Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Video
Connect360 updated with H.264 support
A while back in our TUAW Guide to Xbox 360 and Mac we mentioned the forthcoming Spring Dashboard update on the 360 was to bring updated video codec support. Well that update dropped last week and Nullriver has correspondingly updated their Connect360 software (which we've mentioned before) that allows streaming video (and audio) files from a Mac straight to a Xbox 360. The newly supported codecs include full HD (1920x1080) H.264 in both the MPEG-4 and QuickTime containers (in addition to the previous WMV). This, of course, is substantially higher than Apple TV's support for 720p video, making the Xbox 360 likely the best full HD video extender available (though the Xbox is disappointingly loud compared to the Apple TV).Connect360 remains $20 and a demo is available.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Quinn Banks said 1:53PM on 5-14-2007
If you guys can get this to work let me know. I installed it, registered it and none of my H.264 videos will play.
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Nathan Wilkinson said 1:55PM on 5-14-2007
freakin awesome! i emailed the guys at nullriver as soon as i saw the dashboard update go up and they replied and said they were already working on it. nice work by those guys for a speedy update.
one question i have: i need to convert a bunch of my video into the right format, but what settings should i use? i plan on using ffmpegx since it seems to give the most control over the compression (and its free). has anyone come up with good settings that seem to work all around? i did a couple test compressions and put them on a usb drive and the 360 had some problems syncing the audio and video, so i was just wondering if there's a cutoff bitrate or something i should pay attention to. thanks
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Tony said 2:09PM on 5-14-2007
Thanks! I LOVE this program and have been using it since version 2.42. Thanks for the update!
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indyber said 2:16PM on 5-14-2007
Brilliant program. I just been testing out the new video feature, but I can´t seem to get it to work. My xbox always displays some error message saying this codec isn´t supported. I´ve been converting my videos using ffmpegx, so if anyone knows the "right" setting for conversion, feel free to enlighten the others!
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Daniel said 4:22PM on 5-14-2007
Now if we could just get transcoding from DivX to MPEG 4 or H.264 like TVersity does with WMV, life would be perfect.
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Colin said 2:21PM on 5-14-2007
@ 1,2 & 4
I am having the same problem, and would love to know what program/setting everyone is using. It would be quite helpful.
Thanks!
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bryan ribas said 3:24PM on 5-14-2007
I could not get it to connect to my 360 after this update. :(
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David said 3:40PM on 5-14-2007
Mine's been connecting fine, but one thing I was disappointed about was the lack of support for Apple's HD trailers. They're encoded in AAC surround sound which the Xbox doesn't support. Hopefully they'll fix this soon enough.
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Bobablob said 3:48PM on 5-14-2007
There are serious issues with this Version or with the recent 360 update. Nullriver is aware of the problems (videos cut off, the 360's become unresponsive, videos don't play, inappropriate codec errors) but unsure whether the problem is on their end or on Microsoft's end.
At least you can copy videos to your iPod and hook them directly to the 360's USB port.
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Frogstik said 4:05PM on 5-14-2007
any idea how this thing runs off a B&W G3? i have one of those laying around... could make an okay media server if it works good.
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Praveen said 6:47PM on 5-14-2007
Disappointingly loud? Ever heard of volume control?
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ECJ said 7:46PM on 5-14-2007
The mp4 videos work for me, but I had to uninstall v2.82. Then I had to install v3.0. Thats the only way that it would upgrade properly. So, this may be a fix if you have a previous version installed.
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Mat Lu said 7:41PM on 5-14-2007
@11: Why didn't I think of that? Because of course the volume controls fan noise.
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Rubbinz said 12:32AM on 5-15-2007
Tons of problems with this new version of Connect360. Video freezing, refusal to play and so forth. I can take the same videos and stream them from Vista or play them from a USB drive and they all play fine, so it's not the videos. BTW, I used the presets for the iPod and also custom settings within the defined Xbox 360 limits in Handbrake and iSquint for transcoding Xvid/Divx.
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Chris said 2:43PM on 5-15-2007
@9: You shouldn't have a problem. I run it on both an older ibook and dual 500 G3 without problems.
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BrianS said 9:59PM on 5-15-2007
All my videos freeze too. Not good; can't get 10 minutes into a movie without this happening.
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Leo said 5:54PM on 5-16-2007
I went out and dropped 100 bucks on the 360 wifi adapter then came home and spent 20 on connect360 only to find out that all my movies wont play... or some will play but stop a minute into them.... sucks
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portorikan said 4:45PM on 5-16-2007
I have the same problem as well with my videos. I've got some switchfoot podcasts that are done great, but they just freeze up after a while randomly. I do hope there is an update that might fix this.
Out of curiousity, is anyone having problems streaming things off of an external harddrive? I am for my itunes podcasts and I'm wondering if this is where the majority of the problem might be coming from.
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Goldengoose7 said 11:47PM on 5-17-2007
I just discovered this program after hearing about on the Achievement Junkie podcast.
I too am having a lot of problems with videos freezing after a couple of minutes or not playing at all. (error message about format not supported on formats that are listed as supported).
Well... I guess I probably should have waited a bit before paying for a registered version, since at the moment, the program is pretty much useless.
Sure hope they can fix whatever is wrong.
I wrote to their support address several days ago and haven't heard BOO.
The silence is deafening. Must be a pretty serious problem, since the developer has said nothing about the problem yet.
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Shawn said 8:34PM on 5-19-2007
Connect360 does work great for music and pictures to the xbox. I'm sure they will patch it within a month or so to fix the h.264 issue. In the meantime however, I do know that you can get it all to work through parallels (even transcoding with tversity).
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