Digital Mind

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

It was a good day

I got my Panasonic kit to send ethernet over AC power yesterday and my initial reaction is Thank Christ almighty! This $36 gem is what I've needed all along. I know have uninterrupted ethernet to my Xbox 360 which means... ta da! I now have a solution for watching video on my xbox.

Setup:
Hooked up the master unit to my router via ethernet and plugged it into AC socket. Hooked up slave to AC outlet by my xbox and connected my xbox to the slave device via eithernet.
Wait for green lights to come on and setup is over.

Turned on Xbox 360. Voila - first thing it tells me Xbox live update is waiting and I download it.

Real world test:
I had tried using Connect 360 to bridge my media to my Xbox 360 but the lack of being able to point it to network drives was killing me so I looked around a bit more and found a much more suitable solution. A program called Rivet points to your OS X music/picture/movie folders as well as letting you add any folder on your network. Bingo! Bought that for $18. Setup took about 10 minutes as it needs a little time to scan your drives.

Went back to my Xbox and sure enough, there is my media.

Slideshows of my latest pictures. Check
Music. Check.
On to the big one... Videos. Check check and check.

I played Flight of the Conchords, Entourage, LIttle Britain, Planes Trains & Automobiles. All work fine.

I have not tried High Def video yet and would not be surprised if it does not play without stuttering. A review I read on New Egg said standard vid played fine but he had stuttering with HD. I'll have to download or rip something to see how it fairs for me.

At the moment though I am ecstatic. I'm completely fine with looking through my video via folder/icons. Now my media reaches the entire house. I couldn't be happier. And I'm quite pleased that I don't need to re-encode anything. It plays as is from wherever I downloaded.

I gotta say it was a good day.