My Retina MacBook Pro plays Blu-ray movies fine using the Macgo player, however when it comes to my old HD DVDs from the time of the format war, I just didn't find a way to make them play. On OS X they aren't compatible with my Blu-ray player and on Windows using an old version of PowerDVD Ultra that should play them it says "Incompatible graphics driver". Maybe the driver is bugged or my HD4000 GPU too new? Is there no way to play them on my MacBook Pro? My drive is the old Xbox HD DVD player which played HD DVDs fine on my old PC.
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Play old HD DVD movies on new MacBook Pro?
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How? What application? What about the video file format?
VLC doesn't play protected movies from HD DVDs or Blu-rays.
I can ensure you that this GPU is at least 10 times faster than the Nvidia one from my old PC back then which played them just fine.
Read my post. Use Handbrake and MakeMKV. Use MakeMKV to get the videos off the discs and have Handbrake encode them to MP4 at a smaller size.
Right, you use it to play your newly encoded videos from Handbrake and MakeMKV.
Ok, it's still an iGPU (made by Intel) so I bet they decided not to support it. If your Nvidia was "at least 10 times faster" then is was a long, long time ago so I bet they dropped support for it as well.
Is it also possible to burn them to Blu-ray with a Blu-ray compatible format?
I don't have endless space on my SSDs.
As in able to be played as a Blu-Ray in a regular Blu-Ray player? You can always just burn a bunch of movies to a Blu-Ray that are in a format the VLC can play.
I wouldn't put stuff on Blu-Rays as they're a scratchable media format. I'd just buy a ~1TB external HD, as they aren't that expensive at all.
Also you can get full movie encoded in Handbrake that has same the quality as a Blu-Ray, but is only in the 4-9 GB range (HD DVDs and Blu-Rays are horribly inefficient and badly done formats).
Yes. I also want to keep the extra titles.
Isn't there that coating layer that protects the disc and give it a life spawn of 50 years compared to an HDD's 10 year life spawn?
The extra titles are beside the point. Do you want to be able to play them with a regular Blu-ray player and with menus? Or are you fine with just playing all the titles (including the main movie) with VLC?
That's what they claim it would get sitting on a shelf not being touched. You can accidentally ruin a Blu-ray in the first minute of getting having it. The lifespan you're talking about is for archival purposes, it does not stop scratches.
The second gives you a lot more flexibility and future proofing. And your file sizes will be around five times smaller.
Just try using MakeMKV and Handbrake and see if you can get a setup that you like.
I honestly have no idea how the whole HD DVD to Blu-ray conversion would work. I could be wrong, but I'm guessing you'd basically be building the Blu-ray from scratch.
I just wanted to chime in here because I converted my HD-DVD library about a year ago to MP4/ATV3 format. I used the same MakeMKV & Handbrake.
One caution is that there is no way I know to burn the hd-dvd soft subtitles into the movie. Handbrake makes it very easy to do this with a bluray mkv, but hd-dvd used a different format.
The good thing is that almost no movies in my HD-DVD collection used soft subtitles. The exceptions I found were the third Bourne movie (the first 2 have hard subtitles already in the video) and Letters from Iwo Jima (because I don't know Japanese.)
I also discovered a HD-DVD disc that wouldn't read, I think some of them were cheaply made and are starting to have "rot" issues. (Carlito's Way 2, Rise to Power.)
I used an xbox 360 HD-DVD player to hook up to my iMac via USB to do the transfer.
One final thing, I have been using Subler to put the Cover Art and other information into the movie after I use handbrake, then importing them into iTunes. I found this works for me, but if you use another app such as plex you may want to find out how to tag the files using their system.
Not to hijack this thread, but I haven't seen a cheap HD-DVD disc for awhile now. Does anyone know a web site where I can trade/buy/sell these discs, to add to my library? (They work just as well as Bluray after converting them to a modern format.)
One caution is that there is no way I know to burn the hd-dvd soft subtitles into the movie. Handbrake makes it very easy to do this with a bluray mkv, but hd-dvd used a different format.
The good thing is that almost no movies in my HD-DVD collection used soft subtitles. The exceptions I found were the third Bourne movie (the first 2 have hard subtitles already in the video) and Letters from Iwo Jima (because I don't know Japanese.)
I also discovered a HD-DVD disc that wouldn't read, I think some of them were cheaply made and are starting to have "rot" issues. (Carlito's Way 2, Rise to Power.)
I used an xbox 360 HD-DVD player to hook up to my iMac via USB to do the transfer.
One final thing, I have been using Subler to put the Cover Art and other information into the movie after I use handbrake, then importing them into iTunes. I found this works for me, but if you use another app such as plex you may want to find out how to tag the files using their system.
Not to hijack this thread, but I haven't seen a cheap HD-DVD disc for awhile now. Does anyone know a web site where I can trade/buy/sell these discs, to add to my library? (They work just as well as Bluray after converting them to a modern format.)
There is some quality loss by reencoding vs just leaving it the the MKV format, but honesty I have never noticed any by using a RF 22 for BluRay & RF 20 for dvd. (The lower the RF, the better the quality, but it gets to the point all it does is increase file size vs make a better video.) Some people even bump the RF down to 20 for bluray, 18 for dvd. There are discussions about the RF in the handbrake help files that do a much better job than I could explaining the whole thing.
If you are happy with the MKV, you can just leave it at the format. The advantage of MP4/M4V format is that it compresses the movie file size, and makes it compatible with most phones/tablets/media players, which usually will not play MKV. iPhones/iPads/ATV/iTunes require a MP4/M4V format.
I just looked at an example for a movie around 2 hours. Raw MKV TrueHD audio only, US subtitles only, the file was 34.3gigs. After stripping the audio to 5.1 surround, hardcoding the subtitle track (needed when Japanese is spoken during the movie) and encoding the movie in rf22 ATV3 M4V format, it is only 3.4gigs.
I have found that older movies take more file size than newer ones, simply due to the graininess of the film.
If you are happy with the MKV, you can just leave it at the format. The advantage of MP4/M4V format is that it compresses the movie file size, and makes it compatible with most phones/tablets/media players, which usually will not play MKV. iPhones/iPads/ATV/iTunes require a MP4/M4V format.
I just looked at an example for a movie around 2 hours. Raw MKV TrueHD audio only, US subtitles only, the file was 34.3gigs. After stripping the audio to 5.1 surround, hardcoding the subtitle track (needed when Japanese is spoken during the movie) and encoding the movie in rf22 ATV3 M4V format, it is only 3.4gigs.
I have found that older movies take more file size than newer ones, simply due to the graininess of the film.
It depends on how you do it, do a bunch of test encodes a different settings (mainly change RF on the high quality preset) to see what you like (remember to look at the size it can change a lot!). I can't tell the difference between the high quality preset at 21 RF from Handbrake and a Blu-Ray, in a blind test I've thought the encode was the Blu-Ray.
The encoding is totally worth it, just find what you like.
As DVD-HD supports 3 image codings (VC-1, H.264 and MPEG-2), you may even be able to preserve the original picture quality, if and only if, the original disk was mastered in H.264. That happens to be the exact iTunes-liked format.
If that's the case, you can just re-pack your movie from MKV container into MP4 container, with many tools available (VLC, Subler, MP4tools etc).
Just a word of caution - AppleTV and/or your network setup might not like very high-bitrate movies. I keep my encodes below 10Mbps.
Contemporary MacBook Pro should not have any trouble with playing back such movie, though.
I have a problem with one of them. There is a part in the movie where the disc is a little bit scratched and lags only a minute or so during playback. (that's what is does on my old PC at least) The problem is MakeMKV just skipped the entire main movie because of that. Solution?
I suggest you ask this question in MakeMKV forum. You can get much more educated advice from there.
Play old HD DVD movies on new MacBook Pro?
You can't do that if you want to watch Hollywood films.
By just changing the RF you wouldn't get the exact settings as iTunes, you could do a bunch of testing to see what looks the same to you. You have to realize there are 40+ options and thousands of combinations of settings for h.264 (the video codec iTunes and yourself are using), the RF is just one of them. If I had to guess I'd say iTunes is in the 22-24 range, but so many other things can change the encode.
Yeah, when ripping movies you want a perfect copy.
Start by wiping the disc (whenever your wiping a disc always wipe across the disc not with the rings! Wipe with a very soft cloth!) and trying again.
If that fails, wipe it with some water.
If that fails, wipe it with a little soap and water.
If that fails, wipe it with a little toothpaste and water.
If that fails, well... let's hope it works before it gets here.
You can always lookup more tips for cleaning discs on Google, these are just what works for me.
It's not a MakeMKV problem, it's a scratched disc problem. MakeMKV needs to get a perfect read of everything, if it doesn't it just skips the title it's on.
Sven11, one more thing to note, when setting up the encodes watch for soft mandatory subtitles that you need to add to the encode. Any disc that's well made will have mandatory subtitles burned in, but sometimes a badly put together one might not have them burned in, if that's the case you'll have to turn on the subtitle track on in Handbrake.
You can't do that if you want to watch Hollywood films.
By just changing the RF you wouldn't get the exact settings as iTunes, you could do a bunch of testing to see what looks the same to you. You have to realize there are 40+ options and thousands of combinations of settings for h.264 (the video codec iTunes and yourself are using), the RF is just one of them. If I had to guess I'd say iTunes is in the 22-24 range, but so many other things can change the encode.
Yeah, when ripping movies you want a perfect copy.
Start by wiping the disc (whenever your wiping a disc always wipe across the disc not with the rings! Wipe with a very soft cloth!) and trying again.
If that fails, wipe it with some water.
If that fails, wipe it with a little soap and water.
If that fails, wipe it with a little toothpaste and water.
If that fails, well... let's hope it works before it gets here.
You can always lookup more tips for cleaning discs on Google, these are just what works for me.
It's not a MakeMKV problem, it's a scratched disc problem. MakeMKV needs to get a perfect read of everything, if it doesn't it just skips the title it's on.
Sven11, one more thing to note, when setting up the encodes watch for soft mandatory subtitles that you need to add to the encode. Any disc that's well made will have mandatory subtitles burned in, but sometimes a badly put together one might not have them burned in, if that's the case you'll have to turn on the subtitle track on in Handbrake.
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Play old HD DVD movies on new MacBook Pro?
Blu-Rays don't have DRM that works, you can't make DRM for movies that in unbreakable. You said no DRM. Also some people don't like how low quality the video is on DVDs and only buy Blu-Rays.
Blu-Rays don't have DRM that works, you can't make DRM for movies that in unbreakable. You said no DRM. Also some people don't like how low quality the video is on DVDs and only buy Blu-Rays.