Questions about streaming videos on Xbox 360

Question

I got an Xbox 360 with 250Gb harddrive and I have some questions.

1. I been trying to stream some movies from my computer to my Xbox 360 with Windows Media Center. I noticed that the quality is better when I burn them to a DVD and play them through my DVD player. How can I improve the quality? I have an HDMI cable hooked up.

2. When I play these streamed videos they are always in a zoom mode (Zoom 1). Is it possible to disable zoom?

3. If I am streaming from my computer to my Xbox 360 (so it is connecting via wi-fi to my router). Does it use internet bandwidth? I would think not since everything is local.

4. How can I copy files from my PC over to my Xbox 360? I tried to put them on a USB key but I can't figure out how to copy them over to my harddrive.

Answer 1

1. Hard to tell what would be a problem here. This could be affected by the quality of the videos, your Xbox settings, your Windows Media Center settings, or even your TV's settings. I'm going to suggest a couple things, but I'm going from memory here, so I don't guarantee them working.

   • During playback, press 'A' and look for 'Display' in the controls that come up. You should be able to change the display mode there. Play around with different values and see if any of them look better.
   • Copy your video files to a USB key and play them that way. If they look better, the problem may lie with Windows Media Center. To do this, plug in the USB key and then, when you're in the Dashboard, push the Xbox button on your controller and navigate right to the Media tab. Choose "Video Library". The USB key should be enabled in the list of available sources as "portable device".

2. I think "Zoom 1" refers to the zoom settings in Windows Media Center here. Zoom 1 means normal aspect ratio, Zoom 2 means stretching the video horizontally to remove black bars, Zoom 3 means stretching the video vertically to remove black bars at the top and the bottom, and Zoom 4 attempts to dynamically adjust the video to keep it in the middle of the screen.

3. You're correct. No internet bandwidth is used for transfers between your computer and your Xbox.

4. You can't move files on the Xbox's HDD from a USB key. You can add music files to the harddrive by ripping music CDs, but that's about it.