Getting subtitled MKVs upstairs to my HDTV downstairs

[EwanG]

Well, I've tried the "simple" solutions, and so am now turning to y'all for what I hope will be the "right" solution. I have a couple terabytes of my own videos and MKV videos that are subtitled that I'd like to serve to my 52" HDTV downstairs. I tried the Windows Media Center option since I have Vista 64 Ultimate on the machine upstairs and an XBox 360 downstairs. But it won't play any of the MKVs (big surprise...). I tried Tversity, but it requires that you turn off UAC, and I'm not keen on doing that. I tried MediaCoder with the idea of converting the MKVs to a WMV or AVI, and it chokes on the files.

Any suggestions, preferably ones you've actually made work yourself?

TIA!

[Baldrick]

Have you tried gotsent or similar tools that just remuxes to a mp4? But if you want subs you probably need to reconvert also.

[guns1inger]

PS3 Media Server has some beta Xbox360 connectivity built into the latest version. Might be worth a try.

[neomaine]

How about a PopcornHour?

[ocgw]

Well, I've tried the "simple" solutions, and so am now turning to y'all for what I hope will be the "right" solution. I have a couple terabytes of my own videos and MKV videos that are subtitled that I'd like to serve to my 52" HDTV downstairs. I tried the Windows Media Center option since I have Vista 64 Ultimate on the machine upstairs and an XBox 360 downstairs. But it won't play any of the MKVs (big surprise...). I tried Tversity, but it requires that you turn off UAC, and I'm not keen on doing that. I tried MediaCoder with the idea of converting the MKVs to a WMV or AVI, and it chokes on the files.

Any suggestions, preferably ones you've actually made work yourself?

TIA!

Look @ this "NetTop"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883152001

ocgw

peace

[EwanG]

Look @ this "NetTop"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883152001

Given that the top review for it is that the person is "sorry they bought it", can't get tech support, and can't find a working MPEG-2 codec, I think I'll pass. However, the "concept" seems right, just looks like the execution is lacking.

[EwanG]

How about a PopcornHour?

Well according to these threads

http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?tid=8694

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=987101

it looks like this is another device that has "the right idea", but where the execution isn't up to the promises.

[EwanG]

Have you tried gotsent or similar tools that just remuxes to a mp4? But if you want subs you probably need to reconvert also.

Yeah, gotsent choked on the subtitled. So I'd have to get something that could handle those, and I suspect we're now looking at a rather substantial investment in time. It seems like there ought to be something that would let you transcode on the host machine, and then take the output at the end (goodness knows my box can handle the effort), but there just doesn't seem to be anything like that out there.

Sigh...