They say the thousand mile journey begins with the first step.  My first step to digitizing all my media will be documented here on this blog.  It's been done, sure.  This isn't promising to be the definitive guide to all things HTPC.  But thus far, a working HTPC has eluded me.  I've been interested and I've been touting the strengths of going with digital media and storing away all those DVDs and CDs for a long time.  Actually the CDs are pretty much unsed in my house anymore, as with most who have simply converted to MP3 and have other means of playing them back.

But movies and TV programming, recording shows and storing them away permanently (or even burning them to DVD) is something else.  I've been using a PVR for awhile but it's only transient.  I'm not really building a collection of media with it.  It's a handy device, don't get me wrong.  But the PVR alone has a finite storage and isn't designed to be ported to mpg2 format to my PC.  I'm sure there are hacks that could perform this operation but I'm going to go the HTPC server route.  I have the Xbox360 now, so it'll be the machine I keep near the TV that hooks up using component video and optical audio S/PDIF connection to my main home system.

Here is what I'm interested in being able to do with the 360 as my extender:

Xbox 360 Media Setup

With Xbox 360, you can:

I dug this up from Xbox.com from their faq about what formats exactly are supported for streaming to the 360 from the WinMC HTPC machine.  This are the most important steps in the thousand mile journey, deciding there are indeed services that are valuable to getting this job done.

I'll make a new category on this blog so I can keep track of the HTPC.  This will be the first entry.

Q: What media file types are supported when streaming content from a PC running Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005?

A:

Video

Windows Media Video (WMV) 7, WMV 8, and WMV 9

Maximum resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p)

Windows Media Audio Standard or Windows Media Audio Pro audio

WMV content may be Windows Media DRM-protected

MPEG-1 with MPEG-1 layer I or II audio

MPEG-2

Maximum resolution of 1920x1080 (1080i)

AC-3 or MPEG-1 layer I or II audio

WMV Image 1 (Photo Story 1 & 2), and WMV Image 2 (Photo Story 3)

Audio

Windows Media Audio (WMA) 7 through WMA 9

WMA Standard content may be Windows Media DRM-protected

WMA Professional

WMA Professional content may be Windows Media DRM-protected

WMA Lossless

Windows Media DRM protected WMA Lossless is not supported

MP3

Other formats that have a DirectShow decoder installed on the host computer that outputs pulse code modulation (PCM) audio.