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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY
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 Link Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 12:41 am Post subject: Timeshifting BD rentals w/ HTPC |
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BD drives are coming down enough so that they'll probably hit my $100 price threshold soon. So I'm considering taking the plunge (birthday's sept. 23...  ).
I've got a 2.4ghz Pentium D (dual core)... not too fast but not awful. 7900GTX onboard. It can play 1080p WMV/AVI files without breaking a sweat, so I assume BD playback won't be an issue.
The plan is to rip BDs to the HD before I watch them, at least if I want to timeshift further out than the rental time. I know that AnyDVD HD will do the job, but I'm curious how playback works. With ripped DVDs, I just point Zoomplayer to the directory containing the DVD file structure. No idea if BD is similar - any thoughts?
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Zebu Fellenz
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
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| Link Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 1:49 am Post subject: |
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-I haven't ripped BD and have no idea what software is needed to do so, but for playback from the hard-drive you will need PDVD 7.3 before they broke the HDD playback.
-What motherboard do you have that has a 7900GTX onboard? it should work for BD as my AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ with Geforce 7950GT does a great job.
Erik
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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Link Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 3:07 am Post subject: |
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Ah, sorry - it's not an onboard card, it's just that it's on board the computer. 
My secondary question is what's available in the way of audio filters - I copy the LFE channel to the two fronts since the Vegas have such good bass response, and it would suck to lose that functionality (I do it with AC3Filter now). Any ideas?
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Zebu Fellenz
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
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| Link Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 3:10 pm Post subject: |
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| perisoft wrote: | | My secondary question is what's available in the way of audio filters - I copy the LFE channel to the two fronts since the Vegas have such good bass response, and it would suck to lose that functionality (I do it with AC3Filter now). Any ideas? |
PDVD has an option to direct an amount of the LFE to the two front channels. You could also hardwire it out of the HTPC.
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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2920
Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Link Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 7:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Zebu Fellenz wrote: | | perisoft wrote: | | My secondary question is what's available in the way of audio filters - I copy the LFE channel to the two fronts since the Vegas have such good bass response, and it would suck to lose that functionality (I do it with AC3Filter now). Any ideas? |
PDVD has an option to direct an amount of the LFE to the two front channels. You could also hardwire it out of the HTPC. |
Fantastic! I wonder if I can make my Creative Extigy's remote control work with it... (Actually, so far I can't make it work at all. Creative's Extigy software package seems to have no support for it, oddly enough!)
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006
Posts: 3068
Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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| Link Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2008 11:56 pm Post subject: |
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I think your PC will be far too slow and you will need a later video card with full hardware acceleration.
To use Zoomplayer you will need to convert the files ripped with Anydvd HD to .MKV (and typically convert the audio to FLAC) using eac3to.exe (from Doom9), and mux to a single .mkv file using mkvmerge. Takes about 1.5 hours all up per disc.
To use Powerdvd you will need to rip the BD as an .ISO file using ImgBurn and mount it as an image using Daemon Tools Lite. You will find that using the early versions which allow playback from hard drive directly is problematic... Ripping as an .ISO is actually quite simple.
The downside with Powerdvd is there is NO GAMMA adjustment whatsover as it uses overlay and ignore the video cards overlay colour controls. GRR.
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 12026
Location: Fort Collins, CO
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| Link Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:29 am Post subject: |
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This is hijacking the thread somewhat, but... what about ripping BD's for non-HTPC use?
My PS3 can play .mp4 and similar files. I use Handbrake for time-shifting SD DVDs, but that's not going to cut it for BD.
Supposedly you can load Linux onto the PS3 (since that's the only BD reader I have currently) and rip the .iso with a simple dd command, but then you still have an AACS-encoded file. What would it take to pull .mp4's out of the ISO? Do you have a solution for that on your HTPC? Only one I know about is SlySoft AnyDVD HD.
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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Link Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 12:56 am Post subject: |
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Not sure I get why I can play 1080p mov/avi/wmv without a hitch, but bd won't work. Iirc it's mpeg4; not too cpu intensive. And if I rip out the protection, the cpu load drops even more. Am I missing something?
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006
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Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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| Link Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 1:02 am Post subject: |
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Bluray's bit rate is way higher.
I can play ALL HD-DVDs and all WMV/AVI/ETC on my Opteron 165 at 2.4 Ghz (faster than a Pentium D), but it struggles with some 16:9 BDs and I have to use Media Player Classic with Hardware Accel, or Powerdvd. 2.35:1 BDs are fine in software.
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Zebu Fellenz
Joined: 21 Dec 2006
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| Link Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 2:02 am Post subject: |
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| Mark_A_W wrote: | | The downside with Powerdvd is there is NO GAMMA adjustment whatsover as it uses overlay and ignore the video cards overlay colour controls. GRR. |
You can have Gamma in Powerdvd with an Nvidia card and purevideo. In fact I can set Gamma per (color) channel for Powerdvd with my Geforce 7950GT
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Mark_A_W
Joined: 15 Mar 2006
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Location: Sunny Melbourne Australia
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| Link Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 3:04 am Post subject: |
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Really?
With an ATi card it ignores the Drivers overlay colour controls. You wiggle the gamma control all you like and nothing happens.
I thought it was a Powerdvd issue, but maybe it's an ATi one.
It's not that big a deal as I rip all my movies to MKV, but I'd like to fix it.
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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Link Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject: |
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So the 7000-series nvidia cards don't have HW accel for BDs? I've got some newer cards with less 3D grunt I could stick in there - an 8600GT for one, I think. Any advice as to which cards would do acceleration?
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Angus_rg
Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 343
Location: A planet far, far away..... Baltimore, MD
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| Link Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:44 pm Post subject: |
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| perisoft wrote: | | So the 7000-series nvidia cards don't have HW accel for BDs? I've got some newer cards with less 3D grunt I could stick in there - an 8600GT for one, I think. Any advice as to which cards would do acceleration? |
Since no one responded, I'll give you a real late one, especially to set the records straight about the Pentium D. Pretty much the 8000+ series, but I don't think the 8400 does it. I've seen 8600's for a little more than 50 bucks. ATI has some in the 2000 series and above. Not terribly familiar with them.
I'm running a Pentium D on Vista in my HTPC and it produces a smoking picture. I threw the drive in a Phenom and saw no noticable difference, but I had an 8800GT doing the bulk of the work. For HTPC use, there shouldn't be much difference between the 8800 and 8600GT.
With a hardware capable GPU, you could probably run it on a PIII and it would look great. Well, that may be a stretch, but.....
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perisoft
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
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Location: Ithaca, NY
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| Link Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Angus_rg wrote: | | perisoft wrote: | | So the 7000-series nvidia cards don't have HW accel for BDs? I've got some newer cards with less 3D grunt I could stick in there - an 8600GT for one, I think. Any advice as to which cards would do acceleration? |
Since no one responded, I'll give you a real late one, especially to set the records straight about the Pentium D. Pretty much the 8000+ series, but I don't think the 8400 does it. I've seen 8600's for a little more than 50 bucks. ATI has some in the 2000 series and above. Not terribly familiar with them.
I'm running a Pentium D on Vista in my HTPC and it produces a smoking picture. I threw the drive in a Phenom and saw no noticable difference, but I had an 8800GT doing the bulk of the work. For HTPC use, there shouldn't be much difference between the 8800 and 8600GT.
With a hardware capable GPU, you could probably run it on a PIII and it would look great. Well, that may be a stretch, but..... |
Not too late - I haven't got a BD drive yet anyway. I like to plan ahead. Thanks for the reply... Yeah, I've got a 7900 in there now, but I can swap in an 8600GT or a 9800GT that I've got in other machines. The 9800 is completely wasted in the machine it's in, anyway.. 
The only thing that suddenly concerns me is the ability to do overlays and gamma, which I guess will depend on the player. But I'm not sure if hardware decoding limits your options. It's *necessary* to do gamma, and would be *nice* to do some overlays to do contrast modulation and so forth. I don't really care about processing in any more detail - sharpening and upscaling are pretty pointless for BD.
It ought to be dead easy to do per-channel brightness overlays for contrast modulation or wear knockouts by rendering the image to a few textures and using a shader; it would use zero CPU, and the as far as the video card is concerned it's a non-issue. But I'm not sure that any software actually DOES that. If not, I really need to learn C and directX programming... 
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Angus_rg
Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 343
Location: A planet far, far away..... Baltimore, MD
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| Link Posted: Wed Sep 24, 2008 8:46 pm Post subject: |
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| perisoft wrote: |
Not too late - I haven't got a BD drive yet anyway. I like to plan ahead. Thanks for the reply... Yeah, I've got a 7900 in there now, but I can swap in an 8600GT or a 9800GT that I've got in other machines. The 9800 is completely wasted in the machine it's in, anyway.. |
I'd be tempted to try all 3 and see how it handles it. My understanding is that the Pent D is the same as the Core 2, dual core, whichever the next released CPU was, it just uses more power.
| perisoft wrote: |
The only thing that suddenly concerns me is the ability to do overlays and gamma, which I guess will depend on the player. But I'm not sure if hardware decoding limits your options. It's *necessary* to do gamma, and would be *nice* to do some overlays to do contrast modulation and so forth. I don't really care about processing in any more detail - sharpening and upscaling are pretty pointless for BD.
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That's a really good point I never thought of. Both PowerStrip and Nvidia home grown software worked with BR discs. The only way that would be possible would be if it was hardware encoded. Or possible without any noticable CPU spike. It's obvious Nvidia uses hardware and I believe their libraries are availablish, so PowerStrip can use it as well.
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AnalogRocks
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| Link Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 12:42 am Post subject: |
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| Angus_rg wrote: | | perisoft wrote: |
Not too late - I haven't got a BD drive yet anyway. I like to plan ahead. Thanks for the reply... Yeah, I've got a 7900 in there now, but I can swap in an 8600GT or a 9800GT that I've got in other machines. The 9800 is completely wasted in the machine it's in, anyway.. |
I'd be tempted to try all 3 and see how it handles it. My understanding is that the Pent D is the same as the Core 2, dual core, whichever the next released CPU was, it just uses more power.
| perisoft wrote: |
The only thing that suddenly concerns me is the ability to do overlays and gamma, which I guess will depend on the player. But I'm not sure if hardware decoding limits your options. It's *necessary* to do gamma, and would be *nice* to do some overlays to do contrast modulation and so forth. I don't really care about processing in any more detail - sharpening and upscaling are pretty pointless for BD.
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That's a really good point I never thought of. Both PowerStrip and Nvidia home grown software worked with BR discs. The only way that would be possible would be if it was hardware encoded. Or possible without any noticable CPU spike. It's obvious Nvidia uses hardware and I believe their libraries are availablish, so PowerStrip can use it as well. |
Powerstrip doesn't work with the 8xxx and 9xxx series Nvidia cards. Or has that changed recently?
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Angus_rg
Joined: 16 Dec 2007
Posts: 343
Location: A planet far, far away..... Baltimore, MD
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| Link Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:37 am Post subject: |
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| AnalogRocks wrote: | | Angus_rg wrote: |
That's a really good point I never thought of. Both PowerStrip and Nvidia home grown software worked with BR discs. The only way that would be possible would be if it was hardware encoded. Or possible without any noticable CPU spike. It's obvious Nvidia uses hardware and I believe their libraries are availablish, so PowerStrip can use it as well. |
Powerstrip doesn't work with the 8xxx and 9xxx series Nvidia cards. Or has that changed recently? |
It worked great for me, but now that I think about it, I think I've watch DVDs. I tried watching The Muppet Movie with my daughter and you couldn't see a thing w/o. Watched it with, and WOW!!!!! Huge difference. Oddly enough, it's a very dark movie, at least in the beginning.
NVidia is suppose to make that junk public, otherwise gaming companies couldn't take advantage and they couldn't claim the best picture. Not to say that companies are using it.
Of course, my HTPC is in pieces right now, and it may take me a while to test it. Why do I always need to take things apart?
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AnalogRocks
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| Link Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Angus_rg wrote: | | AnalogRocks wrote: | | Angus_rg wrote: |
That's a really good point I never thought of. Both PowerStrip and Nvidia home grown software worked with BR discs. The only way that would be possible would be if it was hardware encoded. Or possible without any noticable CPU spike. It's obvious Nvidia uses hardware and I believe their libraries are availablish, so PowerStrip can use it as well. |
Powerstrip doesn't work with the 8xxx and 9xxx series Nvidia cards. Or has that changed recently? |
It worked great for me, but now that I think about it, I think I've watch DVDs. I tried watching The Muppet Movie with my daughter and you couldn't see a thing w/o. Watched it with, and WOW!!!!! Huge difference. Oddly enough, it's a very dark movie, at least in the beginning.
NVidia is suppose to make that junk public, otherwise gaming companies couldn't take advantage and they couldn't claim the best picture. Not to say that companies are using it.
Of course, my HTPC is in pieces right now, and it may take me a while to test it. Why do I always need to take things apart? |
Which model Nvidia card do you have?
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Angus_rg
Joined: 16 Dec 2007
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Location: A planet far, far away..... Baltimore, MD
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| Link Posted: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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| AnalogRocks wrote: |
Which model Nvidia card do you have? |
8800GT
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Elaine Benes
Joined: 25 Apr 2006
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| Link Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 10:18 am Post subject: |
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If anyone discovers how to have Gamma control using an ATI card, please post it. Nvidia is no problem using Gamma and their control center...
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