Popcorn Hour BD network playback

[mike123abc]

Well I found a program that I have been using on HD DVDs. "tonmt" or To Network Meadia Tank (popcorn hour runs network media tank). It remuxes the audio/video into a .ts file all in a gui, pretty fast.

Just crossed the 7TB mark. Have about 50 more discs to go. I have transferred about 200 discs so far (TV series, movies). Looks like the average disc is running about 35 GB. I am doing ISO images of the BDs, ripping out and remuxing the video on HDDVDs. Yeah I loose all the menus and special features on the HD DVDs, but I have about 45 of these. I sent in 25 WB discs in the red2blu program, will make the ISOs when they come back.

Essentially my next problem is that I will have the array filled by the end of the year. I have to hope the 3TB drives come out soon. I will start to rebuild the array with 3TB discs and move my 2TB drives to my other NAS that only has 750 GB drives in it now.

The jukebox GUI is great. For series like BSG, you have one picture of BSG to pick, then you get a picture for each year, then you select which episode you want to watch and it loads up the right ISO. You still have to pick the episode out of the disc menus.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

Tell me about this popcorn hour box. I have about 200 dvd's most of them never opened. I would love to rip all the disks and put the disks in a box somewhere. Would this box help me do this.

 

[dfergie]

Rip them to a EHDD then select & watch without messing with a player... I use a different media player but have 3 drives for it with BD, HD DVD & other video...

 

[mike123abc]

Tell me about this popcorn hour box. I have about 200 dvd's most of them never opened. I would love to rip all the disks and put the disks in a box somewhere. Would this box help me do this.

The main strength of the PCH is that it will play BD ISOs and treat them like a BD player (i.e. full menus, full HD audio pass through, etc). I just have a couple NAS boxes that I use with it. I am just about finished loading up all my BDs in ISO format to my NAS, and am ripping my HDDVDs. It will of course play the old DVD ISO format too with full menus.

I love the combination of YAMJ (which runs on a PC to index all your ISOs, gets the info from IMDB, and builds up nice GUI HTML files for all your movies), and the PCH that can execute the HTML files to give a nice movie library navigation system.

If you do not want to use NAS, it does have a mechanism to insert hard drives, so you can just put your movies on a hard drive and insert the hard drives in a front panel slot. It does Windows SAMBA and Linux NFS client/server so you can serve movies from your PC or where ever you want.

The real chore is ripping all these ISOs. I have been able to do 7-10 a day over the last month. You just use Slyfox's anydvd HD to rip each one. One trick you have to do is learn to name the ISO correctly so YAMJ can pull the right IMDB entry (especially on movies that have remakes by the same name, you need to put the year in the file name). With series you make a file name like:

Battlestar Galactica (2003) S01E01E02E03

So it gets the right BSG, and then it is season 1 episodes 1-3. YAMJ goes and gets the episode names off the internet for the menus.

So, you rip all 20 BSG discs, and you get cover art for the series in the selection, you pick that and you see the cover art for each of the seasons, then you select the season and then you pick which episode you want to see. It takes you to the correct disc ISO image, but you still have to go to the menu and select the episode.

 

[mike123abc]

On another note all this could be done with a PC connected to the TV. If you already have the PC in place, power dvd or some such program could play your BDs and use NAS. The PCH just at $299 is a less expensive option. I plan on getting another PCH box. I am just moving the box between TVs now (just power, ethernet and HDMI) it is pretty easy to move.

 

[mike123abc]

Here is a youtube video showing a couple movie jukebox options running on the PCH C-200.

[youtube]<object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/N6yKV1W7rYM&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/N6yKV1W7rYM&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>[/youtube]

 

[cybok0]

Right now I just use my PC and WMC with Media browser, right now it's just DVDs till I get a blu-ray player for my PC.

I use DVDfab.

[YOUTUBE]<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Eqq7eoAsJMg&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Eqq7eoAsJMg&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>[/YOUTUBE]

 

[mike123abc]

Well reaching a critical problem... 1 TB left and I still have a stack of BDs to put in. I am down to 5 more HD DVDs to load. I have the shipment from WB for the red2blu on the way.

So, I broke down and bought 4 more 2 TB drives to upgrade my other NAS. I am going to put all the TV series on the other NAS. I have 3 TB or so of TV series.

My big NAS has 9.08 TB (real formatted TB) and I will overflow it before I get everything transferred. So, next week I will upgrade the old NAS, and transfer off the 3TB of TV shows.

I have not even started to rip DVDs. I am kind of ripped out at the moment, it is a huge project and I keep finding more discs to rip. Have about 250 ripped so far in BD/HD DVD. And I thought it was a big chore when I ripped through about half my CDs when setting up iTunes the first time years ago.

 

[dfergie]

If you don't mind losing a little resolution use BD Rebuilder to shrink...

 

[mike123abc]

If you don't mind losing a little resolution use BD Rebuilder to shrink...

Yeah I know, but on my projector I love every bit of the HD. I think my main problem is that I buy too many movies. I had them stashed everywhere. I am getting them all organized and set up now. It has been a good exercise. I had more discs than I originally estimated.

It is all coming together and having a huge library of BDs on demand is really nice. My only problem now is that I have "rediscovered" so many BDs I will be busy all summer trying to watch them all again. I have already lost some sleep over it... Just one more movie...

 

[dfergie]

I have a lot of catching up to do myself... not just BDs but network shows on the dvr also. I like to record from the dvr with the H-Box then remove commercials to watch on the media player...

 

[mike123abc]

Well finally finished transferring every BD/HD DVD I have in the house. Just 200 GB left! I still have a shipment from WB coming from the red2blu program. I will have to have my second NAS ready before I will be able to process them. I was thinking that I would have a couple terabytes of spare capacity when I started the project. I noticed that a lot of movies are using 50GB BDs to the fullest. It makes you wonder how HD DVD really could have been a good alternative.

 

[diogen]

It makes you wonder how HD DVD really could have been a good alternative.

Blast from the past, eh?

Diogen.

 

[mike123abc]

Blast from the past, eh?

Diogen.

Yeah. I am a real BD believer now. I have had the opportunity over the last couple weeks to rewatch a lot of the HDDVDs. They are definitely more compressed than BDs. Early BD suffered from lack of 50GB manufacturing, but now movies use very high bit rates and VC-1 or H.264, well beyond what they would have been able to do with HDDVD. On my projection system you can see the difference. Yes I know the HD DVDs would have benefited from improved compression technology, but they still would have been limited in the bit rate. It is nice to see BD makers really use the space.

I have 31 HD DVD movies (not counting th 26 that I sent into red2blu) and 3 TV series. I also had 4 movies I rebought in BD. So for the 31 movies I just have the video stream. The TV series are not so bad, I extracted each individual episode into its own file, with the Jukebox being able to read a synopsis of each episode with artwork makes it ok.

The Star Trek first season was the hardest transfer... 10 (yes 10) HD DVDs. 3 episodes each disc. At 7 GB each they could have done it in 5 BDs. They were forced to split episodes over the HD DVD layers, so you would have 2_1/2_2 for episode 2, which I would have to put back together. The Smallville season 5 was easier, it looks like they worked harder to keep episodes from being split, only a couple were. Smallville was more compressed at 4-5 GB/episode. Well my bonus prize for the ST series was a remote control that looks like a phaser... Too bad it is for an HD DVD player

When I get the new array working I will probably go back and make "BD ISOs" out of the HD DVD video files. Just to get better playback ability (right now limited to 4x FF, with BD it is 32x). The hard work is done with all the videos extracted and recombined.

 

[diogen]

Yeah. I am a real BD believer now.

Me, too.
If you want the best quality video (and it exists on BD) - there is nothing even close.

Yes I know the HD DVDs would have benefited from improved compression technology....

That says it all.
It is hard to compare two formats as complex as BD and HD.
Especially if nobody wants to. Especially if allegiance is nothing but religious.

x264 encoder has improved leaps and bounds in the last 2 years since BD was left alone. Commercial encoders, no doubts, did the same.

BD disks definitely are cheaper to encode now since the last step - manual "polishing" - is hardly needed: with so much space to waste, why bother?

Water under the bridge...

Diogen.

 

[Scott Greczkowski]

I was going to get a Popcorn Hour box, but instead this weekend picked up a WD TV LIVE box at Best Buy.

I am actually impressed with the WDTV Live Box.

It plays everything I throw at it including HD .ts files I recorded off my FTA satellite receiver.

I upgraded the firmware to WDLXTV which is a hacked firmware based on the current version of the official firmware. It add in easy support for cover art and movie info much like YAMJ. It also also in Torrent download support and some other features.

About the only thing it does not do is play streaming audio or video from the net (yes it does youtube, pandora and Live365. But I would like to play other shoutcast stations and I also have a few live video broadcasts I like which I stream on my PC all the time which I believe are also Shoutcast based.

Now I am trying to figure out how to rip my DVD's and Blurays (I have under 20 Blurays so far..) I want to figure out which format to rip them so that the most sources can view them, such as on a PS3, XBOX360 or via the DLNA client that is built into my Samsung LED TV...

So far I tried ISO for SD DVD's and I can play them on the WDTV and also on my PC using VLC. However neither of them lets me access the DVD menus or extras, or access chapters...

So now I am ripping in MKV format and see what we get from that.

I could rip in MPEG4 I guess but I want the origional quality of the DVD and Bluray media. Anyone have advice whats the best format to rip them in?

This is going to be a fun project.

 

[dfergie]

I have the WDTV box 1st gen, (no ethernet) I downloaded WDLXTV but haven't flashed to my box yet... AnyDvd then you can mount the BD as an ISO, usually they will play if you just rip to a folder though.

 

[diogen]

However neither of them lets me access the DVD menus or extras, or access chapters...

That is WDTV's problem - doesn't show DVD menus in ISOs...
http://www.satelliteguys.us/recordi...ts-best-media-player-up-date.html#post2140803

So now I am ripping in MKV format and see what we get from that.

MKV is a container that most of the time has x264 encoded video (H.264 format, just like BD) and DD/DTS audio mixed inside.
When done right, your 5GB+ DVDs will be compressed to less than half its size without quality loss.
I've never seen it used to keep DVD menus in the resulting file (but believe it could be possible).

Diogen.

 

[dfergie]

If needed you can always convert the full movie into same sized files with TSMuxerGui (and take out unneeded languages, subtitles etc...)

 

[mike123abc]

Anandtech starting a series of articles on home Media Streamer Platforms. The initial overview article: Media Streamer Platforms Roundup - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

It gives some background on different chipsets and solutions. In the coming days they will do indepth articles on each platform. It turns out that the Western Digital and Popcorn hour boxes both use similar Sigma chipsets.