I have figured out a solution for watching HD videos on my old XBOX classic. This attempt should work also for other low performance devices which are not able to render HD media standalone.

The basic idea is using UPNP (because many devices are able to use it) and an UPNP server which supports live transcoding of the media. I choose mediatomb on my debian desktop system(also available for windows…).

After you have installed mediatomb you need add some directories/media`s with the web-interface. I think it is not necessary to explain that step, because its quite easy. If someone needs support please ask. After you have added some media with HD content, in my case some movies inside MKV containers, you need to edit the configuration.

On debian mediatomb configuration is stored in /etc/mediatomb/config.xml. Open this file with an editor and do following changes inside the transcoding section. Changes are marked bold. <transcoding enabled=”yes“>

<mimetype-profile-mappings> <transcode mimetype="video/x-flv" using="vlcmpeg"/> <transcode mimetype="application/ogg" using="vlcmpeg"/> <transcode mimetype="application/ogg" using="oggflac2raw"/> <transcode mimetype="audio/x-flac" using="oggflac2raw"/> <transcode mimetype="video/x-matroska" using="vlcmpeg"/> </mimetype-profile-mappings> <profiles> <profile name="oggflac2raw" enabled="no" type="external"> <mimetype>audio/L16</mimetype> <accept-url>no</accept-url> <first-resource>yes</first-resource> <accept-ogg-theora>no</accept-ogg-theora> <agent command="ogg123" arguments="-d raw -o byteorder:big -f %out %in"/> <buffer size="1048576" chunk-size="131072" fill-size="262144"/> </profile> <profile name="vlcmpeg" enabled="yes" type="external"> <mimetype>video/mpeg</mimetype> <accept-url>yes</accept-url> <first-resource>yes</first-resource> <accept-ogg-theora>yes</accept-ogg-theora> <agent command="vlc" arguments="-I dummy %in --sout #transcode{venc=ffmpeg,vcodec=mp2v,vb=4096,fps=25,aenc=ffmpeg,acodec=mpga,ab=192,samplerate=44100,channels=2}:standard{access=file,mux=ps,dst=%out} vlc:quit"/> <buffer size="14400000" chunk-size="512000" fill-size="120000"/> </profile> </profiles> </transcoding> read more