Is support for Blu-ray disc playback anywhere on the list?

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by sportera

And having to pay for a yearly AnyDVD HD subcription when I already own a TMT3 for playback doesn't make me happy either. I can understand this if I chose to rip blu-rays to the hard drive, but I've got a ton of DVD's I've not watched in years. I now just get a movie from netflix, watch it once or twice, and send it back. Unless I find a movie so good I want to keep it (rarely), I don't have the need to backup a disc to the hard drive anymore, and therefore, shouldn't need to pay to have AnyDVD HD on hand.

If you think about what it would take for Sage to add proper BD support, it would add $50-60 to every license. While BD is an important feature to some, I doubt that many would want to pay that much for it.

For V6 there are STVi that can launch TMT from Sage for physical BD playback, you can also use SageTVLauncher's ISO browser feature to launch any player (I use PDVD) for a 10' experience.

[Suntan]

Sorry I’m rubbing you guys the wrong way.

I use daily and appreciate SageTVs abilities, but I don’t think their setup is infallible. And I’m not going to just sit around and say that the current setup for BR support is acceptable when I have yet to hear of anyone out there that can get reliable BR playback of all iterations (AVC, VC1, MPEG2 <=>TrueHD, dtsHDMA) working with full subtitle support.

While I do appreciate the fact they call out you need your own codecs it doesn’t change the fact that randomly hunting around for the “secret sauce” of codecs and splitters is not something I want to do.

I’m a paying customer with money in my hand. I’m expressing my dissatisfaction of the features being offered in a public forum targeted to the topic. Yet I was told to go away and buy something else. Yeah, no kidding that’s an option. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. But that’s not what I want. I want better support for it *in SageTV.*(Or barring that, official guidance from Sage that they will stand behind with real customer support instead of just saying “You’re on your own.”)

I didn’t care about them eliminating the “pause between recordings” but I didn’t sit around telling everyone who did to sod off.

-Suntan

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Suntan

I use daily and appreciate SageTVs abilities, but I don’t think their setup is infallible. And I’m not going to just sit around and say that the current setup for BR support is acceptable when I have yet to hear of anyone out there that can get reliable BR playback of all iterations (AVC, VC1, MPEG2 <=>TrueHD, dtsHDMA) working with full subtitle support.

No one is claiming infallibility, but you've confused the feature that was implemented with what you would like the feature to be.

BDMV playback works fine on my system except for some bugs around audio stream selection - it's still in beta so some issues are expected. BD subtitles don't work, but you can work around that with external SRT. Full subtitle support from the splitter is on the requested feature list, the more people ask for it the higher it will be prioritized.

Originally Posted by Suntan

While I do appreciate the fact they call out you need your own codecs it doesn’t change the fact that randomly hunting around for the “secret sauce” of codecs and splitters is not something I want to do.

If you're not comfortable with the caveats then don't use the feature (the caveats exist for a reason). It's there for those who are able to manage their HTPC, for those who can't or won't there are other options - convenience isn't usually free.

Originally Posted by Suntan

I’m a paying customer with money in my hand. I’m expressing my dissatisfaction of the features being offered in a public forum targeted to the topic. Yet I was told to go away and buy something else. Yeah, no kidding that’s an option. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. But that’s not what I want. I want better support for it *in SageTV.*(Or barring that, official guidance from Sage that they will stand behind with real customer support instead of just saying “You’re on your own.”)

I don't think your desires are realistic w/o a big price increase, you might be fine with adding $50 to each license but I suspect most users would find it unpalatable. You are free to make whatever demands, hold whatever opinions and express them however you like. But when "the obvious" is ignored, it shouldn't come as a surprise when someone points it out.

We all want things that aren't realistic; for e.g. I'd like my car to transform into a GT-R, but I wouldn't complain if someone pointed out that it's probably not going to happen.

[Naylia]

With how much playback capability W7 provides natively (ie...if I go click on the .m2ts file in the BDMV folder, plays back in WMP with no additional codecs installed), you'd think we could at least get Sage to properly recognize all three video types, select the first supported audio track, and and start playback.

My SageTV capabilities should be >= to WMP in W7 out of box

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Naylia

With how much playback capability W7 provides natively (ie...if I go click on the .m2ts file in the BDMV folder, plays back in WMP with no additional codecs installed), you'd think we could at least get Sage to properly recognize all three video types, select the first supported audio track, and and start playback.

My SageTV capabilities should be >= to WMP in W7 out of box

For most disks that should work, but you may get the wrong audio track because the first AC3 track isn't always the language you prefer.

If it doesn't you should submit a support ticket.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by korben_dallas

As a long time SageTV user, I have to say that I think SageTV's guidance on playback of BD disc / iso / folder is quite poor.

It is not surprising people are confused, and that some are even asking if it works at all.

As of yet, I have not been able to make video + lossless audio BD content play on my SageTV v7 server.

If there are OS limitations, they need to be delineated.
If there are codec requirements, they need to be enumerated.
If there are client considerations, they need to be discussed.

Otherwise, this "feature" will remain broken to many users.

I suspect they don't really know. Further I think many are expecting more than was added. When "BDMV" support was added to the extenders, many on these forums complained about why it wasn't included on the PC versions when PCs have greater decoding abilities.

Well in V7 they added the the equivalent support to the PC apps, and now I think we see why they didn't add it in V7.

Now I'd say you've probably got a point if you want to say they overstated what was added as far as Blu-ray "support" goes.

Originally Posted by sportera

And having to pay for a yearly AnyDVD HD subcription when I already own a TMT3 for playback doesn't make me happy either. I can understand this if I chose to rip blu-rays to the hard drive, but I've got a ton of DVD's I've not watched in years. I now just get a movie from netflix, watch it once or twice, and send it back. Unless I find a movie so good I want to keep it (rarely), I don't have the need to backup a disc to the hard drive anymore, and therefore, shouldn't need to pay to have AnyDVD HD on hand.

You're NOT going to get around that. AACS licensing has made it essentially impossible for someone like SageTV to license Blu-ray support from a 3rd party. This is why we don't see any BD support in the likes of TheaterTek, SageTV, or Zoomplayer.

The only way you're "ever" going to see "hack-free" BD playback is via an external standalone application.

Originally Posted by babgvant

If you think about what it would take for Sage to add proper BD support, it would add $50-60 to every license. While BD is an important feature to some, I doubt that many would want to pay that much for it.

I bet it would actually be a lot more than that given SageTV's tiny (compared to Cyberlink et all) customer base and the costs of all the various licenses needed. Not to mention the cost to do all their own development and certification.

[Suntan]

Originally Posted by babgvant

No one is claiming infallibility, but you've confused the feature that was implemented with what you would like the feature to be.

I’m not confused about the feature. I just want them to add more support to the feature. I thought that was what people talked about in a Beta Discussion forum, namely how well the new features work.

Originally Posted by babgvant

I don't think your desires are realistic w/o a big price increase, you might be fine with adding $50 to each license but I suspect most users would find it unpalatable.

I also said I would be happy with official guidance from SageTV as to how to get it to work. Other then a reference in a FAQ someplace where it said they test against ffDshow, I’ve seen little. I played up down and sideways with ffDshow a few weeks back when looking at the S7 Beta and came up with nothing for VC1 or DTSHDMA.

I’m realistic that offering their very own version of a fullblown BR player is unlikely to happen anytime soon. I didn’t say that was the only thing that would satisfy me.

In any case i've said my piece on the subject, you seem keen to keep correcting me on it, even though my comments are in line with most everyone else’s in this thread (and really, you've admitted that you too feel the same way that this feature could use more polish) so I’ll be quiet now and you can tell me again that I'm confused, unrealistic, don’t understand, or some such. Have a good one.

-Suntan

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by stanger89

You're NOT going to get around that. AACS licensing has made it essentially impossible for someone like SageTV to license Blu-ray support from a 3rd party. This is why we don't see any BD support in the likes of TheaterTek, SageTV, or Zoomplayer.

The only way you're "ever" going to see "hack-free" BD playback is via an external standalone application.

It might be possible to license the BD menu/playback engine as a complete component and maintain AACS compliance. That said, I don't know why ArcSoft or Cyberlink would do that - it would almost definitely be a lost sale.

Personally, I'd like it if Sage would resell a set of licensed codecs for $20-30 at provide a better end-user experience for everyone.

Originally Posted by stanger89

I bet it would actually be a lot more than that given SageTV's tiny (compared to Cyberlink et all) customer base and the costs of all the various licenses needed. Not to mention the cost to do all their own development and certification.

If they built it themselves, absolutely - especially because they no experience playing at that level.

[Rico66]

How exactly does VC1 playback work? Just enabling a codec (e.g. from MPC) doesn't do the trick. I'm assuming that you're replacing the splitter as well, which is pretty much a hack.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Rico66

How exactly does VC1 playback work? Just enabling a codec (e.g. from MPC) doesn't do the trick. I'm assuming that you're replacing the splitter as well, which is pretty much a hack.

Pretty sure that the M2TS (and MKV) splitters expose WVC1 which will connect to the WMV DMO included OOTB in XP, Vista, and 7.

The MPC-HC (and ffdshow DXVA) video decoder also support WVC1 so if you have a GPU that works with it that is an option for HWA.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by babgvant

It might be possible to license the BD menu/playback engine as a complete component and maintain AACS compliance. That said, I don't know why ArcSoft or Cyberlink would do that - it would almost definitely be a lost sale.

If they built it themselves, absolutely - especially because they no experience playing at that level.

All I know for sure is what Andrew has posted on the TheaterTek forum about why he hasn't/can't add BD support to TheaterTek. I don't have the post handy right now, but I basically paraphrased what he said, that the licensing surrounding AACS makes it impossible to license subcomponents from other entities.

If there were a reasonably practical way to do it, i don't doubt for a second that Andrew would have done it already. His company (TheaterTek) is basically over without Blu-ray support at this point, and it appears he's accepted that he's not going to be adding BD support.

The way I look at it is, if TheaterTek can't make true Blu-ray support happen, when movie disc playback is the #1 feature of their product, there's no way Sage is going to when it's just a "minor" subfeature.

Personally, I'd like it if Sage would resell a set of licensed codecs for $20-30 at provide a better end-user experience for everyone.

The problem is with no practical way to sell BD playback "parts" and with DTS-HD and TrueHD being used exclusively by Blu-ray (as far as "legal" content goes) there's no incentive for anyone to create such easily resellable packages.

AACS has basically crushed innovation as far as PC playback of Blu-ray and Blu-ray derivative solutions goes. We're stuck relying on open source, community developed solutions because there's no logical way to build a business case for selling something only of use to those willing to resort to shall we say "grey market" means (AnyDVD).

[Rico66]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Pretty sure that the M2TS (and MKV) splitters expose WVC1 which will connect to the WMV DMO included OOTB in XP, Vista, and 7.

The MPC-HC (and ffdshow DXVA) video decoder also support WVC1 so if you have a GPU that works with it that is an option for HWA.

When you say "pretty sure" does that mean that you have this working? Can you share out your configuration in this case? I still get playback errors (exceptions), when trying to play vc-1 BDs (filed a bug about this a couple of weeks ago).

Also, the native Windows splitter doesn't support the combination of m2ts/vc-1 neither (though using Haali instead makes it happen).

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by stanger89

All I know for sure is what Andrew has posted on the TheaterTek forum about why he hasn't/can't add BD support to TheaterTek. I don't have the post handy right now, but I basically paraphrased what he said, that the licensing surrounding AACS makes it impossible to license subcomponents from other entities.

You misunderstood what I said. To get the "BD menu/playback engine as a complete component" you'd have to license everything from the nav to the renderer, basically leaving out just the UI shell. I don't know if it's possible to license the individual filters for required for BD playback, but I doubt that it would be financially possible to do it.

Originally Posted by stanger89

The problem is with no practical way to sell BD playback "parts" and with DTS-HD and TrueHD being used exclusively by Blu-ray (as far as "legal" content goes) there's no incentive for anyone to create such easily resellable packages.

Please, just let me dream

Originally Posted by stanger89

AACS has basically crushed innovation as far as PC playback of Blu-ray and Blu-ray derivative solutions goes. We're stuck relying on open source, community developed solutions because there's no logical way to build a business case for selling something only of use to those willing to resort to shall we say "grey market" means (AnyDVD).

Agreed. But the OSS/grey solution is pretty good, and getting better.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Rico66

When you say "pretty sure" does that mean that you have this working? Can you share out your configuration in this case? I still get playback errors (exceptions), when trying to play vc-1 BDs (filed a bug about this a couple of weeks ago).

I have BDMV working, but I use the TMT2 VC-1 filter bundled w/ the HDPVR (it's HWA). I'll check it tonight - I asked for WVC1 when they added native M2TS splitting in V6, and I think they added it for V7. If their demux doesn't present WVC1 we should all ask again, the more people ask for a feature the more likely it is that it will get in.

Originally Posted by Rico66

Also, the native Windows splitter doesn't support the combination of m2ts/vc-1 neither (though using Haali instead makes it happen).

VC-1 from M2TS is broken in MC OOTB. Can't remember if the root cause is that MS doesn't present WVC1 from their splitter or if it's because they are using MF - been a while, and I don't use 7MC if I can help it.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Pretty sure that the M2TS (and MKV) splitters expose WVC1 which will connect to the WMV DMO included OOTB in XP, Vista, and 7.

I was wrong. The Sage M2TS splitter does not expose WVC1, but [oddly] the MKV splitter does. Since the MKV splitter already presents the media type, I can't imagine that it would too hard for them to extend the M2TS demux - let's all put in a feature request and hope that it makes it in.

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by gplasky

You would run ANyDVD on the PC that has your Blue ray drive and share that drive out in Windows. Then add the drive as an import directory in Sage. Now when a disc is put in Sage should see it as an imported DVD and you would play it as any other rip. The VirtualClone DVD is used with a ripped .ISO file to mount it as a drive I believe.

Gerry

OK, I'm missing something here because I tried this and it doesn't work for me.

I have the following installed:
Windows XP Pro 32 bit
Sage 7 Beta Version 11
SageMC STV
AnyDVD 6.6
PowerDVD9

I shared my K:\ drive on my Media PC and tried adding it as an import directory in Sage. Any time I try to go to the "Network" option in the browser to try and navigate to add the drive share I get an SMB://// error. If I try to specify the directory it always tells me that it doesn't exist and it asks if it can create it. I tried just adding drive K:\ as an import folder but that didn't work.

Any help would be appreciated, I'd love to get even some BD support through the Sage UI to try and improve the WAF towards BD as its pretty low right now due to the requirement of an external player.

As a side note, the ISO mounting of BD discs in Sage doesn't work either. I posted about that in another thread and no one responded

-Striker-

[sportera]

Originally Posted by babgvant

I have BDMV working, but I use the TMT2 VC-1 filter bundled w/ the HDPVR (it's HWA). I'll check it tonight - I asked for WVC1 when they added native M2TS splitting in V6, and I think they added it for V7. If their demux doesn't present WVC1 we should all ask again, the more people ask for a feature the more likely it is that it will get in.


VC-1 from M2TS is broken in MC OOTB. Can't remember if the root cause is that MS doesn't present WVC1 from their splitter or if it's because they are using MF - been a while, and I don't use 7MC if I can help it.

OK, although being involved with and building computer systems since the 1980's(before DOS & Windows), I'm going to admit my stupidity and ask if you'd publish a short dictionary for your abbreviation usage?

What is: HWA, WVC1, MC OOTB, MF, 7MC, MKV, MPC-HC, DTSHDMA, WMV DMO

And just when I thought I almost ready to hang with the sage icons I feel like an idiot again.

And for what its worth, if getting BD playback working within the Sage UI is possible but would require paying for BD playback licensing, I'd pay it. The way I look at it is, I'd rather pay Sage than AnyDVD (assuming the licensing fee is somewhat competitive against AnyDVD). At least then I would feel better about having seamless support for the functionality, i.e., plug and play for those "limited" and easily confused individuals like me.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

As a side note, the ISO mounting of BD discs in Sage doesn't work either. I posted about that in another thread and no one responded

Do you have Virtual Clone Drive installed? If you do, make sure you have at least 2 virtual BD drives.

[babgvant]

HWA = Hardware Acceleration - video decoding is handled in the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)
WVC1 = Media subtype used by the Windows Media Framework to present VC-1 in a WMV container
MC = [Windows] Media Center
OOTB = Out of the box
MF = Media Foundation - the media framework introduced in Vista that will replace DirectShow in future versions of Windows
7MC = [Windows] 7 Media Center
MKV = Extension used for Matroska Media Container files
MPC-HC = Media Player Classic Home Cinema - an open source DirectShow media player
DTS-HD, DTS-MA = a lossless version of DTS used on Blu-ray disks
WMV DMO = a video decoder included in windows for decoding WMV files

[Striker:WG]

Originally Posted by babgvant

Do you have Virtual Clone Drive installed? If you do, make sure you have at least 2 virtual BD drives.

Yes, I have Virtual Clone Drive installed. The ISO mounting works with regular DVD ISO's, just not with BD ISO's.

I will try adding a second virtual drive to the system and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestion!

-Striker-