Blu-ray for your HTPC

[fitbrit]

Someone has to come up with a tool to do this a little easier. It MUST happen!

[BLKMGK]

It will I'm sure, then they will be sued, and back and forth it will go just like DVDs. A tool needs to be built that will sit on top of AnyDVD HD is what needs to occur. Honestly what is already available comes damned close. I think I can maybe automate this a little further even if I try but frankly right now it's only like 4 steps or so, sadly I lose all my trailers, menus etc. which sucks but I do get to retain access to my media and can watch it easily on my computer... <shrug>

[SSD]

Thanks BLKMGK!!  I bought my Blu Ray drive and it died after ripping 3 Blu Rays.  .  Guess I will be RMAing.  I am going to try to follow your directions with the ripped movies and see if I can get anywhere.  They are blu ray, not hd dvd, so I'm sure it will be a little different.  At least one is BD+ protected.  I am not even sure if it is possible based on some of the comments in your thread on the other forum.

[BLKMGK]

I ordered a 4x Lite-On BR drive today along with another 750Gig for the unRAID. I'll check this out soon enough although I'll have to get hold of a Blu-Ray disk to do it heh. It's a shame the drives come with crap software unless you buy the high dollar ones but I'll be ripping the media I buy anyway <shrug> BD+ is close to being popped it looks like, check the Slysoft forums. And thanks be for small Caribbean islands where German Euro programmers can find a haven. <sigh>

 

Honestly? I ALMOST wish that they would come up with something that couldn't be ripped. Something so nasty it would stop people from ripping completely and then see them try to move all of their media to it. That is what they want - badly! Joe Blow sheeple on the street is used to being able to rip his DVD and CDs for his other players and doesn't seem to understand this so they do not care as law after law passes. If these guys were to finally succeed perhaps we could have the backlash needed to get some reform - I'm not holding my breath nor am I really sure I want that to happen.

 

Anyway, when I have media and the drive I'll see what's different. My luck I'll get something BD+ and have it gather dust for weeks!

[SSD]

RMAing my LiteOn 4x.  I left a BR disk in the drive all night, and in the morning there was an AnyDVD error about the drive.  It had already finished ripping the disk, so I don't think having the disk sitting in the drive should have been any problem.  The symptom of failure was it just stopped being able to read disks.  It will eject (via button or right click in Windows), but no matter what media I put in (CD, DVD, BR, DVD-R, CD-R) it just says that I need ot put a disk in the drive. 

 

I noticed Toshiba HD DVD players (the kind you connect to your receiver) for $99 at CC today.  The movies are not on sale, but they had a TON of them.  When Toshiba says they quit, I could see a big sale coming.  The movie makers may decide, though, to take the HD media back and replace them with BR equivalent, rather than let all those movies hit the street for less (maybe way less) than DVD prices.

[BLKMGK]

for those of you looking at one button solutions take a look at DVD FAB Platinum -> http://www.dvdfab.com/dvd-fab-platinum.htm

 

I've NOT yet tried this and am asking about it on Doom9 but on the surface from the description it SOUNDS like this might be what some of you are looking for. Hell, it might be what I'M looking for

 

Check it out, lemme' know what you think. I have some concerns about how it handles surround sound but if ti can do it right and compress well this MIGHT be a winner.

[Billped]

A 30 second scan shows no Blu-Ray or HD-DVD support.

 

 

 

Bill

[BLKMGK]

Gah! Okay, I was looking at this -> http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm whch has their "HD" software. However I'd been assured that it had all the features I wanted by someone I know and since that one talked about HD and I saw screenshots elsewhere noting H.264 support.....

 

Well, I downloaded their Platinum software. It "supports" HD-DVD to the point that it will rip the disk to your HDD. That's about it, no compression, no changing formats, nothing but the same thing you get copying files with AnyDVD installed. I'm going to chat with my associate tomorrow but as of right now it looks like utter crap. Sorry guys, with a quick look I thought this would work but digging deeper it sucks too. Yeesh, now get to post same at Doom9 dammit

[BLKMGK]

Picked up a BluRay drive and a non-BD+ movie. Still figuring this out but right now it's looking like a heyuge PITA. The files are in a sort of MPEG format - M2TS is the extension on the files. Joining multiple parts into one clip is as far as I've gotten. Demuxing the file, compressing it, and remuxing left to be figured out. <sigh>

[SSD]

I'm pretty lost, glad to see you're hard at work on this.  Hope you can figure out how to make this work so that you can explain it to us!

 

[erikatcuse]

Picked up a BluRay drive and a non-BD+ movie. Still figuring this out but right now it's looking like a heyuge PITA. The files are in a sort of MPEG format - M2TS is the extension on the files. Joining multiple parts into one clip is as far as I've gotten. Demuxing the file, compressing it, and remuxing left to be figured out. <sigh>

 

You've gotten further then me...I ripped a disk its 40gb and it stuttered to much to watch....It would be nice if a product appears that does what dvd shrink does for DVD's

[BLKMGK]

It's actually pretty much JUST like ripping an HD-DVD. eac3to now supports M2TS files and you simply need to know the proper order of them to rip them into a single file with eac3to - not much different than 2 EVO files on HD-DVD. Once you have that as a MKV and an AC3 audio file you can either mux them with MKVmerge or compress them with something like meGUI using X264 or some other CODEC. I generally, on BD, see at LEAST a 50% decrease in size.

 

H.264 video can be a bear to playback though so you will need a pretty serious system. I use XBMC on Linux and it has multithreaded decoding - a 3Ghz C2D CPU can playback any and all content I've thrown at it so far using both cores. 5.1 surround, the works! Sadly nothing exists to compress the whole thing menus and all - YET.

[Rob_Esc]

I actually bought the LITE-ON DH-4O1S-08 about 2 weeks after reading about the demise of HD-DVD.  Shortly after that, I learned about AnyDVD HD.  Now I must build an unRaid server as a result of those first two statements.

 

I'll try re-encode methods as soon as it gets a little simpler (that Doom9 post hurt my brain).

 

[BLKMGK]

I don't see it getting much simpler anytime soon. A commandline like

eac3to y:\HVDVD_TS\feature_district_13.evo 2: f:\b13\b13-vid.mkv 3: f:\b13\b13-aud.ac3 -640 -libav

rips an HD-DVD and a commandline like

eac3to x:\BDMV\STREAM\00002.m2ts 1: f:\wonder\wonder-vid.mkv 2: f:\wonder\wonder-aud.ac3 -640 -libav

rips a BD. Compress with something like meGUI using H.264 and then mux using MKVmerge with the AC3 soundtrack - done! I have close to 25 movies done this way thanks to deals on box sets. I'm not expecting to see a full rip\compress package anytime soon - look what happened to all of the folks who built them before for DVD! The sad thing is I lose extras, menus, and other things I wish I could keep

 

P.S. Someone did try to automate this with batch files -> http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=32795 but personally I wouldn't trust it to do the best job.

[RockDawg]

BLKMGK - Is it currently possible to rip all Blu-ray discs with no compression and play them back in XBMC Linux (with the right hardware of course)?  I don't care about menus or extras.  In fact, I currently remove them from my DVD's.  If so, can you rip them with the lossless audio along with the regular DD/DTS so that I can playback now with the regular audio but still have the lossless for when my system supports it?

[BLKMGK]

You will have to move them into a MKIV container but yeah I think so. XBMC can handle VC-1 encoding and H.264 - H.264 better than VC-1 right now, supposedly VC-1 isn't always perfect. The audio I think is no issue EXCEPT that some audio is too high a bandwidth for SPID/f. You'll have to decode it on the box and put it out analog or use another sound track. I guess you could put both audio tracks in the container - best place to ask IMO is the eac3to thread on Doom9.  http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1130492#post1130492 Maybe do some research in the XBMC forums too http://xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52

 

So far I find that XBMC on Linux handles most everything HD I throw at it. I also find I can knock about 1/3rd of the file size down with H.264 compression and it looks GOOD!

[nightfly]

As an MKV x264 affectionado (downloads, don't think I can rip my hd-dvd collection with Mac software and I really hate using windows) I'd love to know if any of you have a reliable set-top-box you play MKVs on? I've read a bit about popcorn hour and tivx, but I also read about 4.0 audio limitation. I use my laptop for playback in my theater (720p projector) but it's a hassle to setup/tear down (it also comes to work).

 

As for the quality, I've watched original HD-DVDs on both my 720p projector (96") and a 56" 1080p DLP RPTV and there is only a noticeable loss in quality with the best of the best transfers, even on 720p MKVs, although at 4.3GB they're still HD without any doubt and AC3 is good-enough audio for me (although Dolby TrueHD is actually awesome - I've heard the difference, but my sound system is low-end). For my money, 720p is the sweet spot at 4.3gb for most films (that's with AC3, not DTS) for long-term archival.

 

Feeling a little sorry for myself because of my $430 HD-DVD player and collection that I don't want to even calculate, I'm not in a big rush to buy Blu-Ray, although once my favorite Trilogies are released I'll reconsider - should have a 1080p projector by that point, too.

[BLKMGK]

Sorry I didn't reply sooner - 'net outage

 

for playback of HD video I'd look at XBMC. They have ported it to Linux and it works GREAT for MKV video! It has also been ported to Windows and OSX - check out osxbmc.com or the XBMC.org forums. http://xbmc.org/forum/

 

Still being worked on but I for one am loving it!

[crankbearing]

Sorry I didn't reply sooner - 'net outage

 

for playback of HD video I'd look at XBMC. They have ported it to Linux and it works GREAT for MKV video! It has also been ported to Windows and OSX - check out osxbmc.com or the XBMC.org forums. http://xbmc.org/forum/

 

Still being worked on but I for one am loving it!

 

BLKMGK,

 

So I am building a new HTPC to replace the xbox in the living room, I will likely use windows and XBMC as I have had mine up and running for a month now and it playing back BR and HD not a problem. My dillemma is and I have been seaching My TV in the living room is still 1080I it is a 57" Sony Top o line that I pd BIG money for so until it dies or the green gun goes I am stuck with it as the better half would say. So I need to convert mine 1080I from 1080P. I am using your tut with eac3to and then Megui to reconvert, I am just not sure of what setting I need to use to get a 1080I or 720P output for that matter. Any insight would be welcomed. I chose to use the Zalman Hd-135 with the Asus P53 and C2D Wolfedale processor. I have been working for the last two weeks on making the case about 90% silent. playing with different fans and PSU's as well as foam placement for best cooling and silencing.

 

Thanks,

 

Dave

[Equilibrium]

You shouldn't need to do any reconversion to display 1080i on your HDTV. (I have a big Sony RPTV HDTV also BTW, I like mine). Your HTPC's videocard will be setup to output 1080i no matter what (or at least it should be methinks) and any progressive video being played will automatically be upconverted or downconverted to the correct interlaced resolution (1080i in your case).

 

(if there is some XBMC specific reason what I said doesn't hold true, please confront me on this... I've never used XBMC.)

[BLKMGK]

I agree, it ought to be the video card that controls final output. I haven't ever tried the Windows version bur converting the video doesn't seem like the right way to go. Honestly I'd ask in the XBMC Windows forum, those guys will certainly have more experience with that version than I do (none). Not sure where that version stands compared to th eLinux version either honestly, hopefully it's keeping up because the Linux version just continues to get better and better!

[crankbearing]

Did you ever get your issues with the small window playback sorted out, are your vob's playing full screen now? Have you tried your on the flash version yet. I have not tried the windows installer version yet that was recently posted I am still installing the SVN with the latest EXE for windows. My playback works great on this pc set to 1920x1200 on my AMD6400. I tried to playback on BR rip on the XBOX at 1080I and it was just a black screen.

 

Since this machine is going to be a clean install anyhow, I may just revisit the linux build and see how it goes. The one thing I like about the windows Media Center version is I have access to both on the same machine, I can run XBMC on it and then if I need I setup MCE to do pvr recording and playback those files in XMBC later. I just wish MYTH-TV was a better solution currently.

 

How are they doing PVR if any in Linux.

 

Thanks

 

Dave 

[RobJ]

How are they doing PVR if any in Linux.

 

Thought I would mention SageTV, not trying to sell it, but I do like it.  SageTV runs both standalone and client/server, with versions of both for Windows, Mac, and Linux.  That is, you can run everything on any one Windows, Mac, or Linux machine, or you can 'mix and match' across multiple machines from all of the platforms.  Windows support is much more complete of course, partly because PVR's are so dependent on driver support, which is much weaker on the Mac and Linux, for tuners, codecs, filters, remotes, and displays.  One of the knocks on the Linux server though is that the main program/server is not platform portable.  That is, if you try a Linux version and finally give up on it, you can't use that purchased license on a Windows machine, you have to buy the Windows version.  The clients and placeshifters are completely portable, and there is superior support for extenders, using the portable placeshifter licenses.

 

It is possible to setup a Linux server, and select tuners with good Linux driver support, then use other machines and extenders for clients, for actual management and viewing.  Extenders like the MVP and STX100 are great for removing a lot of driver problems and format/transcoding issues.  They just work.

 

SageTV is not free, but nothing is, and SageTV may save you a lot of time and effort, with broader compatibility and support, and a huge feature list, constantly being improved and expanded.

 

Other solutions are MythTV and LinuxMCE, of which I hear good things, slick and easier to use, but I don't believe is very complete yet (don't quote me though), and probably much weaker in hardware support and client/server usage.

 

[i do apologize for being off-topic here.]

 

[NLS]

all well known solutions

the problem is multimedia hardware support

still limited in linux

 

I prefer mediaportal and the comfort of directx (frankly opengl is the NOT the answer to everything)

 

 

[BLKMGK]

No, VOBs still not playing right last I checked, others are starting to notice and bitch though so I'm hopeful that a fix will be forthcoming.

 

XBMC isn't a PVR although it can act as a front-end for Myth and I expect that other backends will follow - that's the plan. As for nothing being free - XBMC is as is Myth. Hardware support for XBMC wasn't an issue for me - I built a machine for it. This machine also works great for Myth, I use an HDHomerun for a tuner - works with MCE too. Honestly recording isn't an issue for me - I have a Tivo HD and it works just fine. It's playback of DVD, HD, and downloaded video that I need. XBMC serves this purpose very well and handles music well, it will be able to play Mame and other games too, I look forward to some of the creative Python scripts too. To each his own <shrug>

 

DirectX is fine and has the benefit of video accelerated drivers. What it does NOT have is an open source that allows people from all over the world to code for it. I'm not a freak about open source stuff but XBMC is a terrific example of what can be done when many people work together to build something and I enjoy supporting it to the best of my limited ability...