[jmcgee]

Greetings,

Our team takes astrophysical simluations of double-binary mass transfer systems and renders the objects as a concatenated frame-stock, then exported as a Quicktime movie. We will start rendering these in High-Defintion soon in the file formats described below using codecs like H264, Quicktime, MPEG2, etc. We want to stream these Quicktime movies in High Definition to an HDTV using an Xbox 360. Currently, a Mac or PC cannot drive the HDTV at true HD since the digital signal cannot be converted to NTSC interlaced HDTV format. The Xbox360 boasts it can do this with a Windows Media Center PC, but what about Mac!? If anyone can point to a reference or address, phone number (besides Xbox, Microsoft, or Apple customer support), we would be thankful for that.

Goals: The Xbox 360 must be able to ...

1. (Accept)Stream/save to hard disk digital movie formats from PowerMacG5
2. Stream or Playback(from hard disk) digital movie formats to HDTV at its native HD resolution-say of 768i, 1080i, etc
3. Stream/Playback .mov, .m2v, .m4v,etc movie file format

PowerMac G5 I/O:
1. DVI-D
2. Firewire 900, 600
3. 100 MBps Ethernet
4. USB 2.0

HDTV I/O:
1. RGB
2. HD Component
3. Composite
4. S-Video
5. Coax (NTSC)

Questions:

1. If the Xbox 360 can meet our goals, how exactly, w.r.t. hardware/software configuration, will it do this?
2. Is a WindowsXP 2005 w/Rollup 2 update Media Center PC the ONLY way to communicate media through Xbox 360? What about Mac?

[baw]

I think there may be some confusion on your part, but I can't put my finger on it as I'm trying to figure out why you want an Xbox involved in the process.

[brokenjago]

Originally Posted by baw

I'm trying to figure out why you want an Xbox involved in the process.

Originally Posted by jmcgee

We want to stream these Quicktime movies in High Definition to an HDTV using an Xbox 360. Currently, a Mac or PC cannot drive the HDTV at true HD since the digital signal cannot be converted to NTSC interlaced HDTV format. The Xbox360 boasts it can do this with a Windows Media Center PC, but what about Mac!?

Although I can't verify the validity of that statement, I find it pretty clear why he wants an Xbox 360 involved in the process.

[blizzard]

I don't want to pretend to be an expert here, but some observations:

1.) the 360 only has a 20 gig hard drive, so you're looking at streaming for sure.
2.) MS has currently only announced that MCE will be able to stream video to the 360. I expect it'll only be a matter of time before this process is reverse-engineered and a comparable Mac program released, but it might be a LONG matter of time depending on the protection MS builds into the process.
3.) It might make more sense to wait until the Intel macs are released...you could set one up to run MCE as a second OS, possibly. Or you might even just run one PC in your office on MCE and set it up with a gigantor-HD to centralize and stream all your videos.

Just some ideas. Umm, I'm also thinking this may not be the correct forum, even though it involves an Xbox. But for the life of me, I can't figure out where else it should be.

[brokenjago]

Note that the 360 only has a 20 GB HD if you buy the Xbox 360 $399 package.

Although if you've got a PowerMac G5 then saving up for a $399 360 should certainly be possible...

[Thinine]

Wouldn't you just use a dedicated output card in this case? Because this definitely sounds like something people are already doing on the Mac, given it's pervasiveness in the media industry.

[reader50]

Originally Posted by jmcgee

Greetings,
...

PowerMac G5 I/O:
1. DVI-D
2. Firewire 900, 600
3. 100 MBps Ethernet
4. USB 2.0

...

The G5 I/O list is inaccurate.
1. DVI-I with one DVI -> VGA adapter included.
2. FireWire 800, 400 (there is no FW 900 or 600)
3. 10/100/1000 Ethernet.
4. USB 2.0/1.1

[baw]

Why not just use the G5 connected to an HDTV display device via DVI? People do this all the time.

[jmcgee]

Originally Posted by baw

Why not just use the G5 connected to an HDTV display device via DVI? People do this all the time.

Right, so that is the current configuration: We have a PowerMac G5 that playsback via DVI cable to a Dell W3000 LCD HDTV. Right now we can playback a 1280x768 digital signal. However, it is not an NTSC High Definition signal, it's a digital computer signal. In other words, we cannot be guaranteed that when we get a 1920x1080 native resolution HDTV, that it will, with full HD quality, render the digital stream correctly. But the Xbox 360, and a product called HD-Connect say they can. [take a computer signal and convert it to a TV signal].
Another advantage of the Xbox 360 is its superior Hardware acceleration and video memory processing. We could not hope to achieve the smooth anti-aliasing, interlacing,etc over DVI to an HDTV that an Xbox could deliver in the HDTV's own native Component Input. This is why we are pursuing the Xbox360 as a solution.
Any thoughts?

v/r
JMcGee

[inkhead]

the xbox 360 supports only one video format for your hi-def and it's wmv10. WMV10 does not support macs. You will not be using your mac to do anything with the xbox 360.

I have no idea what the hell you are going on about, but what is your xbox superior for? What are you trying to do? Watch a movie? You don't make any sense.

Anyway I have the xbox 360 and it only plays wmv10 meaning it only plays from my windows xp pc, and then it has no rewind or fast forward (yeah you heard me right)... it's crap.

[Cadaver]

AFAIK, there is no such thing as "NTSC High-definition." The NTSC system is current analog interlaced TV. What you're talking about is ATSC HDTV.
Also, there are several digital video transcoders that will take a standard DVI signal and convert it to an ATSC signal (720p or 1080i). Good broadcast quality transcoders can cost a few thousand dollars, though.
Trying to store HD video on an XBox 360's hard drive will get you about 30 seconds of video (ok, not literally 30 seconds, but barely enough time to be useful).
And IFAIK, the XBox 360 is not designed to transcode HD video. It will upconvert a 480p DVD movie to 720p or 1080i, but so can my $300 Sony DVD player.

Edit: I re-read your first post more carefully. Nearly any HDTV will accept a DVI computer signal and scale it as necessary to its display. And if for some reason your display device doesn't like the computer's DVI signal, there are several consumer-grade VGA-to-component transcoders.
Here's one that will convert VGA (at the proper resolution) to component video at 480p, 720p or 1080i (640x480, 1280x720 or 1920x1080).
http://www.digitalconnection.com/pro...video/9a60.asp