Bluray playing... have searched and read allot

[toony]

Hi,
i have read quite allot and just want to confirm what I think I have learned.

I am getting a Bluray player for the server.

If I use Power DVD HD I drop a disc in the player and watch it through my extender on my TV with all menus at 1080P. There is some tinkering around to do to get sage to start up Power DVD or I can use a Harmony remote.

Or I can rip and remux the files to the hard drive and store it for playpack through the extender.

This is correct right?

I don't want to rip the discs and remux as I would like to eventually just rip the entire disc and store as we do now with DVD's. Hoping that sage / extender will eventually allow that, and as HDD's come down in price.

So for now I am happy just playing Bluray discs from the disc tray as long as I can watch it through Powere DVD Hd.

Thanks

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by toony

Hi,
i have read quite allot and just want to confirm what I think I have learned.

I am getting a Bluray player for the server.

If I use Power DVD HD I drop a disc in the player and watch it through my extender on my TV with all menus at 1080P. There is some tinkering around to do to get sage to start up Power DVD or I can use a Harmony remote.

Not sure how you plan on doing that, you can't route external programs through the extender.

Or I can rip and remux the files to the hard drive and store it for playpack through the extender.

This is correct right?

You can do the later (rip) but not the former.

I don't want to rip the discs and remux as I would like to eventually just rip the entire disc and store as we do now with DVD's. Hoping that sage / extender will eventually allow that, and as HDD's come down in price.

So for now I am happy just playing Bluray discs from the disc tray as long as I can watch it through Powere DVD Hd.

Not through an extender.

[killervette]

i use my ps3 to rip my bluray discs and put them on my server. I play them through the hd100 extender. I use eac3to and mkvmerge to repack the bluray into a mkv container with ac3 sound.

[toony]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Not sure how you plan on doing that, you can't route external programs through the extender.



You can do the later (rip) but not the former.



Not through an extender.

I read this thread here, on starting power dvd with a harmony remote.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...er+dvd+harmony

It's not full proof as fara s I can tell but they seem to have it going.

Are there any plans to allow for full Blu ray storage like dvd?

[toony]

Originally Posted by killervette

i use my ps3 to rip my bluray discs and put them on my server. I play them through the hd100 extender. I use eac3to and mkvmerge to repack the bluray into a mkv container with ac3 sound.

Is there any loss in video quality?

[killervette]

Originally Posted by toony

Is there any loss in video quality?

no quality loss since there is no compression or encoding to be done. The resulting file is 18-25GB or so. I strip out the menus, bonus stuff, and only take 1 audio track. So the file size is slightly less than the full bluray disc.

[toony]

Originally Posted by killervette

So the file size is slightly less than the full bluray disc.

Can you just keep everything so that the extras and bonus material remain with the menus?

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by toony

I read this thread here, on starting power dvd with a harmony remote.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/show...er+dvd+harmony

It's quite easy to launch PowerDVD (even from an extender) but it will launch on the server and will output audio and video on the server. There's no way around that (short of routing the server's output into the HD PVR, recording it, and playing it through the Extender).

Are there any plans to allow for full Blu ray storage like dvd?

I expect it to be a very long time before anyone (not just Sage) provide full Blu-ray support (ie menus, navigation, etc) on extenders.

[killervette]

Originally Posted by toony

Can you just keep everything so that the extras and bonus material remain with the menus?

I dont think i could the way i do it.

[hockeyfan]

I remember watching the DVD menu and thinking "there has to be a way to stream this". I scoured the forums and found a lot of usefull information. The two key pieces of information are:

1. Mapping a video folder (UNC).
2. A program like AnyDVD.

The result was amazing for DVD, full menus, multiplexed throughout the sage network. I guess I should mention my sage network is comprised of two HD100 and sagetvclient (I don't watch TV off of server).

After trying out AnyDVD-HD I am able to watch (the movie only) blu-ray throughout my network. I need to mention this only works if the audio stream is 5.1. First I drop the blu-ray disc in the drive and AnyDVD does it's job. I rescan import folders. I see a folder called BDMV, inside is a another folder called STREAM. At this point you select the .m2ts file. The largest .m2ts file is the movie, based on my experience so far. I can then watch the movie through the extender, seen a few already

If the movie is 7.1 audio then you need to follow the demux/remux procudure.

I don't have powerdvd installed on the server.

Hopefully someone finds this usefull.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by hockeyfan

I remember watching the DVD menu and thinking "there has to be a way to stream this". I scoured the forums and found a lot of usefull information. The two key pieces of information are:

1. Mapping a video folder (UNC).
2. A program like AnyDVD.

Lets be clear, you don't get BD menus or extras though.

I need to mention this only works if the audio stream is 5.1.

It's got nothing to do with whether it's "5.1" or not, it's all about the audio codec. The Extender only supports DD and DTS, so if the audio track is PCM (even 5.1) it won't work AFAIK. I'm not sure if the Extender is smart enough to be able to extract the core stream from DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD tracks.

[killervette]

Originally Posted by stanger89

I'm not sure if the Extender is smart enough to be able to extract the core stream from DTS-HD MA or Dolby TrueHD tracks.

Pretty sure it cant. i have tried it

[hockeyfan]

Yes, stanger you are correct. Movie only no menus. I thought I mentioned that in my bracket statement, but I can see how that can be overlooked.

And really codecs aside I can get 5.1 DTS or DD to work and not 7.1 true DD, that was where I was coming from. All of my statements are not from what I think I know but rather what I have been able to do.

I am only trying to help ppl out, and not try to confuse them.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by hockeyfan

Yes, stanger you are correct. Movie only no menus. I thought I mentioned that in my bracket statement, but I can see how that can be overlooked.

Only reason I mentioned it

And really codecs aside I can get 5.1 DTS or DD to work and not 7.1 true DD, that was where I was coming from.

DD doesn't support 7.1, so any 7.1 is by default, not DD or DTS

I am only trying to help ppl out, and not try to confuse them.

Me too, just trying to add information or clarification where I can

[MarkV]

There doesn't appear to be a fool proof way for all blu-ray formats to playback on the extender after being ripped to .mkv without re-encoding the video stream. It's usable, but some formats stutter so it can be annoying.

Please prove me wrong.

[Motofreak75]

MarkV what video format(s) doesn't work for you ? I haven't seen any of my blue rips fall to play yet, that I have left un touch

[valnar]

Originally Posted by MarkV

There doesn't appear to be a fool proof way for all blu-ray formats to playback on the extender after being ripped to .mkv without re-encoding the video stream. It's usable, but some formats stutter so it can be annoying.

Is there a particular program that works well in transcoding to MKV which is compatible with the HD Extender? I know there are several ways to do it (am a member of Doom9 too), but I wanted to know specifically if one way works better with the Sage clients.

Should I also take all 1080p videos down to 720p, or does 1080p work okay? I don't own a Blu-ray drive for my PC yet, but am getting close to buying one.

[stanger89]

haven't tried it myself yet, but TSMuxeR claims to be able to do it. Maybe TSRemux as well.

There should be no reason to touch the video at all. Audio you'll want to convert to DD or DTS (or extract the core streams).

[SWKerr]

I don't know about the extenders but I use MeGui to convert my BluRays for playback on the Client.

I start with TSMuxerGui and create a m2ts file with just the video and the English sound. Most of the time I have to check the box to downconvert TRUE-HD sound. They are 1080 at this point and are about 18-25gb. These files play just fine on the Client machines. Takes about 30-60 minutes to convert.

If it is something I will watch once then I just delete the m2ts file when I am done. If it is something that will get a lot of play then I convert it using MeGui to a mkv file. I resize everything down to 1280x720 (usually will end up as 1280x528 after croping the black space) I encode it at a bitrate of about 4000 using the Xbox360 template. The goal is to have a mp4 under 4gb that I can put on a DVD and play on the Xbox360. The MK4 plays perfectly on the Xbox but for some strange reason will skip on SageTV. I simply Mux it again as a mkv and it will play fine. (Same video and sound files) (The video in the SageTV library is a mkv and the DVD backup is a MK4 for use in the xbox360.)

On my 46" and 42" TVs I can't really tell the difference between original 1080 files and the 1280x720/4000kbit mkv/mp4 files. At just 4Gb I can't justify the extra disk space for full resolution. I have also had issues with minor skipping with converted full 1080 files in Sage. (Not on Xbox360) I have not tried to find a setting that works with 1080 but I expect since the original works that I could find something if I thought the final product was worth it.