PDVD or TMT? which one?

[lovingHDTV]

I just built my new HTPC last night. With it I bough the LG Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM SATA Model GGC-H20L drive. This came with what I believe is PDVD V7 (OEM).

I was able to play the Blu-Ray Prince Caspian without any video issues, thought it did take a while to start up. I was not able to check out the sound as this was done in my office without a receiver or speakers.

So do I need to buy the PDVD8, or TMT to get things right? I'm not sure what I'm missing. Maybe the sound doesn't work and I'll find out tonight with I move it next to my reciever?

What are the benefits of the two? All I can see is that TMT is $70 and PDVD8 is $100. What do I get for $$ premium?

any help appreciated,
dave

PS. I did get PDVD working with SageMC and Eventghost so that was good, just trying to figure out where to go now.

[HelenWeathers]

You're going to get lots of opinions on this one, so I'll start. I also receiver PDVD with my Sony BD drive back in August 2006. I used it for two years. When I bought my HD-PVRs they came with TME. I installed that and liked it. There was a discount offered at the time (maybe still) to take 30% of your next Total Media purchase so I decided to give Total Media Theater a shot (paid about $50 for it) and ended up liking the interface much better. I moved the PVDV to another computer and I do keep it up to date. I just like Total Media Theater better. Both work very well for Blu-ray.

EDIT: By the way, TMT definitely favors hand held remotes (MCE variety) over keyboard control which makes it interface with SageTV and Sage MC very well.

[lovingHDTV]

I did see on TMT that they have a MCE plugin, which appears to be a 10ft interface. How does this compare to PDVD? I have not seen anything comparable to that in PDVD.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

I did see on TMT that they have a MCE plugin, which appears to be a 10ft interface. How does this compare to PDVD? I have not seen anything comparable to that in PDVD.

As standalone players, I think both are equal. The TMT MCEDVDPLAYER plugin is what sold me. That's what I use to interface with SageTV. Sage yields (and sleeps) control to TMT while it's running, and the "Back" button on the remote returns you to SageTV. Very smooth. You can search for posts and will find that someone (BigBill I think) found that you could run PDVD with the /fullscreen parameter and achieve the same thing.

For me, it just came down to which interface I liked more.

EDIT: To interface with SageTV, You'll need Dynamic Menus or Sage MC to customize your SageTV and add the option to play your Blu-ray from the Sage menu.

[chrishallowell]

PowerDVD 9 is coming soon:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1122882

I've read horror stories from both... (I have experienced a horror story using PDVD 8 Ultra.)

After that experience my wife made me buy a standalone Bluray player. (Took 15 minutes to setup. Bluray HDMI to A/V HDMI 3.1 to TV). Now I have 1080p and TrueHD/DTS-MA. No more worrying about ATI drivers and PowerDVD updates that screw up everything.

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

As standalone players, I think both are equal. The TMT MCEDVDPLAYER plugin is what sold me. That's what I use to interface with SageTV. Sage yields (and sleeps) control to TMT while it's running, and the "Back" button on the remote returns you to SageTV. Very smooth. You can search for posts and will find that someone (BigBill I think) found that you could run PDVD with the /fullscreen parameter and achieve the same thing.

For me, it just came down to which interface I liked more.

EDIT: To interface with SageTV, You'll need Dynamic Menus or Sage MC to customize your SageTV and add the option to play your Blu-ray from the Sage menu.

I got this all working with PDVD fullscreen etc. I just don't like the interface. It does not integrate well. Maybe if I could get rid of that ugly red screen it would help, but ICK its ugly.

[HelenWeathers]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

I got this all working with PDVD fullscreen etc. I just don't like the interface. It does not integrate well. Maybe if I could get rid of that ugly red screen it would help, but ICK its ugly.

I hated the red screen too. I never did it, but I think there are different screen themes available. Check the Cyberlink web site.

[SWKerr]

Like Helen I used PDVD V7 (OEM) for quite awhile. TME was worth the upgrade fee to me. Here is the posts related to my question about if the upgrade was worth it.

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39247

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by HelenWeathers

I hated the red screen too. I never did it, but I think there are different screen themes available. Check the Cyberlink web site.

I prefer PDVD for straight BR playback; the TMT vc-1 decoder is much better when used directly on m2ts (or other content) so I have both installed.

There are some nice themes for pdvd here.

[elaw]

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

All I can see is that TMT is $70 and PDVD8 is $100. What do I get for $$ premium?

A program that won't play HD-DVD's, or any discs (BD, HD-DVD, regular DVD) ripped to your hard drive?

Peronally I'm a TMT fan, although their MPEG-2 codec is awful. Of couse I watch regular DVDs in Sage, but use nVidia codecs to do it, not Arcsoft.

[lovingHDTV]

From reading here, it looks like PDVD7 that I got with my DVD player will allow me to play back Blu-Ray disk. There are different opinions on the quality, useablity, etc, but it should play back. I have seen this part work.

I guess I was confused where cyberlink says that PDVD7 does not support blu-ray.

I would prefer not to have to buy yet another program. So if PDVD7 will play blu-ray disks, maybe I wait for native support in SageTV to play m2ts natively. Looks like there is some movement in that direction.

I did find a nice black, including background, skin for PDVD7 so I'll give that a shot.

[babgvant]

As long as it's not the crippled audio version, stick with PDVD7. There isn't much more in 8, only thing I can think of off hand is pip support.

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by babgvant

As long as it's not the crippled audio version, stick with PDVD7. There isn't much more in 8, only thing I can think of off hand is pip support.

i'm not sure on the audio as I've not hooked it up to my receiver yet. I hope to do this tonight if UPS would ever show up and drop off my case

I'm tired of seeing "out for delievery"

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by chrishallowell

I've read horror stories from both... (I have experienced a horror story using PDVD 8 Ultra.)

I opted for Pioneer BDP-51FD after trying both PowerDVD Ultra 8 and TMT in both XP and Vista. I hate PowerDVD with a passion, it's horrible for a Home Theater, and TMT never worked right on my 780G system. When the hardware finally appeared to die in my HTPC, that was the sign to write off that investement and start over from scratch, with the aformentioned 51FD.

FWIW, my dad, who doesn't ever notice anything AQ/PQ related, noticed the 51FD is better.

After that experience my wife made me buy a standalone Bluray player. (Took 15 minutes to setup. Bluray HDMI to A/V HDMI 3.1 to TV). Now I have 1080p and TrueHD/DTS-MA. No more worrying about ATI drivers and PowerDVD updates that screw up everything.

I hear ya.... 51FD for my Netflix rentals, HD200 reading from a ReadyNAS for my purchased BDs.... It's a wonderful combo.

Originally Posted by lovingHDTV

I guess I was confused where cyberlink says that PDVD7 does not support blu-ray.

PDVD 7 Retail doesn't but there are OEM versions that do, and PowerDVD Ultra (with the unspoken/writen 7) does as well.

I would prefer not to have to buy yet another program. So if PDVD7 will play blu-ray disks, maybe I wait for native support in SageTV to play m2ts natively. Looks like there is some movement in that direction.

Sage plays m2ts natively now (AFIAK) with the right filters installed. It doesn't support BDMV structures on the software side though (extenders do).

[lovingHDTV]

Well my case finally showed up. Only issue now is that it does not fit an atx power supply. I tried two different supplies and the tread holes are off about half the thread size. I can't push it down far enough to get them lined up. ARGS can't anyone build a case anymore that will just work! I put the thing together anyway without the power supply screwed in. It'll have to do till I get something figured out. Will probably just drill them out a smidge.

Anyway, got PDVD and Sage running. Got Eventghost working great. Got a black theme for PDVD so it does not look too bad. Got 5.1 dolby using spdif feedthrough working. I then watched a little Prince Caspian to make sure it looked good. It is 1080p so that was good and I didn't see any issues. Used 3-5% of the CPU and a little over 1GB of memory during playback

I guess I'll stick with this for a while as it appears to be working for me.

Now on to try and figure out why I get sparklies on my DVI connection with the new Nvidia board, while my old one (5 years old) doesn't.

thanks for everyones input,
dave

[SWKerr]

For the power supply, a lot of times there is a notch cut in around the open area in the middle that you can use instead of the 4 outer edge ones. If you have a ATX power supply and a ATX case it should fit some how.

[lovingHDTV]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

For the power supply, a lot of times there is a notch cut in around the open area in the middle that you can use instead of the 4 outer edge ones. If you have a ATX power supply and a ATX case it should fit some how.

I see the slots, but the issue is the power supply sits too high so they don't help. I've emailed support for nMediaPC we'll see what they say. I don't expect anything spectacular.

[lovingHDTV]

I have run into an issue with the PDVD decoder. If I use it to decode regular DVDs using the SageTV player I find that the right 1/3rd of the picture is missing. I also find that the menus cannot be used.

I then installed the PureVideo decoders that I've been using for years and they work great. I'm not sure what was wrong with the cyberlink decoders.