Oddly, a standard AVI container with AC3 audio output 5.1 correctly before AC3Filter was installed, but also dropped to stereo after installation. That's odd - Media Player seems to use the DirectShow-based AC3Filter correctly, but Media Center will only output stereo.

AVI file with AC3 - Media Player: STEREO / Media Center: STEREO.MKV file with DTS - Media Player: 5.1 / Media Center: STEREO.MKV file with AC3 - Media Player: 5.1 / Media Center: STEREO.With DivX Plus AND AC3Filter 1.63b installed These results seem correct and to be expected since no third-party AC3 decoder was installed for MKV files, and supported containers output audio correctly in 5.1.Ģ. AVI file with AC3 - Media Player: 5.1 / Media Center: 5.1.MPG file with AC3 - Media Player: 5.1 / Media Center: 5.1.MKV file with DTS - Media Player: NO AUDIO / Media Center: NO AUDIO.MKV file with AC3 - Media Player: NO AUDIO / Media Center: NO AUDIO.Wouldn't it be nice if the H.264 stream in the MKV container could be decoded natively by the XBOX360? Well it can, using the DivX Plus Codec Pack from DivX. This can be solved by offloading the transcoding onto another PC or dedicated machine, but that's not always an effective or viable solution.

The problem is that transcoding is intensive, reduces video and audio quality, increases load and heat output on the PC doing the encoding, and is thus not desirable to be doing on your Windows Media Center PC which is most likely tucked away in a tight spot with minimal ventilation and prone to overheating (well mine is anyway). Since there is no option to install a splitter on the XBOX360 to gain access to the H.264 stream, the only way to get MKV files to play on an Extender is to transcode the content to a format which is supported by the Extender before streaming, and once again there are a number or ways this can be achieved.

Even though Microsoft included H.264 support for XBOX360's in 2007, the MKV container is not supported. This all works perfectly when using Windows 7 Media Center in isolation, as your sole entertainment solution directly connected to your LCD/Plasma and amplifier, but these splitters and codec packs do nothing for MKV playback when including one or more XBOX360 Extenders into your solution for remote access to media from other locations around the home.

Windows media player mkv audio track