HD200 and Blu-Ray playback?

[appelm]

Originally Posted by topperdude

Can the HD200 playback BluRay movies from a shared network drive on a computer that does not have SageTV software installed?

My SageTV server is an old computer with only IDE interfaces. My home/office PC however is a newer computer where I could install a SATA/BluRay drive and AnyDVD HD. If I purchase HD200, would I able to stream the main BluRay movie to the HD200?

Thanks,
-Topper

Yes.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by topperdude

Can the HD200 playback BluRay movies from a shared network drive on a computer that does not have SageTV software installed?

Yes, just map the correct folder/drive in sage using UNC paths. I have not tried this with the bluray drive directly but works fine for HDD's

[cat6man]

yes

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

Issue 1: Have tried this so far on 2 blurays. On Casino Royale it starts playback from the beginning of the filer, at time = 00:00:00, but at chapter 9/16 (what sage thinks the chapter is). From there I can chapter skip succefully one chapter at a time (to the right time in the file) but the chapter number is wrong. Any ideas? could I be remuxing improperly. I ran BDinfo on the created BDMV folder and all seemed kosher, and used eac3to to extract the chapter and again all seemed ok.

So it appears this is an issue in the way tsmuxer authors the disk. Specifically, the way the mpls (playlist) file sets the Time In value. This is the time that playback starts at the beginning of the file. So this explains why the chapter information is off. I was able to confirm this by modifying the original mpls file to point to the correct m2ts (video) file and confirmed correct chapter info/playback in sage. It still does not fix the audio info on the OSD (see below).

New issue i just noticed: When playing back the full disc sage reports the audio language correctly in the OSD, while in the disc mastered by TSremux it just ends up blank. Same thing goes for subtitles.

This still doesnt answer this question (GetMediaFileFormatDescription returns the correct info... still trying to figure out why the OSD doesn't display the correct information).

[Dravor]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

When you create a BDMV file structure for the HD-200, you can still make TMT (or Power DVD) the default player for m2ts files by file association. Then you can use Explorer to browse your network/PC, double click on the m2ts file in the BDMV/STREAMS folder (there is only one m2ts file, containing the whole movie, when muxed), and play with TMT/PDVD.

There may be other ways, but I've not tried any others.

I guess the bigger question I have is since you are changing the playlist, will the menu playback for BR still work. The main reason I ask, is that my main playback room has a PC currently, with surround sound that supports LPCM output, and so I am using TMT3 to playback BluRay movies and decode TrueHD to LPCM.

I want to be to play back the movies on the HD200, but no break any functionality on the PC end either.

-Dravor

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

New issue i just noticed: When playing back the full disc sage reports the audio language correctly in the OSD, while in the disc mastered by TSremux it just ends up blank. Same thing goes for subtitles.

This still doesnt answer this question (GetMediaFileFormatDescription returns the correct info... still trying to figure out why the OSD doesn't display the correct information).

So heard back from Sage support for this. Its an issue with sage not returning anything when only a single audio stream is present in the movie. It will be fixed in the next release.

[TwistedTweaker]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

Well, I was wrong about seamless branching. I just tried Close Encounters which has 25-30 m2ts files to make up the movie, depending on the cut you want to watch. It plays perfectly in Sage from my shared BD Drive. Defaults to AC3 Spanish, but the True HD track can be selected and works even on my TV.

So, It's something other than seamless branching.

I was under the impression you could not use the Sage HD200 as a True HD pass-through?

Are you able to pass-through True HD and DTS HD? I have a high end surround sound system (well more like middle of the road...lol) and thought the only way I could achieve this was through a custom built MCE.

What Blu-Ray drives have people had a good response with in conjunction with WHS?

Thanks,

Sean

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by TwistedTweaker

I was under the impression you could not use the Sage HD200 as a True HD pass-through?

Are you able to pass-through True HD and DTS HD? I have a high end surround sound system (well more like middle of the road...lol) and thought the only way I could achieve this was through a custom built MCE.

What Blu-Ray drives have people had a good response with in conjunction with WHS?

Thanks,

Sean

When I talked about working on my TV, my TV is stereo so it's downconverted to AC3 then the TV renders it as stereo. True HD and DTS HD are not currently passed thru in HD format.

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

When I talked about working on my TV, my TV is stereo so it's downconverted to AC3 then the TV renders it as stereo. True HD and DTS HD are not currently passed thru in HD format.

The extenders extract the ac3/dts "core" stream and pass that along. It cannot pass through or decode the HD formats. Most HD streams will include an ac3/dts stream and then include the hd on top of that. There is talk that sage is working on decoding the hd formats and then being able to pass that along LPCM via HDMI.

[TwistedTweaker]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

When I talked about working on my TV, my TV is stereo so it's downconverted to AC3 then the TV renders it as stereo. True HD and DTS HD are not currently passed thru in HD format.

How does it down convert? Are you leaving multiple audio formats on the file? I would like to keep everything at DTS HD or True HD only, but I want to be able to watch them (at least in Stereo) until the Sage extender has the capability available.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by TwistedTweaker

How does it down convert? Are you leaving multiple audio formats on the file? I would like to keep everything at DTS HD or True HD only, but I want to be able to watch them (at least in Stereo) until the Sage extender has the capability available.

The way both DTS-MA and TrueHD work is that they are differential compression formats. What that means is that they contain a "core" of DTS or AC3. Then they use that core data to make a differential lossless audio. So when the full HD stream is played back it's actually using both the core and the rest of the data to make "lossless" playback.

What the HD200 can do is to play only the core DTS or AC3 audio from the stream and totally discard the lossless HD part.

[TwistedTweaker]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

The way both DTS-MA and TrueHD work is that they are differential compression formats. What that means is that they contain a "core" of DTS or AC3. Then they use that core data to make a differential lossless audio. So when the full HD stream is played back it's actually using both the core and the rest of the data to make "lossless" playback.

What the HD200 can do is to play only the core DTS or AC3 audio from the stream and totally discard the lossless HD part.

So in theory I will be able to Re-mux all of my Blu-rays to True HD or DTS HD and the extender will still be able to play the core AC3 audio from the file?

Is anyone streaming 20 or 30 gig files to the extender with no issues?

Are there any limitations to the HD200 vs. a custom HTPC? How is the picture quality playing back Blu-ray? Can you still customize the skin, etc?


Thanks,

Sean

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by TwistedTweaker

So in theory I will be able to Re-mux all of my Blu-rays to True HD or DTS HD and the extender will still be able to play the core AC3 audio from the file?

Yes this is what I do (and several others). I extract the main mpls file from the disc and strip out all the unnecessary video/audio/subtitle tracks using TSmuxer. I discovered a bug in the TSmuxer output that screws up the timeline (see http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...&postcount=144).

Is anyone streaming 20 or 30 gig files to the extender with no issues?

Yup again no issues. Quantum of Solace was giving me some issues where it would crash the hd-200 (requiring a hard reboot) but I eventually got it.

[appelm]

So to be clear, subtitles are not supported for bluray at this time? is that right? I ripped the foreign movie Mongol and it plays fine but since I don't speak Mongolian, I can't understand a thing and can't get the subtitles working.

[camens]

Correct, subtitles for Blu-ray are not supported yet. I would love someone from Sage to confirm they are working on that though....

[stanger89]

I thought they said they were in the "Subtitle Support" thread.

[TwistedTweaker]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

System Setup:
Server 2003 r2 32bit, SageTV 6.5.7 RC, SageMC 6.3.8b
2x HDHR (OTA), 1x HD-PVR (Comcast), 1x SageClient, 1x STX-HD100

I am thinking about adding an HD-PVR to my server and I use Comcast...how is that working for you? Can you pull it down to multiple TV's?


Why to you use an HDHR and a HD-PVR?

Thanks,

Sean

[IVB]

Originally Posted by TwistedTweaker

So in theory I will be able to Re-mux all of my Blu-rays to True HD or DTS HD and the extender will still be able to play the core AC3 audio from the file?

The one thing I noticed is that I cannot output the core to analog stereo outputs; it'll output the core via s/pdif just fine though.

[Suntan]

Hey guys. So I'm finally getting around to finishing the basement to make the Mrs. happy, and putting a projector/theater in for my troubles...

Anyway, the Sage Server currently resides upstairs and it doesn't have the horsepower to run Blu-ray. The question is, would/do you guys think an HD200 would be acceptable as your main/only Bluray playback option? I'd add a bluray drive in the Sage server to rip/play the discs to the theater in the basement.

I understand the HD200 only supports regular DD/DTS at the moment, is it likely that it will get full support for the advanced audio formats in the future?

-Suntan

[IVB]

Originally Posted by Suntan

The question is, would/do you guys think an HD200 would be acceptable as your main/only Bluray playback option? I'd add a bluray drive in the Sage server to rip/play the discs to the theater in the basement.

-Suntan

yep, i'm actually selling off my standalone BluRay player as it's working that well for me.