I've had not so great experience with Media Browser (High CPU when extender is left logged in for no reason) and I didn't like transcode360. I figured I'd just re-container the files to a working container format such as mp4, but I'm having a heck of a time. I got mp4box and a number of other tools and tried to convert the files but I've got varying results. The best I was able to end up with was mp4box complaining about the dts stream not being compliant. I tried eac3to to convert to ac3, but ended up with nothing as well. I don't want to have to use handbrake as I don't want to re-encode the video since it is already fine and I dont want to lose quality. I used mkv toolbox to extract the dts and h264 streams from the mkv... Can anyone give some tips on what to try next to make this work? I don't mind writing a little powershell script to do this but I'm really tired of trying 15 different tools to get a bad result. All I want are the movies I ripped for my kid to play on the extender in his room.

 h264 is not going to work on Linksys extenders.  Bjdraw has a good post about how to convert DTS to AC3 on his blog.  Your best bet is to convert to AC3 then convert the mkv to dvr-ms using dvrmstoolbox.  Or buy an Xbox and do a container swap to WTV.

http://bjdraw.com/2009/04/05/how-to-automatically-convert-vob-to-mpg-and-dts-to-ac3/

I know h264 in WTV doesnt work on dma 2x00s but H264 does in fact work in the mp4 container, as well as AVI if I'm not mistaken

Mevi

I know h264 in WTV doesnt work on dma 2x00s but H264 does in fact work in the mp4 container, as well as AVI if I'm not mistaken

 

 

The Linksys box can not decode h264.   I haven't tried to hard so I'm not sure how something like transcode 360 works.  I prefer to use native formats like dvr-ms and wmv.  

It decodes h264 just fine - there was a firmware update about 2 years ago that has it play back just fine. h264 in mp4 container works perfectly, as well as VC-1

If you want to set output audio channel option to 5.1, you should choose AC3 or AAC as audio encoder.

Convert MKV DTS to AC3, convert DTS to AC3 in mkv, convert MKV with DTS sound to AC3 with 5.1 channels is so easy if you owns such a powerful MKV DTS to AC3 Converter.
Personally, I use Aunsoft MKV Converter to accomplish this MKV DTS to AC3.

This program allows to you convert any types of MKV files like MKV DTS, MKV FLAC to AC3, AAC with 5.1 channels, and still keep its good quality.

http://www.aunsoft.com/mkv-converter/

Mevi

It decodes h264 just fine - there was a firmware update about 2 years ago that has it play back just fine. h264 in mp4 container works perfectly, as well as VC-1

Sorry that this is an old thread, but I'm new to MCE Extenders & am looking at getting a DMA2200 on eBay, however I am confused by the conflicting posts out there. I've read about containers - surely everything in recorded/live TV on MC7 is in a .wtv container? I am in Ireland where our DVB-T is in h264, I can also receive BBCHD, BBC1HD & ITV1HD- all in h264. Can a DMA2200 play these either live or recorded? If not, what can- only an XBox 360?

I just use handbrake to convert video files to their default format which is h264 in an m4v format with AAC audio.  If its especially a nice movie, I'll use the High Profile setting but any regular video, I'll just use Normal.  Works perfectly on my DMA2200, if not a bit slow to buffer.  I have had some issues with videos where there is a lot of movement like in some scenes in Kick Ass, but overall, this is my normal archiving method.