erikatcuse Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 It's easy really HD-DVD is dead and Blu-ray has won so whats your opinion. I think I'll go for a combo drive here shortly to take advantage of cheap hd-dvd's Quote Link to comment
fitbrit Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 Yes, I agree. I have the LG combo drive. I'll be ripping all my HD media to my unRAID server anyway, so I don't care whether it came from HD-DVD or BluRay. The cheaper the better, as long as it's got 1080 lines of HD goodness. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 Unless that combo drive goes on a big closeout sale - which is certaionly possible - I am going to go for a Blu-Ray drive, not the combo. Investing in HD DVDs could be risky. A couple of years from now when your combo drive fails, you'll have HD-DVD media and nothing to play them on. If they're on your array, you won't care, but that's a LOT of storage tied up in a very few movies. I predict that HD DVDs will be the betamaxes of the 2000s. I have a PS3 already to play Blu Ray, so not in a hurry to buy one for my computer. When you can buy blu ray drives for ~$100, I'll probably buy one. Quote Link to comment
Billped Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 Unless that combo drive goes on a big closeout sale - which is certaionly possible - I am going to go for a Blu-Ray drive, not the combo. Counterpoint: Jane, you igno ... Seriously, if one of the local big box stores blows out their HD DVD collections for 75% off, I would consider buying up a bunch of movies and a combo player. I wouldn't, however, be paying anywhere near full-price for HD DVDs for exactly the reason you state. I already have a bunch of SACDs sitting around - player at home, but not in the car, not at friends, can't rip (easily), .... Bill Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 Counterpoint: Jane, you igno ... If BB has a firesale and is selling these puppies for $5 a pop, I'd be considering buying a bunch of them too. But in the end I'll bet three years from now we'll both be bemoaning the fact that we can't watch that $100 worth of movies we bought three years ago. Maybe the smarter play it to buy several of the players and save them unopened for a few years so that you can selll them on eBay to the folks with broken HD DVD players that can't watch their movie collections! I have found hardware failure pretty infrequent in most computer parts with one exceptoin - CD / DVD drives. Whether used frequently or infrequently, NOTHING dies with more regularity than a CD / DVD drive in a computer. If I get 2-3 years from one I feel lucky. That's why I'd be hesitant to buy the HD DVDs. So what do you do, feeling the impending doom of your video collection, you RIP them to your unRAID array of course. So each 40G movie is costing you $8 (at $0.20 per gig) to store. And it would take a whole 1T drives to store about 25 HD DVDs. That's a big, long term commitment. Dan, I stand by my prior statement. The price had better be pretty d**n low to make me buy into that dead-end format. That's the news. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow. -Jane Quote Link to comment
fitbrit Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 If the HD-DVD movies were ever at $10 or under, I'd buy them and rip them to ~10 GB each with h264 compression. I'd never store uncompressed HD rips... unless we ever get to the 1 TB for $10 rates of storage. Otherwise, as you say, the cost of current storage makes buying and ripping HD-DVDs similar in cost ot BD disks, if not more. Counterpoint: Jane, you igno ... If BB has a firesale and is selling these puppies for $5 a pop, I'd be considering buying a bunch of them too. But in the end I'll bet three years from now we'll both be bemoaning the fact that we can't watch that $100 worth of movies we bought three years ago. Maybe the smarter play it to buy several of the players and save them unopened for a few years so that you can selll them on eBay to the folks with broken HD DVD players that can't watch their movie collections! I have found hardware failure pretty infrequent in most computer parts with one exceptoin - CD / DVD drives. Whether used frequently or infrequently, NOTHING dies with more regularity than a CD / DVD drive in a computer. If I get 2-3 years from one I feel lucky. That's why I'd be hesitant to buy the HD DVDs. So what do you do, feeling the impending doom of your video collection, you RIP them to your unRAID array of course. So each 40G movie is costing you $8 (at $0.20 per gig) to store. And it would take a whole 1T drives to store about 25 HD DVDs. That's a big, long term commitment. Dan, I stand by my prior statement. The price had better be pretty d**n low to make me buy into that dead-end format. That's the news. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow. -Jane Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 20, 2008 Share Posted February 20, 2008 Interesting. Is a H.264 compression of an HD movie a lot better than DVD quality? Does compressing also compress audio? Quote Link to comment
fitbrit Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Interesting. Is a H.264 compression of an HD movie a lot better than DVD quality? Does compressing also compress audio? Yes, it's very good indeed. You can use x264 to encode a 1080p movie down to ~10 GB with almost no loss of quality. That's with DD or DTS 5.1 or 6.1 sound. No lossless formats as yet, since there's hardly any way to play these currently with HTPC hard/software. I have the Planet Earth BluRay (total 4 discs) and a 720p x264 rips of it (about 16GB total) . Screenshot: On my 61" 1080p set, there is a difference between the 200GB+ uncompressed originals and the 16 GB 720p rips, but at 8 ft away it's almost unnoticable. The Matrix Trilogy at 1080p is amazing at less than 10 GB each. I get a friend to do them for me for now, but soon he'll teach me how. You can now even do the compression in a way that they can be accelerated with Cyberlink drivers for compatbile nVidia/ATi video cards. If done right, one sees very little CPU usage. The MKV format is very good for this application as a container; it's preferable to avi according to the experts. My Battlestar Galactica Rips look pretty good too (JRiver Media Center software): I believe there's a codec shootout review somewhere on the web, and x264 fares very well in 2 successive years as a tool for h264 compression. I've seen DVDs ripped to ~720 MB and the rips look better than the original DVDs on my HTPC. That's possible because I haven't optimised ffdshow for optimal DVD upscaling, but the h264 settings on my HTPC are well adjusted. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Great info! Thanks for sharing. I figured my Blu Ray disks would have to sit on a shelf and be fed into my player, rather than having the convenence that I can have to access my DVDs from myunRAID array. But if I could get them under 10G each, I would consider doing that, even if only to have a backup in case the disk got messed up. BTW, I am experimenting with something called ffdshow, a video postprocessing filter, that can make plain old DVDs look a heck of a lot better. Are you familiar with that? Quote Link to comment
fitbrit Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 Yes, I mentioned ffdshow in my post above. There's a lot to tweak to get the best settings. There's a thread over at avsforum where people experiment and share their settings. Now, compression with a x264 to a ~1- 1.5 GB mkv file looks as good as the original DVD itself, and will contain a full AC3 5.1 sound track. In my case, it looks better than the original DVD, as I haven't optimised my ffdshow settings for playback yet. I'm not sure whether I want to rip all my DVD movies to x264 mkvs yet, though. Not sure whether a <7 GB saving is worth the ripping/encoding time. However, a ~30-40 GB saving with a BluRay is definitely worth it right now... especially with CyberLink not being sure whether they'll let us play BD images from hard drive in PowerDVD right now. Quote Link to comment
Jon Posted February 21, 2008 Share Posted February 21, 2008 I've had my LG combo drive a while now and I'll actually be watching my local Blockbuster for HD-DVD sales. They rarely rent them out and so are in good shape. Depending on what a new copy sells for at Wal-Mart, or wherever, I may snatch a few up. Being a Total Access customer, I usually get several free for every X amount purchased. HD-DVD may be dead, but as long as there are titles available, it's still HD. Quote Link to comment
erikatcuse Posted February 22, 2008 Author Share Posted February 22, 2008 If will be a great day when any type of software incorporates ffdshow directly into there software to make it easier to use; sort of like an upconverting dvd player with out the hassle. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted February 26, 2008 Share Posted February 26, 2008 Anyone have any experience with this LITEON Blu-Ray drive dh-4o1s-08? It is 4x read. $150 http://www.amazon.com/Liteon-Reader-Black-Retail-Pack/dp/B0010ZWYF8/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1203988095&sr=8-1 Quote Link to comment
BLKMGK Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 I *was* looking at the dual format drive - then NewEgg jacked the price $70. I have an HD-DVD frommy dead 360, it rips just fiiine. If the movie is H.264 encoded I keep it at that size. If the movie is VC-1 encoded which has artifacts when I play it back I compress with X.264 and use FLAC or AC3 on the soundtrack (FLAC usually). The result is usually under 12gigs easily. Sadly there's no one button press tool to do this and you lose menus etc. but the video is PRETTY! All of my stuff is played backon XBMC under Linux, it may get EAC3 decoding soon so the soundtracks might be left alone down the road when I rip. When I go BR I'll rip those too, I do not want media laying around allover the house or in nice racks to be stolen or garner attention. I've not yet done any BR but the tools are much the same. Agree on HD-DVD, if I see sales I'm BUYING but so far retailers haven't discounted at all - Toshiba says they will not accept returns of hardware from retailers either so that will surely tick them off. Anyway, if folks have questions on converting HD-DVD, compressed or not, lemme' know. It tookme some time, soe pestering, and some experimenting to get the process working for me and I'm willing to share. Doom9 was a HUGE help but the data is spread out a bit. <shrug> Quote Link to comment
fitbrit Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 I *was* looking at the dual format drive - then NewEgg jacked the price $70. I have an HD-DVD frommy dead 360, it rips just fiiine. If the movie is H.264 encoded I keep it at that size. If the movie is VC-1 encoded which has artifacts when I play it back I compress with X.264 and use FLAC or AC3 on the soundtrack (FLAC usually). The result is usually under 12gigs easily. Sadly there's no one button press tool to do this and you lose menus etc. but the video is PRETTY! All of my stuff is played backon XBMC under Linux, it may get EAC3 decoding soon so the soundtracks might be left alone down the road when I rip. When I go BR I'll rip those too, I do not want media laying around allover the house or in nice racks to be stolen or garner attention. I've not yet done any BR but the tools are much the same. Agree on HD-DVD, if I see sales I'm BUYING but so far retailers haven't discounted at all - Toshiba says they will not accept returns of hardware from retailers either so that will surely tick them off. Anyway, if folks have questions on converting HD-DVD, compressed or not, lemme' know. It tookme some time, soe pestering, and some experimenting to get the process working for me and I'm willing to share. Doom9 was a HUGE help but the data is spread out a bit. <shrug> Thanks for the info and the offer; I WILL be taking you up on this soon. Quote Link to comment
BLKMGK Posted February 28, 2008 Share Posted February 28, 2008 Okay, I posted a tutorial on how I'm processing this stuff on Doom9 - enjoy! http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1106575#post1106575 Quote Link to comment
RockDawg Posted February 29, 2008 Share Posted February 29, 2008 I have grown totally spoiled by having all my DVDs ripped onto my unRAID server and accessible via XBMC. I also appreciate that the ease and simplicity of using DVD Shrink to rip my DVDs at full quality and stripping only the movie. I'll go BR when ripping and playback becomes that simple. Quote Link to comment
BLKMGK Posted February 29, 2008 Share Posted February 29, 2008 Oh yeah, I'm spoiled too! However right now there's nothing out there that will do this in one step nor is there anything "simple" to play it back with. Transcoding is the only way to go right now although eac3to sure does the lion's share of heavy lifting! The old XBOX has a snowball's chance i nhell of playing it back too - this stuff is processor intense to say the least even on Windows. I've seen devices with H.264 hardware decoding, I'd like to know how those work. Quote Link to comment
RockDawg Posted February 29, 2008 Share Posted February 29, 2008 I know there's no way the Xbox will ever play ripped BR, and I'm fine with a pc in my entertainment center so long as it starts up anywhere near as fast as the Xbox and I can control playback entirely from a remote including navigating the media center GUI (future Linux XBMC?). If that would happen I copuld easily deal with a more advanced method of ripping so long as it was consistent. Quote Link to comment
BLKMGK Posted February 29, 2008 Share Posted February 29, 2008 Fast startup is actually being researched by the XBMC guys for the Linux project. Stripping a distro down, booting it from compact flash, and other things are being discussed. Small form factor computers are also an obvious interest. http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=52 if you want to follow along, the Wiki has instructions for compiling etc. but right now it's considered "Alpha" though I'd argue it's better than that. As for control, I'm controlling mine via a Harmony remote now once the XBMC interface is up. to keep from having to use a keyboard and mouse on it I usually use VNC via my laptop or use SSH to download new code and compile it. If you're looking for something as easy as the old XBOX it's not there yet but it's making steady progress and the interface looks\controls EXACTLY the same. It even works fine with the old XBOX controllers BTW It's being ported to OSX and Windows too although I've tried neither of those versions. Linux on an AppleTV is being wrked with an eye towards XBMC, we'll see how that works out. Hope that helps, it's what I'm using for ALL of my downloaded and HD content right now. P.S. Just spotted a blog that might also be interesting for you concerning this http://ezhtpc.blogspot.com/ Quote Link to comment
fitbrit Posted February 29, 2008 Share Posted February 29, 2008 I know there's no way the Xbox will ever play ripped BR, and I'm fine with a pc in my entertainment center so long as it starts up anywhere near as fast as the Xbox and I can control playback entirely from a remote including navigating the media center GUI (future Linux XBMC?). If that would happen I copuld easily deal with a more advanced method of ripping so long as it was consistent. I do just that on my HTPC with my Harmony 880 remote. The HTPC goes to S3 sleep (totally silent, using ~2-3W of power). I have an iMon VFD and remote receiver, which I programmed with commands from J River Media Center. These were then learned by the Harmony and off I go. If I really wanted to, I could do everything I need for movie viewing via the remote. If I find any function lacking, i can just add it to the remote later. I do, however, keep a Gyration Aero mouse and a BTC RF keyboard handy for editing file info in J River Media Center. Quote Link to comment
BLKMGK Posted February 29, 2008 Share Posted February 29, 2008 I have the same VFD and receiver in my HTPC case. However the Linux support is a bit of a PITA and not as easy to setup in Linux as Windows. the MCE remote receiver was just easier - pretty much PnP under Linux. Quote Link to comment
fitbrit Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 I have the same VFD and receiver in my HTPC case. However the Linux support is a bit of a PITA and not as easy to setup in Linux as Windows. the MCE remote receiver was just easier - pretty much PnP under Linux. In case you didn't see at Doom9: Thanks for the ripping guide. Quote Link to comment
Hooked4Life Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 Okay, I posted a tutorial on how I'm processing this stuff on Doom9 - enjoy! http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1106575#post1106575 Will this work with Blu-ray? Quote Link to comment
BLKMGK Posted March 1, 2008 Share Posted March 1, 2008 fitbrit - yup saw it I will probably be updating it a little bit today with a method that will reduce the amount of disk space you need by pulling files from the disk while you convert. Dunno' why I've never tried that hehe. Hooked4Life - If you can rip the video from the Blu-Ray disk then the steps will likely work, I think they even come off as EVO files. One thing to research because I've not dealt with BR is the audio. I noticed when mucking with eac3to or one of the other tools that it had a command switch for reordering the sound channels from BR rips. I've not seen that mentioned anywhere else but when I eventually get around to BR it's something I'll be worrying. Really what I've written up isn't anything other than steps to pull audio\video from a container, compress it, and move it into a different container. The thing is finding someone that will actually explain the danged process without assuming you're already familier with much of this stuff - even my explanation makes some of these kinds of assumptions else it would've been a damned book. Happy to answer questions about it as best I can but man I'm still learning too Quote Link to comment
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