How to Play Any Video File on Your Xbox360 Using a Mac!!

03. Mar, 2007 11 Comments

WARNING: THIS METHOD IS NOT FREE. BUT IT WORKS SOLID AND WORTH EVERY PENNY!

Ever since I figured out how to play mkv, ts, x264, mov and all those other video formats on my xbox360 using windows vista, I was eager to find something just as great for the mac. And what I found is nothing short of freakin awesome! The mac just makes everything cooler (sorry to you windows fans, I used to be one also). Either way here is what I wanted to do…

The Objective:
Find a way to play all of my HD or High Definition content from my mac, onto my xbox 360.  And I mean every kind of usefull codec and container format from mkv, ts,  avi, wmv, ogg vorbis, x264 etc. It is possible, and it is pretty simple.

What You Need:
Besides the obvious like a mac and an xbox 360, there are 3 programs that you will need.

  • VLC: For playing movie files and basic transcoding. – FREE
  • Connect360: The essential APP to connect your 360 to your mac. – Free Demo
  • Visual Hub: The essential converting tool. – Free Demo

Download and install those products and then come back here to continue.

Basic Insructions:

  1. Use connect360 to connect your Xbox360 with your mac. Now connect 360 can only play wmv files. That is where Visual Hub comes into play.
  2. Find the file you want to watch that is “not” a wmv file. If it IS wmv, you are already good to go. If it is not a “wmv”, use Visual Hub to convert your movie into a wmv.
  3. That is it!

A video will be added later of it actually functioning. Until then, if you have any questions, feel free to ask via our comment section for this post.

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Apple, HDTV, Xbox360

11 Responses to “How to Play Any Video File on Your Xbox360 Using a Mac!!”

  1. Dave Reply 05. Mar, 2007 at 10:06 am

    Is this a better way of streaming videos from a mac to a 360 than having Vista running via BootCamp and doing it that way? Is there any difference in speed, quality etc?

  2. J.J. Reply 05. Mar, 2007 at 11:09 am

    In my opinion… transcoding High Definition content is very buggy. I think this is more straight forward than the vista route. But if you have like an eyeTV or some other TV tuner card, vista is the way to go.

    But for ease, simplicity, and time reasons, I choose the mac route for downloaded HD content.

  3. Dave Reply 06. Mar, 2007 at 9:40 am

    Thanks.

    If video files need converting to .wmv on the mac first anyway maybe using VisualHub to convert them first then using Vista/Media Player 11to stream them is also an option (removing the need to buy Connect 360?!).

    Maybe this could be done from Windows running within Parallels or similar on the Mac for an added layer of complexity!

  4. J.J. Reply 06. Mar, 2007 at 10:58 pm

    Well, the whole reason for doing this was to avoid the switch to windows via paralelles or bootcamp. BUT, connect360 has a great demo version.

  5. AXrl Reply 10. Mar, 2007 at 9:11 pm

    Sorry, but for what is VLC needed in the process??
    I have a mac mini G4 and a 360 and I wanted to know how to do the connection to Xbox 360 of my video files without having to convert all of them to WMV and I also have Connect 360 installed and visualhub demo and VLC, if some one can help, I’ll appreciate it.

  6. J.J. Reply 14. Mar, 2007 at 3:45 pm

    As far as I know, at this point, there is no way to stream files from you Mac to your Xbox360. VLC is a great tool to view the files before they are converted.

  7. johann Reply 09. Aug, 2007 at 11:12 pm

    i have an xbox 360 + ibook.

    downloaded different types of HD files that wont play on the 360 which is quite sad. what settings do i use in visual hub as to not lose quality during the conversion process? would love to have a 360 HD preset in visual hub but its not there?

    any inputs on what settings to use would be great :)

  8. ash Reply 28. Aug, 2007 at 12:58 am

    hi there. i have done the downloading and connect 360 sees my mac. I am currently downloading and x264 file. would i then:

    convert via visual hubb to wmv file (does this create any loss and how do i get settings as good as possible or i have wasted my time)

    then how do i share to the x box

    sorry if i am being dim but you guys are obviously much better at this than me. my connect can see the xbox as it dinged but how do i get the file across and then play it ?

    thanks very much

    ash

  9. bob Reply 09. Mar, 2008 at 9:22 pm

    We need an informative tutorial on how to convert .mkv to be viewable on the 360 via Connect360. There are certain settings you must input, it’s not just as simple as clicking convert. Can you help us out?

  10. J.J. Reply 28. Mar, 2008 at 10:45 pm

    Bob!
    Here you go… Your wish is our command!
    http://www.vanillahd.com/index.php/tutorial-play-any-video-file-on-your-xbox-360-with-your-mac/

  11. Jeff Reply 18. Jul, 2008 at 9:17 am

    With mkv files, and even ogm files, I downloaded MKVtools. Its the trial version, so you’ll get a nag window every time you start a job and you can only do one job at a time (this doesn’t annoy me at all because these limitations are minor). If you want to get rid of these limitations, you can buy it for $3.50.

    But anyway, since mkv files are just containers, MKVtools is able to extract the files contained in the mkv. For example, a file may have an avi video track, ogg audio tracks (i.e. English & Japanese), and even ssa subtitle tracks. You can choose to extract each file separately or select a group of files to be exported as one file (passthrough). It can also re-encode the selected files into an avi (xvid with mp3 or ac3 audio) or a mp4 (h264 or mpeg4 with acc audio) file. If the mkv file has subtitles, you can embed them into the video or extract them as a separate file.

    Here’s where MKVtools can be downloaded:
    http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html#macosx