TuffLuffJimmy
macrumors G3
Did I ever say that I would be watching blu-ray movies on it? No, I just said I wanted an iMac with a blu-ray drive.
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Blu-ray Support in Mac OS X 10.5.6?
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Did I ever say that I would be watching blu-ray movies on it? No, I just said I wanted an iMac with a blu-ray drive.
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CWallace
macrumors G5
DigiTimes this morning ran an article noting many top-tier Wintel manufacturers (including HP) are reducing the number of models they offer with Blu-ray optical drives due to the "high" prices from the OEMs and consequently slower customer adoption due to higher prices for machines with Blu-ray drives compared to those that are not.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Blu-Ray video at 14000 bit rate
Well, been playing around with the latest Handbrake SVN. Seems if you have the appropriate Blu-Ray video rip (MPEG-2 or H.264 with AC3) you can transcode at 1080p with AC3 passthrough and 14 mbps bit rate for no loss of video quality. This plays very nicely with Plex and cuts the file size in half (about 12 gb from 25 gb m2ts source). Plex keeps getting better and better. Now all we need is the ability to deal with VC-1 and DTS (and HD audio) and life would be good.
Well, been playing around with the latest Handbrake SVN. Seems if you have the appropriate Blu-Ray video rip (MPEG-2 or H.264 with AC3) you can transcode at 1080p with AC3 passthrough and 14 mbps bit rate for no loss of video quality. This plays very nicely with Plex and cuts the file size in half (about 12 gb from 25 gb m2ts source). Plex keeps getting better and better. Now all we need is the ability to deal with VC-1 and DTS (and HD audio) and life would be good.
If I've got nice tvs I want archive and play all my media in as high quality as I can from my discs and don't really appreciate the offers of itunes and atv. These and frontrow leave me deeply unsatisfied when compared to what I can achieve with a free app from xbmc and a cupboard full of HDDs.
While not what you meant, I havn't seen enough screenshots showing off what all our macs should be doing!
xbmc has a load of nice skins, I tend to cycle between these two:
http://aeonproject.com/gallery.html
http://www.teamrazorfish.co.uk/mediastream.html
While not what you meant, I havn't seen enough screenshots showing off what all our macs should be doing!
xbmc has a load of nice skins, I tend to cycle between these two:
http://aeonproject.com/gallery.html
http://www.teamrazorfish.co.uk/mediastream.html
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Yes, later tonight after I get home and get the kids in bed.
Have you tried Plex yet? XMBC Atlantis is a nice improvement, but I find Plex to be more Mac-friendly.
DoFoT9
macrumors P6
Yeah I tried (and am following) them both and couldn't really see too much difference. Figured it would be better to go with the actual xbmc devs rather than a fork though.
When did you last try it?
They're both alpha/beta software, sharing virtually all of their code and improving rapidly.
They're both alpha/beta software, sharing virtually all of their code and improving rapidly.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Here you go. The png screen capture is 1.5 mb, well over the MR limit, so I've posted a crop of it.
Attachments
Cave Man
macrumors 604
Yes, with Plex or XBMC the m2ts rips play perfectly well on my Mini. The files have all the extras that come with them - subtitles, alternate audio tracks, etc. But they are much larger because of that.
XBMC has been better than Plex for smooth playback, but the the 0.5.19 release of Plex two days ago seems to have caught up with XBMC. The only reason, in my mind, to use XBMC now is if you are still on OS X 10.4 (on which Plex will not run) or want to replace the software on the Apple TV (but only at 720p, not 1080p).
DoFoT9
macrumors P6
that is incredible!! you can really see the difference between say a 7mbps rip and your 14mbps rip!
DoFoT9
macrumors P6
ok that is awsome!! i cannot wait to get my hands on a mini and a bluray drive to start ripping these puppies for myself!! thanks for showing us the incredible picture and setup you have 🙂
Cave Man
macrumors 604
You understand that you need to buy AnyDVD HD which only runs under Windows, right? You cannot rip Blu-Ray discs using OS X.
I'd like to get AnyDVD HD, but it's too expensive for me (after buying the Sanyo z2000 1080p projector, I'm dirt poor at the moment...). I'm also waiting for the discs to come down in price - $20 to $30 each is a bit much. I only bought 5 and my AnyDVD HD trial period expired a couple of weeks ago, so I'm done with the ripping (and buying of Blu-Ray discs).
DoFoT9
macrumors P6
lol i have been watching what you have been saying for a good month now and i think ive got the gist of the whole 'process'. besides, who says im going to "buy" AnyDVD HD? i have my hackintosh/xp computer ready to rip at the drop of a hat!! just gotta get that mini/blu ray reader.
one major problem about living in australia is that a bluray player costs around $200 at least (for a good one anyway), thats not even with a writer. the BR discs cost around $40-$50 each, so don't you complain about prices 😛 😉 .
You think 13 hours is quick? I dont know about you but I can get to a few major towns and back in about in under 2 hours. 2hours vs 13 hours ?
I am tired of people always saying on these forums " provide me with a dissertation" with regards to citing things. If you can use this forum you can go and use google. Links wise I don't have any to hand, I however do have some handy maths. UK example...
A 622Mb pipe for an isp based on ADSL connection costs etc costs about £100,000 a month (in reality a per annum cost of more like £1.5million) . So if every user on the connection had 8Mb, and used bittorrent for example, saturating their connection, the ISP could serve only 77 users before taking a hit on their available bandwidth. Now ISPs may have 2 or 3 of these at most due to the cost and time it takes to set them up, some do have many more though. This now brings me back to how p2p will slow ISPs and also how annoying and ignorant it is to assume otherwise. Many ISPs are carrying thousands of users, so the pipes are an essential tool in providing their users with the appropriate amount of bandwitdh. Traffic shaping and capping are there to make people download responsibly, and to deter mass downloading which will impact on other users on the ISP. The introduction of 4oD and the BBC iplayer in the UK, both of which which use the kontiki p2p platform silently download in the background and are being use by more people each day... Those who weren't downloading via p2p before are now doing so, many of whom are unaware this is the case.
Whilst this is a very over simplified example, it shows that life on the ISP front isn't as rosey as people would like to think.
This all means added stress on already strained ISPs who have to keep paying incredible sums of money in order to keep users connected. Don't forget, ISPs are signing up new previously unconnected customers as well each day.
Your computer home theatre systems make up a tiny proportion of the market. I don't know any joe average who has gone out and made a HTPC, with a NAS and streamed films and music round their house. For many it is overcomplictated and expensive. In a few years time more people may go this route as the whole process is refined and simplified, but I am afraid we have a classic case of "I do it so everyone must do it" syndrome.
I came to this forum from another, after being let down by its staff and user base who were incredibly selfish and childish. Not thinking of the other possible users when making posts or even bothering to try and do their own research on the subject matter at hand. It is sad so see the same such problems here 🙁
DoFoT9
macrumors P6
1. well, comming from a nation where our average download speed (according to speedtest.net) is 4868kbps and below, compared to the UK's with 7486kbps.. i think its fair to say that our connections speeds are much lower than yours. our land is much larger and the population dwindles 200km's out of a city. if i were to travel 20km down the road i wouldnt even be able to download faster than 3kbps (i have a friend who will vouch for me). for him, and many others in towns like his, 13 hours would be amazingly fast. i have ADSL2+ which is good (yay for me), but this time last year i was still on dialup. most of our country is VERY far behind your paces, probably mainly because your country is smaller and everything is more 'compact'. so if you were to put yourself in my shoes you would see that, from my perspective, that is why i am arguing my point 😛
2. goodluck arguing in court with that 🙂
3. i have no idea about what size pipelines we use, yada yada yada, so i will just say that if there were to be some sort of movie database (based off my "we dont care if it takes 13hours to download" thing) then i dont see a problem with it. (no idea on pipelines so my arguement probably isnt very valid haha).
4. well if everyone is "i do it so everyone else must do it" then wouldnt it be quite a popular thing to do?? (you contradict yourself here). there is no possible way to know how many people are doing this, but i reckon that there would be quite a few!! sure there wont be 40%, but im guessing there is somewhere around mac's marketshare, which is pretty massive 😱 😛 🙂
5. nawww im sorry to hear that you had a bad experience on other forums. im also sorry to hear that youve had a sad experience here, but the forums doesnt revolve around you. i dont see myself as childish, i see myself as a bad arguer (when it comes to making my points clear) but by no means childish or selfish. i am quite offended that you have said that as i feel you were aiming that at me. im afraid you cannot talk about doing research because you hardly provided anything based around vaild points (yours seemed somewhat speculative). meh
have a good day/night 🙂
I am the one contradicting myself?
Wow... ok.
My whole point was that at the moment Blu-Ray will easily survive since internet connections are so slow people will continue to go out and buy the DVD/Blu-Ray physical media. Not only that but not everyone who watches films are connected to the internet. You completely screwed over your own argument by saying people are downloading at 3kbps... my exact point. You cannot download a film in any reasonable timeframe on a 512kb connection or less.
Why this has become a speed debate I have no idea. You asked for figures I gave you them. The cost for the pipes isps use and what happens when you suddenly make everyone download their films online "tomorrow". It wouldn't work. It is going to take years before the infrastructure of ISPs, and the backbone of the internet is such as it can support the amount of data which would be passed about if there were no physical media anymore and everyone was downloading their films music etc online.
My point with regards to the "I do it so everyone else must do it" statement was referring to you. It feels as though because you download films and are making an HTPC, that you think everyone else does, or a large proportion do. This is not the case, and is why I am attempting to point out your flawed argument.
Speculitive points? Hardly... please cite me HTPC sales for the last quarter. In fact cite me numbers of people that illegally download films, or legally for that matter. Show me a comparison to "decline in sales of physical media".
Feels as though you are trying to cause an argument instead of add to the discussion in my opinion.
Cave Man
macrumors 604
No, I don't use AnyDVD HD anymore because my 21 day trial expired. I did use it on the 5 discs I own, though, and it handled all of them fine. I did use tsmuxer GUI to build m2ts files that have the video track, audio track and English subtitles. That helps make the files a bit smaller, especially those that have 8 or 9 DTS or AC3 audio languages. A 35 gig file might become 30 gigs in size. Not much savings, but a bit.
Mostly what we need is the ability to transcode VC-1 video and DTS audio to H.264 and AC3. A lot of discs use these formats. Then all the BR discs would be covered. I'm sure it'll happen, but it might be months away.