Want to play MP4 movies via the XBOX 360 dashboard streamed from WMP11?

In my quest to find a solution to stream movies from my VMC PC to my XBOX 360 dashboard, this was before the release of the fall update that added support of the DIVX codecs to playback AVI's and before I was able to Transcode successfully in real time using Transcode 360, one solution I discovered was to add file support in to WMP11 / VMC for MP4 files.

After running a registry hack and then adding a watch folder in to WMP11 to point to my MP4 movies and enabling WMP11 media sharing with my XBOX 360, this then allowed for the playback of those MP4 movies via the media blade in the XBOX 360 dashboard.

After trying many registry hacks this is the only one that fully works and not only enables the MP4 files to be visible but for them to be played back in the XBOX 360 dashboard.

If you also want to add support for other file formats as well, such as M4V / M4A or you have a 64bit system please visit this page. The author there is the source of the MP4 registry hack I used on my own Vista 32bit system which can be downloaded from me here.

You will also need the right codecs installed on your PC, I would recommend Fddshow Tryouts and the Haali Splitter or just the K-Lite Full Codec Pack.

Disclaimer: Use at your own risk and ensure you have a full backup of your registry before applying the reg file. This is a hack for Vista 32bit and has not been tested on MCE 2005.

Transcode 360

Transcode 360 is an application that can be used to playback DVD's, DIVX and H.264 movies on your XBOX 360 Media Center Extender (MCX). It works by transcoding on the fly these formats to Windows Media Video (.WMV) which the XBOX 360 MCX supports natively.

The latest versions of Transcode 360 where developed and hosted on http://transcode360.co.uk/ However this website is now dead.
You can download one of the later versions of Transcode 360 from me here. This is version 1.6.3

I haven't as yet been able to get this working with DVD VOB's on my system as I'm getting an error, however I can transcode both AVI and MP4 movies for playback on the XBOX 360 MCX in the My Movies add-in user interface. This also works in the default Video Library in VMC by using the more option as the image above shows.