Playback of blu-ray backups

[Muchacho]

We like to hide all the kids DVDs so they cant break them and then watch them through the sageTV extender. I just got a LG bluray/HD-DVD combo drive and would like to play backups of blurays on the HD extender.

When I try to watch the .m2ts file or a .m2ts file remuxed into a mkv wrapper on the HD extender, it will either hang, show a blank screen, or stutter severely. Is there a way to do this, preferably without having to re-encode the whole video?

If this discussion is beyond what is considered appropriate, I apologize and am only trying to watch movies that we own.

Thanks

[jpporter]

I just found a way to at least play blu-ray discs using "Elecard Converter Studio AVC HD Edition".
http://www.elecard.com/products/prod...-studio-avchd/
There is a demo version available.

re-enncoding to mpeg2 to DV 1080i works, I have been playing around with settings to see what gives the best overall output.

[Muchacho]

Thanks- About how long does it take for a typical movie? It sounds like that method will do a complete re-encode?

Thanks

[bialio]

Most BD's that use the AVC codec have a video bitrate that is too high for the HD100.

In theory, any VC-1 encoded (ie HDDVD) mkv will work, as long as you get the audio into a format that is HD100 friendly.

There's a thread about some of this in the General Discussion area :
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29015

btl.

EDIT : So VC-1 isn't only found on HDDVD - but from what I've seen more often than not BD uses MPEG2 or AVC, and HDDVD uses VC-1.

[Muchacho]

Thanks for the info-

So I should have better luck in general with HDDVD? I am currently working on encoding the files a mkv with x264 compression. So far I have not had much luck, but if anything works I will let you know.

[jpporter]

After more testing, if the blu-ray movie is in mpeg2 format already, you can just copy the streams and put them in an mpg wrapper (using converter studio). Time is based on your hard drive speed.

If the movie is AVC you will need to re-encode as mpeg2. That takes 2-3 hours with basic settings at 1080i (on intel 6600). Not sure about 1080p