't know (i didn't) Dolby Digital is the same thing as ac-3... just another word for it.

 I genuinely believe the wtv container will be the key to making 1080p work on the extenders, after all, we all can watch discovery channel hd on our extenders and *that* is 1080p in a wtv container.

To me, non-transcoded BluRay/HDDVD rips played to an Extender is the holy grail for Media Center to enjoy a resurgence in the home.  I've been working on this task since 2006, and while I've gotten close, the playback from any extender I've tried is not acceptable.  I'm ok with container flipping, but transcoding is a dealbreaker. (For the record, I purchase physical media of all my content).  I certainly hope there will be a new Extender announcement soon.... or better yet, SoftSled. I've been playing with a new ASRock ION 330 and it is quite capable of "extending" BluRay rips, but without SoftSled I don't get centralized tuners/guide and live TV support.  Perhaps we can track down the original developers at Kiss (the company Cisco/Linksys acquired for their Extenders) and see if they can port their code to a PopcornHour C200.     

 On another topic... I don't believe any broadcast provider tranmits 1080p:

acgaustin

 can watch discovery channel hd on our extenders and *that* is 1080p in a wtv container.

"Some broadcasters, including Discovery HD, transmit their HD programming in 1080i (not to be confused with 1080p)." http://www.discoveryhd.ca/reports/article.aspx?aid=209 

Please correct me if I am misguided.