Update: Just over a week out, and already out of date. Starting today, October 3rd 2008, VisualHub is no longer available for purchase. Techspanion, the maker of VisualHub (and other popular applications such as iSquint), has shut its doors and will no longer be selling VH. I will update this article soon to replace VisualHub with an application that is still available.
So, you've just downloaded your first 1080p movie (hypothetically) and can't wait to view it in full glory on you gorgeous big-screen TV. However, here is the catch. Your loyal Xbox 360 refuses to play the file. Panic erupts, bottles fly across the room in anger. It's the end of days. You did not notice that the majority of HD movies that you "acquire" from the inter-webs are encoded in MKV. So unless you have a PC or Mac hooked to your TV, it seems all is lost.
However, there is a solution, albeit it is not free. To play MKV Files you will need two applications, neither of which is free, and a lot of time. Before you shy away due to the price of these applications, I will tell you that this is by far the easiest, most convenient and sure-fire way to get your movies onto your Xbox, so before you start hunting for open-source software to do this, you may consider that the endless hours spent trying to get it to work may be worth a couple of bucks.
Nullriver's Connect360 is really the only (good) way to get your music, movies and photos onto your 360. It is a simple matter of installing the preference pane, selecting which folder you would like to share and you are good to go. Nothing could be simpler.
To watch videos on your 360 once you have enabled Connect360, just go to the Media drawer, select Videos, then your Mac, and select the Unsorted folder.
Connect360 costs $20.00 at the time of writing. However anybody with a Mac and an Xbox 360 would be a fool not to own a copy of this great software. you will find yourself using this time and time again, and the price is 110% justified.
Visual Hub can be called the daddy of Mac video conversion software. It will convert almost anything into anything, and it works flawlessly. You will need Visual Hub to convert the .mkv files into .mp4 which the 360 can display. Visual Hub will set you back €17.24 however. If you want to give it a test run to make sure everything works fine, download the demo version (which is limited to 2 minutes per movie) and convert a short sample .mkv file to test you're doing it right.
Set up Visual Hub according to these settings:
Set the video type to MP4, quality to "Go Nuts" (we don't want to loose precious pixels, do we?) and select H.264 encoding, since this is an advanced codec that will save you space at no quality loss.
When everything is ready to go, hit start.
This solution will not save you if your timeframe lies anywhere between 1-3 hours. On average, one minute of 1080p content took 4 minutes to convert on my 2.33 GHz Macbook Pro. Your mileage may vary depending on your system, but be sure to start the conversion with plenty of time to go before showtime.
So now you are ready to watch those gorgeous HD movies on your 360. While this solution is far from perfect, it is one of the most stress-free ways to get it done until MS adds MKV support (don't hold your breath). Enjoy.
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