Anyone use SageTV for DVD playback?

[valnar]

As an alternate to Zoom Player or TheaterTek, has anyone used the built-in DVD playback feature of SageTV? From a remote control standpoint, it would keep the commands similar, but is the quality as good? I assume you can use the same Sonic filters in either one, right?

-Robert

[gplasky]

Quality is good. You can use Sonic, NVDVD, PowerDVD or any of the popular ones. The Hauppague drives are NON-CSS so don't try to use these.


Gerry

[stanger89]

I've been doing that with Sonic filters for a while, the quality is very good. It should be the same as TT since TT also uses the Sonic filters.

[valnar]

Any functional differences or problems?

[GbrNole]

FF and rew functions could be better. you can't post process with ffdshow and skipping comercials is a pain in the ass but overall movie playback is great.

[stanger89]

Yeah, no FF RWD, just the 10s skipps. Skipping commercials doesn't really have anything to do with DVD playback. I had to re-map the Next/Prev buttons on my Streamzap remote, but that was my configuration, nothing to do with Sage.

Actually it plays everything I've thrown at it just fine, it even plays Video Essentials just like my Pioneer, Zoomplayer (when I used it) had trouble with the somewhat unusual layout of VE.

[GbrNole]

actually i should sub the word commercials with "movie previews" which is what i meant.

[stanger89]

GbrNole,

What's hard about it?

[GbrNole]

maybe it's just my setup but on numerous dvd's i HAVE to sit through the crappy previews as sage wont let me skip them. no biggie but an annoyance.

[stanger89]

Many DVDs force you to sit through previews. DVDs have the option to restrict what the user can do at any given place in the DVD. This sounds like the problem you have having. The only issue with Sage is that it actually obeys that flag (or whatever it is) just like a STB.

That's one of the reasons, I always rip my DVDs "movie only" before I watch them. It has the added benefit of being quieter since the DVD drive isn't spinning durring the movie and also eliminates any interuption durring the layer change.

[GbrNole]

right - i'd do the same but lack the disk space!!! :P

there are plenty of programs that can run and ignore the flags just not sure if i could run one in the background and have it fix the problem. it would be great if it could work but i hate loading stuff on my htpc if not necessary in a effort to maintain stability.

[stanger89]

I don't have it either, unfortunately, I can't afford it! I try to leave at least 50Gb for DVD rips, so if I know I'm going to watch a movie and have some time, I fire up DVDShrink and rip the movie so it's ready to go when I am.

[Jakebucky]

try converting your dvd's to divx...highly compressed and decent quality if you do it right. My average 2 hr movie size is 720 mb.

[rotaryracer]

I've used Sage to playback ripped DVDs using both NVDVD 2.55 and Sonic Cinemaster decoders. PQ seems pretty equal, although I'm probably partial to the NVDVD over Sonic.

On audio, has anyone else noticed that Sonic doesn't pass DTS? I'm not looking for it to decode (I have my Denon doing that), but just pass the signal through. NVDVD does it fine, but Sonic goes mute when I try DTS. It handles DD5.1 fine, though.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by Jakebucky
try converting your dvd's to divx...highly compressed and decent quality if you do it right. My average 2 hr movie size is 720 mb.

Divx is not acceptable on an HDTV (not to mention the projector I want to get), plus it would take ~6months for me to convert all my DVDs to Divx and it would still require more space than I have available.

[stanger89]

Originally posted by rotaryracer
I've used Sage to playback ripped DVDs using both NVDVD 2.55 and Sonic Cinemaster decoders. PQ seems pretty equal, although I'm probably partial to the NVDVD over Sonic.

On audio, has anyone else noticed that Sonic doesn't pass DTS? I'm not looking for it to decode (I have my Denon doing that), but just pass the signal through. NVDVD does it fine, but Sonic goes mute when I try DTS. It handles DD5.1 fine, though.

Something must not be right there, I use Sonic and can pass DTS just fine. Did you select SPDIF from the audio setup in Cineplayer?

[lmaccherone]

I use the channel up button to skip through each preview. You can do this for each preview (as long as they are set up as seperate chapters) and quickly breeze through the previews.

I have other complaints/problems that maybe someone else knows how to work around.

1. Our system is setup in an AV stack and has no monitor hooked up. There is a wireless keyboard but it is rarely used. I want it to automatically start the DVD in Sage when I insert it. I had to turn the autoload feature of the drive off because whenever I inserted a DVD with additional PC features, it would try to run that software. I got normal DVDs to auto run with PowerDVD but not in Sage. I have to then get the keyboard to switch back to Sage when the DVD is done. Is there a way around this?

2. Also, is there a key on the Hauppauge remote that cooresponds to the "menu" button on a DVD player?

BTW, now that I'm used to it, I like the way FF and REW work.

[stanger89]

I haven't tried this but in my SageTV dir there's DVDAutoplay.reg that looks like it does what you want.

[lmaccherone]

Do I run the .reg file with regedit?

[justme]

On my system(WinXP) you just run or double click a .reg file. Then Windoz will ask if you want to import the settings into your registry. Say yes, reboot for good measure, and that's it.