What WMC Extender offers the best playback?

[MikeMGMVE]

So I'm looking into a Windows Media Center Extender, as I'll be running WMC on Vista Ultimate 64-bit. I was looking into an xbox 360, as the gaming aspect is part of the reason i want it, and when i found out it was an extender i was floored. But I've read all the issues with playback of certain media files.

If possible, I'd like to not have to reconvert all of my videos to a certain filetype to get it to play. I'll be using the h.264 codec when transferring some of my video tapes, and keeping most of the other files I've downloaded in my media library in their original state. That means I'll have avi's, wmv's, vob's, .m4v, .mov, .divx - I mean it'll run the gammit as to what the playback will be. I will re-encode if I have to, tho I'd like to keep it to a minimum. If I have to, I'll likely go with a majority of re-encoding to h.264.

So my question in the end - With the xbox 360, would I have to use some sort of transcode360 program to play back the files I want, or is there another extender that will solve my problem and offer the most varied playback?

[RabidDog]

.Gooooogle .tvix..dvico...v.expensive
GAmut---> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut