What is the best XBox360 profile for HDTVs?

[GeekMan]

Hey all,
I apologize if this gets long-winded.

I've searched the forums and the internet itself, but I haven't come across any DVDFab profiles that are made specifically for large HDTV displays and/or HD projection that will play through the XBox 360. I'm personally going through a bunch of tests right now to try to determine the "best" profile, but I figured there's GOT to be someone else out there who uses their 360 to display their movies on a large HDTV or screen with 5.1 surround sound like I do, and I'm hoping that those people are willing to share their profiles with the rest of us. File size isn't an issue because I obviously want the best quality I can get for my giant displays (My HDTV is 55" and my home theater screen is 106").

I don't care if the end file is a WMV, AVI, MP4 or anything else. I just want the LEAST amount of audio/video compression and the BEST audio/video quality that can be played via the 360.

If no one else chimes in, then I'll post my findings here when I'm done with my tests.

[MonkeyCowboy]

Use the generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy. You might have to update the xbox to support AVI container. I bump the frame rate to 4096 but others more knowledgable then me reccomend 1100.

I can not tell the difference Between the org DVD and the moblie copy and that is my goal.

[jdbower]

Some of it depends on how you're getting it there, are you popping it into the 360's hard drive or streaming it over the network? If it's streaming, what software are you using?

[MonkeyCowboy]

Some of it depends on how you're getting it there, are you popping it into the 360's hard drive or streaming it over the network? If it's streaming, what software are you using?

I only stream so all my reccomendations are based on that.

[jdbower]

Good man, streaming is the bestest way to get the data around the house Depending on how you stream different codecs yield different results. For example, WMP11 on XP was the only one that did 5.1 sound so that was an easy choice for me. I don't know if that's changed recently, however, and I know Windows Media Center supported a lot of other formats.

[GeekMan]

Use the generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy. You might have to update the xbox to support AVI container. I bump the frame rate to 4096 but others more knowledgable then me reccomend 1100.

I can not tell the difference Between the org DVD and the moblie copy and that is my goal.

Do you use 720x400 or some other resolution?

[GregiBoy]

Actually, I use 720 x 400 resolution with crop off. This ensures that the aspect ratio will be correct on ALL players with letterboxing for widescreen titles.

Some players tend to stretch the image to fill the screen height and then the aspect ratio is incorrect.

I said 1100 bitrate is a good start point but really "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and it is very subjective.

Do a chapter test of a movie that you really like and do it at 1100, 2200, 3300 & 4400. Play the chapter off the original DVD first and then try each test and see what you are happy with.

[Vimes]

...
Do a chapter test of a movie that you really like and do it at 1100, 2200, 3300 & 4400. Play the chapter off the original DVD first and then try each test and see what you are happy with.

This is great advice. Also, you might want to check out TVersity as a streaming platform (though WMP11 works ok as well if you're just going to the xbox360.) Whatever you do, you want to avoid on-the-fly transcoding if you can. The way to do that is to make sure that the xbox can natively play whatever format you choose.

The xbox currently supports 5.1 sound in 2 containers, 1) avi and 2) wmv with wma10. The avi quality it pretty good, the WMV is better but there is a bug in DVDFab (currently being worked on) that puts the sound in the wrong channels in WMA10. Note: The xbox will also play h264 files, but only with stereo sound.

If you want to maintain the 5.1 sound you need to use AVI with AC3. AFAIK, xbox supports AC3 sound with divx and xvid in an AVI. Of those 2, I have had the best luck (streaming/FF/RW/quality) with xvid. The profile for this is generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy.

Personally, WMV with WMA10 offers the best quality and works best with streaming to the xbox (i.e. it never stutters, and is very responsive to FF and RW). WMV has the down side of not being compatible with as many devices as AVI (or other formats) but if you're just going to xbox and can wait for the fix, I would stick with WMV/WMA10. This profile is xbox360.wmv.wma10...hopefully to work properly in the near future.

[MonkeyCowboy]

Do you use 720x400 or some other resolution?

I match the original resolution of the DVD. I have an HP Media Smart Connect that I stream to and that seems to do a good job of upscaling to my big screen.

My goal is to have the very best quality I can get regardless of file size. I have read here that the Hardware up scale is better than the SW up scale.

If the media smart connect supported VOB I would use that.

Part of my problem is the menu function of the HPMSC as I catorgize by Genere and use WMP 11 to tag them

I wish I could figure out how to get VLC Player to stream but I just can't even though I have tried.

[GregiBoy]

I prefer TwonkyVision Media Server.

[GeekMan]

Thank you everyone for your responses!

So far I've done a lot of tests and have discovered that the WMV files look as good as the AVI files, but at a much smaller file size. WMV would be ideal, except for the sound/speaker issues which completely destroys it for me. I won't wait for a fix since it seems this issue's been around for quite some time already without any real progress, but once the fix is in and confirmed I'll redo my testing for WMVs and switch.

Which means that right now AVI is the current champion and so far the best output has been generic.avi.xvid.audiocopy at a fixed bitrate of 3300 with crop on (didn't seem to matter if crop was on or off actually, so I left it at the default of ON). I'm currently doing a test of 4400 bitrate just to see if I notice a difference, but the 3300 looks identical to the original DVD (Monsters Inc). The reason I'm trying 4400 is to see if action scenes "feel" sharper, but I honestly believe 3300 will be fine. Once I have these settings finalized I'd like to offer them up here as a profile for others to use if they so wish. Could someone point me to a "How-To" to export and name the profile? I think I'd like to make 3 profiles for my ripping. You know a "good" for standard things like TV shows and older movies, a "better" for movies and TV shows with lots of special effects or action and a "best" for special DVDs that require the best compression for optimal viewing pleasure.

Gregiboy:
I used to use Twonky when I first bought the XBox years ago, but my XBox is able to see my ReadyNAS across the network perfectly fine without it now, so I don't feel like I need it anymore. Especially for playing files converted specifically for playback through the XBox. Am I missing something?

P.S. One annoying thing I've learned after doing 7 test conversions for this is that I have to remember to turn off the subtitles EVERY time. Is there a way to have subtitles default to off (unchecked)?

[GregiBoy]

The reason that I use Twonky is that some players (eg: The inbuilt player in my Samsung 850 TV) cannot see network shares but play from a DNLA server such as Twonky, TVersity, etc so you aren't missing anything.

The subtitles can be turned off in Settings-Streams-Subpicture-Do not Preselect....

[MonkeyCowboy]

I prefer TwonkyVision Media Server.

I've tried just about everything out there including Twonky and have yet to find one that will sort througn the HP media smart connect. Every one works but only shows up through the server UI and not the Video UI.

What do you use on the front end to serve up to?

We gotta be careful here as sig will lock this since we are way off topic.

[GregiBoy]

I think we are still on topic as the discussion is about Streaming Media and we are not discussing competitive products.

My main front end is a Samsung LA52A850 Series TV which is networked and will play files from a DLNA server with it's own inbuilt player software.

I also have in 2 other rooms a Zensonic Z500 and a Ziova CS615 Network Media player.

Besides this I also always have at least a couple of networked HDD media players that I import from China () with 1Tb drives installed for testing purposes.

I provide content stored on 2 highly software modded Linksys NAS200's running Twonky under Linux with just upgraded 4Tb of storage.

I've been interested and involved in this stuff for over 8 years right down to the player firmware development and it is always growing.

I love it !!!

The only problem I have is when my current girlfriend comes over and wants to watch a movie because there is too much to choose from and it usually takes her an hour to choose what to watch.

[Bigplayer]

What size files are we talking about at 3300 bit rate? I want to keep the file size as small as possible but still have a HQ copy. Is WMV 10 the way to go if I dont care about the speaker issue?. How is the quality at 1100? File Size?

Thanks
Sean