Xbox 360 Display problems

[brodieman214]

Hopefully someone here can help me out. I have used DVD Fab in the past to rip tv shows to my Creative Labs Zen in the past. I had no problems lowering the picture quality to save file size. Now I have an external hard drive and want to rip my DVD collection to stream to my Xbox 360 with the best quality. I have ripped the same DVD over and over again using as many different settings as possible (AVI versus VOB, different resolutions, crop versus no crop, etc...).

HERE IS MY PROBLEM: No matter what I do I lose part of the picture when streaming it to my 360.

The 360 display options are:
Native (which is a tiny box in the middle of the screen),
Letterbox (this option is the best, but it stretches the picture and cuts of the left and right sides)

MY QUESTION IS: Is it the way I am ripping the DVDs or is it the 360 media player that is the problem? Is there a solution for this problem?

[Complication]

I assume you are using the same DVD for your test each time? This is probably a stupid letterbox title which is encoded as 4x3 on the DVD but has 16x9 frame in it. DVDFab would reproduce the same incorrect aspect ratio that the DVD has. I've had almost no luck getting these to play correctly on my PS3 unless it is from the DVD.

Have you tried another disc?
How about setting the 360 to native and using a zoom feature on your TV?

[brodieman214]

Thanks for the reply. I have tried more than one DVD....one widescreen and one not...and the results are always the same. I have not tried using the zoom feature on my tv, that is a good idea. I was hoping there was a better solution to this. Could it be Windows Media Player? Should I try TVersity?

I am just looking to get the best picture quality for my DVDs before I rip my entire collection.

[Vimes]

Thanks for the reply. I have tried more than one DVD....one widescreen and one not...and the results are always the same. I have not tried using the zoom feature on my tv, that is a good idea. I was hoping there was a better solution to this. Could it be Windows Media Player? Should I try TVersity?

I am just looking to get the best picture quality for my DVDs before I rip my entire collection.

I don't think Tversity vs. WMP would make much difference as the xbox should be decoding natively. Have you tried going into the "video effect" settings and turning the auto-crop off or otherwise adjusting it? To get there from the dvd-to-mobile screen, click the "edit" button next to the selected profile then click "video effect settings".

I've had good luck with the xbox 360 using WMV9 or 10 with no crop as well as the generic.xvid.avi.audiocopy profile. Also, if you're doing a lot of testing I suggest limiting the chapters to 1 or 2 so you don't have to wait so long to see the results. I don't use the zoom feature on the TV, I just cycle through the xbox formats until I hit the right one. (usually letterbox, but I seem to remember another one (maybe full?)).

[brodieman214]

Hey Vimes, thanks for the input. Of course I am only ripping a chapter or two! (I learned this the hard way!). I have tried cropping on, cropping off, cropping automatic and they all have the same problem I mentioned. Letterbox and full "chop" off part of the picture...granted it is a small portion, but I want to make sure it is not something I could correct. I tried converting using passthrough, but I am not quite sure what to do with the VOB file it gives me. I have used VOB2MPEG when converting a group of VOB files.

Anyway I am trying everything I can to get the best picture possible...are there other settings I am missing?

[Vimes]

Hmm, I have not had that particular problem. Have you been using the xbox to watch movies? (i.e. do DVDs display ok). Maybe someone else will chime in. Can you list a couple of dvd's you've tried?

[KmR]

What OS are you running on your comp? Are you using Zune or WMP to stream? If WMP, what version?

Have you tried encoding to WMV? In my testing this has the best quality streaming to the xbox...

Do you have Windows Media Center? Check out the following URL for details: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/win...d/default.aspx
(be sure to open in IE)

WMC comes with Vista, Win7 and XP MC Edition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Center)

I setup my 360 as a Media Center Extender and everything has been very high quality when viewed... No need to select any native/letterbox options - it just works...

Hope that helps...