HD100: What can it play (bluray rips,x264,subtitles)

[azirath]

Hi,

Until now i have used a single HTPC in my living room with Mediaportal. I am planning to switch to a server/client based system in which my old ugly HTCP is put into a closet somewhere and just acts as a storage and recording server. I watch DVB-T (unencrypted) and DVB-C (encrypted) signals.

The HD100 extender seems like a very interesting candidate, enough so that i might switch to SageTV because of it. However, i do have some questions about the extenders abilities:

1. I know DVB/teletext subtitles are not supported (which is a big minus btw), but what about MKV files containing subtitles as well as other subtitle formats?
2. Does it play DVD rips (ie decrypted DVD folder structures)?
3. Does it play Bluray rips (same as above just bluray)?
4. Can it play any HD x264 encoded file or only those that are normally compatible with hardware acceleration on the PC as well?

2+3 are rather critical as we only watch TV once in a while, while we watch DVDs (and in the near future Bluray) quite a lot.

[Lucas]

Originally Posted by azirath

Hi,

Until now i have used a single HTPC in my living room with Mediaportal. I am planning to switch to a server/client based system in which my old ugly HTCP is put into a closet somewhere and just acts as a storage and recording server. I watch DVB-T (unencrypted) and DVB-C (encrypted) signals.

The HD100 extender seems like a very interesting candidate, enough so that i might switch to SageTV because of it. However, i do have some questions about the extenders abilities:

1. I know DVB/teletext subtitles are not supported (which is a big minus btw), but what about MKV files containing subtitles as well as other subtitle formats?
2. Does it play DVD rips (ie decrypted DVD folder structures)?
3. Does it play Bluray rips (same as above just bluray)?
4. Can it play any HD x264 encoded file or only those that are normally compatible with hardware acceleration on the PC as well?

2+3 are rather critical as we only watch TV once in a while, while we watch DVDs (and in the near future Bluray) quite a lot.

1. Subtitles embedded in mkv files are not yet supported. However, external subtitles in .smi form(easy to convert from srt) are supported with a plugin.
2. Yes.
3. No. But the demuxed streams when muxed into an mkv container play most of the times.
4. Yes.

Hope this helps.

[azirath]

Originally Posted by Lucas

1. Subtitles embedded in mkv files are not yet supported. However, external subtitles in .smi form(easy to convert from srt) are supported with a plugin.

Do you know if support is planned for embedded MKV subs and srt subs?

3. No. But the demuxed streams when muxed into an mkv container play most of the times.

Thats really too bad, the whole point for me of getting the HD-100 (besides being much cheaper than an HTPC) would be to have to do less fiddling to get things to work. On the other hand i dont even have a Bluray drive yet or anything to rip

Is support for this planned for the HD-100, or is there some hardware limitation involved?

Hope this helps.

It does

[lobosrul]

Let me add:

It will play demuxed Blu-ray (and remuxed to MKV), so long as the disc is encoded in h.264 or MPEG-2. Its a no-go for VC-1* on my setup anyways. The HD-100 also doesn't support any of the advance autio codecs like TrueHD.

*Why we even have to suffer with VC-1 is beyond me. Its microsoft's usual non standard compliant tech that is no better than h.264, I don't understand the point of its existence.

[azirath]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Let me add:
It will play demuxed Blu-ray (and remuxed to MKV), so long as the disc is encoded in h.264 or MPEG-2. Its a no-go for VC-1* on my setup anyways. The HD-100 also doesn't support any of the advance autio codecs like TrueHD.

Does that mean that you cant get audio of some Bluray rips or just that you have to use a sound track of lower quality?

Are all these incompatibilities rooted in hardware issues or can it be fixed later through firmware upgrades?

*Why we even have to suffer with VC-1 is beyond me. Its microsoft's usual non standard compliant tech that is no better than h.264, I don't understand the point of its existence.

I agree, but now that it exists its hard to ignore

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by azirath

Does that mean that you cant get audio of some Bluray rips or just that you have to use a sound track of lower quality?

Are all these incompatibilities rooted in hardware issues or can it be fixed later through firmware upgrades?

1) All Blu-ray's include either a Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS track. The HD-100 will decode the AC3 directly, but only pass-thru a DTS track (to an AV receiver).

As a side not, you really have to be a real audiophile with fairly high end equipment to hear the difference between DTS and "HD" audio.



2) I'm not actually 100% sure if the HD-100 will pass-thru any of the "HD"* audio tracks, but they won't mux into an mkv container at present anyways. If the HD-100 did ever pass thru those audio types, it would have to be with an HDMI cable.

*HD audio would be DTS-HD, TrueHD, Dolby Digital+.

[azirath]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

1) All Blu-ray's include either a Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS track. The HD-100 will decode the AC3 directly, but only pass-thru a DTS track (to an AV receiver).

Can it pass the DTS track over HDMI to a HDTV, or does HDTVs require the audio to be decoded? (i dont want any other AV equipment except for either a HTPC or the HD-100 and my TV).

As a side not, you really have to be a real audiophile with fairly high end equipment to hear the difference between DTS and "HD" audio.

I am no audiophile, but i do want *some* audio

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by azirath

Can it pass the DTS track over HDMI to a HDTV, or does HDTVs require the audio to be decoded? (i dont want any other AV equipment except for either a HTPC or the HD-100 and my TV).

Sure it could pass it thru, but there aren't many (any??) TV's out there that can decode DTS.

However, you can always use a program called eac3to to convert any track to AC3. Its quite quick actually.

In fact if you're *SURE* you never want to get an AV receiver then you may as well downmix the audio to stereo and encode it with something more efficient than AC3 (I recommend 64kbps Vorbis, I use that for commentary tracks).

I hope you're not expecting getting a hdd copy of a Bluray disc playable on Sage is anything like a DVD. It is certainly not drag and drop; subtitles and something called "seamless branching" or a real bitch to deal with.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Let me add:

It will play demuxed Blu-ray (and remuxed to MKV), so long as the disc is encoded in h.264 or MPEG-2. Its a no-go for VC-1* on my setup anyways. The HD-100 also doesn't support any of the advance autio codecs like TrueHD.

Technically it supports tranport streams (and theoretically m2ts streams) as well, though I've yet to try it much with Blu-ray rips.

*Why we even have to suffer with VC-1 is beyond me. Its microsoft's usual non standard compliant tech that is no better than h.264, I don't understand the point of its existence.

You talking about Microsoft's implementation of SMPTE 421M? It's nearly as efficient as H.264 and significantly easier to decode.

Originally Posted by lobosrul

1) All Blu-ray's include either a Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS track. The HD-100 will decode the AC3 directly, but only pass-thru a DTS track (to an AV receiver).

Or PCM, they don't have to have a DD track.

2) I'm not actually 100% sure if the HD-100 will pass-thru any of the "HD"* audio tracks, but they won't mux into an mkv container at present anyways. If the HD-100 did ever pass thru those audio types, it would have to be with an HDMI cable.

It won't, I'm 99.99% sure it doesn't have HDMI 1.3 which is required for bitstreaming HBR codecs. It may be capable of supporting multichannel PCM but that's somewhat questionable too.

Originally Posted by azirath

Can it pass the DTS track over HDMI to a HDTV, or does HDTVs require the audio to be decoded? (i dont want any other AV equipment except for either a HTPC or the HD-100 and my TV).

Can your TV decode DTS? And not to be rude or anything, but you have absolutely no need of any of the advanced audio codecs if you're just using your TV for audio.

[cool_runner]

According to support, the extender is using HDMI 1.1. So bitstreaming of HD Audio is out of the question.

Does anyone know if there is a way to get Popcorn Hour A-110 to work with Sage. i.e. streaming of TV and the GUI? It is capable of bitstreaming the newer codecs.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Technically it supports tranport streams (and theoretically m2ts streams) as well, though I've yet to try it much with Blu-ray rips.

Just added .m2ts to "seeker/video_library_import_filename_extensions". MPEG-2 plays with the Sage client (with dshow filters), VC-1 does not, don't have any h.264 to test. No-go completely on the extender.

Originally Posted by stanger89

You talking about Microsoft's implementation of SMPTE 421M? It's nearly as efficient as H.264 and significantly easier to decode.

Yes, but ALL BD players must be able to decode h.264 anyways, so I still don't see the point of VC-1 on BD. Just another hurdle to climb for software player (or the HD-100 in this case) compatibility.

Originally Posted by stanger89

Or PCM, they don't have to have a DD track.

I doubt you'll find many BD's with a PCM stereo track and no DD (maybe some music concerts). It would probably sound identical with TV speakers anyways.

Originally Posted by cool_runner

Does anyone know if there is a way to get Popcorn Hour A-110 to work with Sage. i.e. streaming of TV and the GUI? It is capable of bitstreaming the newer codecs.

It looks like the Popcorn Hour does have a bit of a mod community. Still I doubt its possible for a 3rd party to make it 100% into a SageTV client. I don't actually care about the advanced audio codecs, but it sure would be nice if the Sage player supports subtitles and audio stream switching in mkv like the A-110 does!!

[ziphnor]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Can your TV decode DTS? And not to be rude or anything, but you have absolutely no need of any of the advanced audio codecs if you're just using your TV for audio.

I got the impression from an earlier post that some Blurays only had audio tracks in 'advanced audio codecs', so that i would either be required to transcode the audio or pass it to the TV.

But as pointed out, i can see thats its not a straightforward process to play Bluray rips on the HD-100.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Just added .m2ts to "seeker/video_library_import_filename_extensions". MPEG-2 plays with the Sage client (with dshow filters), VC-1 does not, don't have any h.264 to test. No-go completely on the extender.

Yes, but ALL BD players must be able to decode h.264 anyways, so I still don't see the point of VC-1 on BD. Just another hurdle to climb for software player (or the HD-100 in this case) compatibility.

They're required to play VC-1 as well, and when the HD DVD and Blu-ray standards were being developed, VC-1 was much farther along development wise than H.264 (especially in terms of encoding tools). Probably 90% of HD DVDs used VC-1 for that reason (and to very good effect). Lack of well-developed H.264 tools is a big reason initial Blu-ray releases mostly used MPEG-2. It wasn't until close to a year into Blu-ray's life that H.264 tools really started coming of age.

I doubt you'll find many BD's with a PCM stereo track and no DD (maybe some music concerts). It would probably sound identical with TV speakers anyways.

Just something to consider (and not PCM stereo, 5.1 or 7.1 PCM). And FWIW, seems like I've seen quite a few BDs without a DD track, Fox especially is fond of just sticking a DTS-HD MA track on from what I've seen.

[skyeclad]

How much time does a typical demux/remux take assuming you want a straight rip?

If you then wanted to further compress to a more reasonable file size, say 12gb. How much more time investment are we talking for a quad core box?

[Motofreak75]

depends on the system, My machine takes I guess around 30 minutes de/re mux a 30 gig rip. And for me, I wouldn't try and further compress a blueray rip unless you have a lot of time, a lot tools used to compress etc. don't support quad or even dual core cpu's


And VC1 plays just fine on the stx. I have a few movies that are Vc1 and since the july27 firmware, the stx can play them. And as of August 4th firmware, I can now watch a AVC/DTS movie that spends a lot of time above 40mbits bitrate almost perfectly.

The Sage dev team has spend a lot of time accommodating forum users to help tweak the stx. And if you have a issue please submit a bug report it can only get better.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Just something to consider (and not PCM stereo, 5.1 or 7.1 PCM). And FWIW, seems like I've seen quite a few BDs without a DD track, Fox especially is fond of just sticking a DTS-HD MA track on from what I've seen.

Fox seems to be going with DTS-HD tracks, while most of the other studios go with a TrueHD track and a DD track (that only holds true on newer movies). I've seen audiophiles complain about this in forums.

DTS-HD contains a DTS track within it, any DTS capable device can decode DTS-HD. If I remember correctly, TSMuxer can "core" the track to DTS w/o re-encoding it. I like to encode everything to DD 5.1 though, just to save space.

I believe HD-DVD players could always handle TrueHD while its optional on BD, hence the need for a DD track to be included.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS-HD_Master_Audio

I have a hard time believing a TV will be able to cope with a 5.1/7.1 PCM track. Can HDMI 1.1 even handle it (I'm not sure)? I'm also reasonably sure no BD disc contains a raw 5.1/7.1 PCM track. TrueHD's purpose is to be lossless audio, but at about half the size as PCM.

EDIT: BD does support 5.1/7.1 PCM, and is found on a few discs (imports I think).

Originally Posted by skyeclad

How much time does a typical demux/remux take assuming you want a straight rip?

That really depends. In the best case scenario: MPEG-2/h.264 video, the entire movie is in one m2ts file, and there are no subs to process, it would take me maybe 10 minutes of actual "work" in front of the PC, processing time, I don't know 30 minutes, not counting getting the blu-ray to the HDD.

I've only successfully done one remuxing with "seamless branching" (when the movie is in more than one m2ts file), that took me maybe 2 hours to figure out.

Subtitles can be time consuming to process, also I hard-code them into the video stream since sage cant process .srt. These have to be converted to text from the BD's format.

The HD-100 can't handle VC-1. So if the BD disc your converting contains VC-1 you will have to re-encode it.

Originally Posted by skyeclad

If you then wanted to further compress to a more reasonable file size, say 12gb. How much more time investment are we talking for a quad core box?

That really depends on what codec, and settings your using. I wouldn't use a constant file size for encoding a BD BTW (you said 12GB).

On my machine, an Intel dual-core 3 GHZ, I can do a 720p h.264 encode of a 2 hour movie in roughly 10-12 hours. Thats with a quick 1st pass, and an HQ (but not insane quality) 2nd pass at a bitrate from 3500-5000. I would guess a 1080p encode at double that bitrate would take a little bit longer on a quad-core.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by Motofreak75

And VC1 plays just fine on the stx. I have a few movies that are Vc1 and since the july27 firmware, the stx can play them. And as of August 4th firmware, I can now watch a AVC/DTS movie that spends a lot of time above 40mbits bitrate almost perfectly.

I *thought* I had the latest firmware, but maybe not. VC-1 playback gives me a bunch of giant green blocks on the HD-100.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

I have a hard time believing a TV will be able to cope with a 5.1/7.1 PCM track.

I don't know if TVs can or can't, but BD players have to support multichannel PCM.

Can HDMI 1.1 even handle it (I'm not sure)? I'm also reasonably sure no BD disc contains a raw 5.1/7.1 PCM track.

HDMI 1.0 supported 8 channel 24bit/192kHz LPCM.

[skyeclad]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

That really depends. In the best case scenario: MPEG-2/h.264 video, the entire movie is in one m2ts file, and there are no subs to process, it would take me maybe 10 minutes of actual "work" in front of the PC, processing time, I don't know 30 minutes, not counting getting the blu-ray to the HDD.

I've only successfully done one remuxing with "seamless branching" (when the movie is in more than one m2ts file), that took me maybe 2 hours to figure out.

That really depends on what codec, and settings your using. I wouldn't use a constant file size for encoding a BD BTW (you said 12GB).

On my machine, an Intel dual-core 3 GHZ, I can do a 720p h.264 encode of a 2 hour movie in roughly 10-12 hours. Thats with a quick 1st pass, and an HQ (but not insane quality) 2nd pass at a bitrate from 3500-5000. I would guess a 1080p encode at double that bitrate would take a little bit longer on a quad-core.

I'm glad to see that remuxing isn't a very long process but I wonder how many "seamless branching" movies are out there?

I agree, I wouldn't force a compression to a constant file size but I would hope to reduce the storage needs of a hidef movie. I've seen some really good 720P versions of 1080P material and I thought they looked better than DVD but did not require much more space.

[lobosrul]

Originally Posted by skyeclad

I'm glad to see that remuxing isn't a very long process but I wonder how many "seamless branching" movies are out there?

I agree, I wouldn't force a compression to a constant file size but I would hope to reduce the storage needs of a hidef movie. I've seen some really good 720P versions of 1080P material and I thought they looked better than DVD but did not require much more space.

Theres two types of seamless branching. Some BD's have multiple cuts of the film on them (ie Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind), and have the movie spread over many (50+ I think) m2ts files. I haven't seen any of those, and I think they're very rare. Other BD's have the movie over two m2ts's (why I don't know). I'd say the latter kind occur about 1 disc in 5.

As for 720p, I'd say 3-5 GB is about right for most movies. It depends on the length (obviously), the amount of high motion scenes, and the size of the black bars you can crop out.