This is a tough one! Codec issues - my devices aren't playing friendly

[Kevo123]

Any help is greatly appreciated, I’ve been unsuccessful in finding a solution for well over a month now.

My goal: Stream h.264 from Windows Home Server to Xbox or PS3 while maintaining Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (does it have to be AC3?)

To make things difficult, I have a mac-only household. So I can’t use any Media Center, or WM11 or Zune tricks (anyway, 3 devices to stream a movie? whatever!). I’m using handbrake 0.9.3 to rip my dvds, but am willing to incorporate anything else if its mac friendly.

WHS will stream the following containers: wmv, dvr-ms, avi, mpeg, mpg, mp2 and as of yesterday, mp4.

Xbox will play h.264 but only with 2 channel AAC it appears. I can do Xvid with AC3 in an AVI container, but the video quality was poor for some movies, so I stopped going that route.

I’m not as familiar with the PS3 supported codecs (silly me, I thought Microsoft’s Xbox would be more friendly with WHS). I read that M2TS is a solution, but I do not believe that WHS will stream that format.

What I’m thinking I might have to do is just wait for Microsoft / Sony to add AC3 support in the mp4 container. I read from a post in January that it is part of the mp4 spec now? I think my handbrake would also need an update since as of right now, getting h.264/AC3 requires changing the format from mp4 to m4v.

Again, any help is really appreciated. I’d prefer a software solution, but at this point I’m willing to add some more hardware to the mix. I’d just like to hear ANY solutions to streaming h.264/AC3 from WHS to “my TV”.

[guns1inger]

Yes, if you want Dolby Digital audio then you have to go AC3. Why ? Because AC3 is Dolby Digital. If your Xbox or PS3 are connected to a surround amplifier then you need to stream the AC3 to the device so it can in turn stream it through to the amp. They won't convert it on the fly.

MP4 does support AC3 audio now, and has for several months. Unfortunately the conversion apps are lagging behind in fully supporting it. Perhaps you need to look at alternative streaming program for the Mac platform. I use PS3 Media Server under Windows, but it also supports OS X. It has beta support for the Xbox 360 as well. It can stream natively anything supported by the PS3, including M2TS files, and can transcode anything else as required.