I watched my first ripped Blu-ray movie on SageTV

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by MeInMaui

Is there any advantage to remuxing back into m2ts vs. ts? Thanks.

Aloha,
Mike

From what I've seen they are exactly the same. No real advantage one over the other. I have chosen to mux to m2ts in the hope that if/when Sage adopts a stance on BD playing, m2ts seems to be a given to be supported as it's the container of choice for the native BD streams.

[MeInMaui]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

From what I've seen they are exactly the same. No real advantage one over the other. I have chosen to mux to m2ts in the hope that if/when Sage adopts a stance on BD playing, m2ts seems to be a given to be supported as it's the container of choice for the native BD streams.

Makes sense. Thanks.

[vexhold]

Ok, I figured out cars..

Heres a general BD question....

Are they all Letterbox only? I have a 52" widescreen LCD and it displays letterbox. If I try any of the other views, it either stays the same or zooms enough to fill the screen but cuts the sides off immensly.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by vexhold

Heres a general BD question....

Are they all Letterbox only? I have a 52" widescreen LCD and it displays letterbox.

Almost all are letterbox. I know there are a few that were shot in 16x9. One or two of the first Bond films were shot in 15x9 and have slight pillarboxes on the edges. EDIT: Some older films were shot in 4x3 like Casablanca and The Adventures of Robin Hood. But the films on BD will 99.9% of the time be rendered in their original aspect ratio which is not 16x9 and requires either letterboxing or pillarboxing.

[vexhold]

A possible fix for the constant letterbox of blu-ray... Although I think it will look bad on any other AR.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/01/15...a-21-9-lcd-tv/

[popechild]

Does anyone know if it's possible to perform the same procedure (or a similar one) that we're doing here for HD-DVDs? I'm not really up to speed on the tech side of HD-DVD, I know I can rip them, but from that stage to extracting a useable file that Sage (and the Sage extender) will play - anyone know if that's possible? I sort of assume it is, but didn't know since I haven't seen anyone here talking about it. Reason I ask is that it's so cheap to buy HD-DVDs right now, it might make sense to pick some up if I know that I can watch them through Sage and don't need to rely on always having an HD-DVD player.

[hemicuda]

I agree. I've tried to follow the BD instructions on an HD-DVD and can't get past the ripping part. The program used in the next step chokes.

[popechild]

Originally Posted by hemicuda

I agree. I've tried to follow the BD instructions on an HD-DVD and can't get past the ripping part. The program used in the next step chokes.

Hmm... so no one else has tried this?

[Deacon Crusher]

sorry, ran a test the other day and meant to post results.

Not sure which version of the prep process you are running, but when I ripped my hd dvd of batman begins it played back just fine inside on my computer (outside of sage) and on my sage extender.

My process is to use eac3to to do all ripping except for the last step when I use mkvmerge to merge in the audio file ripped out by eac3to into the mkv created by eac3to that contains the video file.

If you search for my posts that contain eac3to you should find one where I lay out the step by step for doing this and it's no different with hd dvd then it is with blu ray.

I hadn't done this yet with an hd dvd because I did go hd dvd early on and have toshiba hd dvd players at the 2 televisions that we watch movies at so have just watched those discs via players, but trying to avoid spending the same money over again on blu-ray players so am ripping blu-ray discs as we get them and watching only via sage extender (or on computer.)

[popechild]

Excellent - thanks for the feedback!

[jmv]

I don't know if this will help...I did HD DVD many months ago...but here was my command line in EAC3to...other than that step, the steps I follow for blu are identical...

STEP #1
rip AnyDVDHD dvd to Hard Disk Option

STEP #2a Blu-ray
eac3to desired streams (for blu-ray this is 3 steps...)
figure out streams ==>
eac3to.exe "D:\Movies\FullDisc\OPEN_SEASON_2"
look in eac3to log file to choose stream...it is 1) in this case 1080p full movie ==>
eac3to.exe "D:\Movies\FullDisc\OPEN_SEASON_2" 1)
look in eac3to log file to choose desired audio/video/chapters/etc strip desired audio/video I do 1080p, ac3, and native HD audio ==>
eac3to.exe "D:\Movies\FullDisc\OPEN_SEASON_2" 1) 2: "D:\Movies\HD\Open Season 2\Open Season 2.mkv" 1: "D:\Movies\HD\Open Season 2\Open Season 2 chapters.txt" 3: "D:\Movies\HD\Open Season 2\Open Season 2.THD" 3: "D:\Movies\HD\Open Season 2\Open Season 2.ac3"

...or...STEP #2b HD
eac3to to desired streams (1 step, I believe eac3to automagically stripped audios and chapters out too by default)
eac3to.exe "M:\HD DVD\300 - HD\HVDVD_TS\feature_300NDOM6LF1VC1_HD1.EVO"+"M:\HD DVD\300 - HD\HVDVD_TS\feature_300NDOM6LF1VC1_HD1_Divide.EVO" "D:\Movies\HD\300\300.mkv" -stripPulldown

STEP #3 (Blu and HD same)
run MKVmerge, select the .mkv and .ac3 from above, and the chapters file

Done an .mkv that sageTV can play...now if only they can get that HD audio stuff working I'll mux those streams back in and be in both video AND audio paradise...

go here for more details on eac3to source and output files...http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Eac3to/How_to_Use

[chrishallowell]

I just ordered 3 HD200s and my next task is blurays.
If I decompress TrueHD to PCM using eac3to and mux the video and PCM in with TSMuxer. Will the HD200 play this?

If it will, what is the eac3to command I would use?

[hemicuda]

Here's what I ended up having to do to get things to work on my system...

1) Rip the HD DVD w/ Anydvd.

2) Use eac3to_more_gui.exe (my preference) to split out the specific audio (AC3) and video (MKV) portions. Best guess is to pick the biggest two EVO's with similar names.

You'll need to specify paths to eac3to and possibly mkvMerge. Haven't figured out how to add the audio file in the mkvMerge tab on the GUI so there's a step 3. I had to d/l the Haali demux as well.

3) Then I dump those 2 files into mkvMerge GUI and set the language under track options to "eng" for both files.

Worked great for me on the last 2 discs. Be careful of the order you add the EVO files though. It WILL process them in the order you pick. Had to redo the audio on the last one cause I got them reversed. Opening scene had audio from the middle of the movie.

I'm not going to bother with trying to compress the end result at this time since it's a 9+hr ordeal. And I haven't seen too much on the board about bitrate vs quality vs filesize.

[Mark SS]

Have tried a rip with tsMuxer and AnyDVD-HD, works fine in Media Player Classic but Sage throws a playback error. Any ideas or logs worth enabling? Cyberlink PowerDVD 7 codec is specified in properties file.

[MilkmanCDN]

Has anyone tried Ripbot264 (v.1.13.2)? I've used this with AnyDVDHD to successfully rip and compress BluRay's to .mp4 files. I find that encoding at constant quality (CRF=19) works very well with no studder on the HD-100 extender. Image quality is the same as the original.

Encoding time takes around 30+ hours on a dual-core processor, but it's something that you'd only have to do once.

The process I see posted here seems very tedious and complicated. Ripbot automates all of it.

[dagar]

Great gouge milkman ... currently trying it out based on your suggestion

Clearly my Q6600 needs to be replaced, not that I am hard to convince Need to do my part for the economy

[OldPCGUY]

So I finnally picked up an LG Blue Ray Drive for my PC and purchased a blue ray movie ('The Day After Tommorow').

I played the m2ts with an HD-200 extender.
Looks fine and sounds great, But no Subtitle or CC support on HD-200(well there might be a convoluted way).

Looking at the Video on a 42 Inch LCD in letter box format I noticed/realized several things.

1) Not significantly better than DVD with letter boxing.
2) Cinemax or Dish is zooming and cropping all its movies to fit in a 16:9 format. (kind of indifferent on this, yes it throws away some of the picture but it still looks pretty good and is certaninly better than my old 4:3 TV).
3) Without menus you are stuck with default sound, no subtitles etc. in M2TS unless you want to run TSremuxer.
4) I don't need 30Gbyte full 1080P movies for a 42 Inch display. The Dish 1080I Movies are about 12-15Gbytes and look very very good. OTA TV is even better since I don't soften the picture with an HD-PVR.
5) Blue Ray playback is locked down pretty good with very little full playback support except for PowerDVD. It makes no sense. Who can download a 30Gbyte movie?
6) DVD playback in Sage is fully supported with all menus, lagnuages, sound, subtitles.

If and when Sage decides to support CC, Subtitles or full Blue Ray playback then I may come back to Blue Ray. For Now the Blue Ray drive is going back and I will add more storage instead.

Blue Ray is a big dissapointment. Huge files, expensive players, expensive ROM drives, expensive media. But Hey TRUE HD sound.

[onlydarksets]

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

So I finnally picked up an LG Blue Ray Drive for my PC and purchased a blue ray movie ('The Day After Tommorow').

I played the m2ts with an HD-200 extender.
Looks fine and sounds great, But no Subtitle or CC support on HD-200(well there might be a convoluted way).

Looking at the Video on a 42 Inch LCD in letter box format I noticed/realized several things.

1) Not significantly better than DVD with letter boxing.

Definitely subjective - I did some A/B comparisons and noted a huge difference.

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

2) Cinemax or Dish is zooming and cropping all its movies to fit in a 16:9 format. (kind of indifferent on this, yes it throws away some of the picture but it still looks pretty good and is certaninly better than my old 4:3 TV).
3) Without menus you are stuck with default sound, no subtitles etc. in M2TS unless you want to run TSremuxer.

Pressing the Audio button on the remote will cycle audio streams. Of course, you have to have an AC3 stream in order for it to playback, but that's not the issue you were raising. I don't know if there is a similar button for subtitles, but try the options menu.

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

4) I don't need 30Gbyte full 1080P movies for a 42 Inch display. The Dish 1080I Movies are about 12-15Gbytes and look very very good. OTA TV is even better since I don't soften the picture with an HD-PVR.

I agree - you won't see a difference between 720p/1080i/1080p on a 42" display.

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

5) Blue Ray playback is locked down pretty good with very little full playback support except for PowerDVD. It makes no sense. Who can download a 30Gbyte movie?
6) DVD playback in Sage is fully supported with all menus, lagnuages, sound, subtitles.

If and when Sage decides to support CC, Subtitles or full Blue Ray playback then I may come back to Blue Ray. For Now the Blue Ray drive is going back and I will add more storage instead.

Good points.

Originally Posted by OldPCGUY

Blue Ray is a big dissapointment. Huge files, expensive players, expensive ROM drives, expensive media. But Hey TRUE HD sound.

I don't disagree with your facts, but I like the HD video. To each his own.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by onlydarksets

Definitely subjective - I did some A/B comparisons and noted a huge difference.

I think it's one of those things that you notice, but don't care about until it's gone. As an HD-DVD adopter the difference was appreciable, but not huge. Going back to watching DVDs when the format died was painful

Maybe it was the source material (I haven't seen 'The Day After Tommorow') it would be hard not to notice the difference on 'The Dark Knight', esp. during the IMAX scenes.

[95TBird]

Just thought I share this discovery!!

Clown_BD_v0.31b

It's basically a GUI for eac3to & tsMuxeR, etc.

It makes it really to select the correct playlist.

(I discovered it while trying to get WALL-E to play)

I found it here...

http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=25818

Very easy to use!!

Enjoy

-Bruce