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Questions before purchase

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So, I love the fact that the DRM has been broken on HD-DVD. In all honesty it's the only way I would ever purchase HD content anyway so the industry should like it to. I think my system should work just fine for this but I wanted to check and ask a question about audio as well.
Here are my system specs:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2GHZ
HDD: 2 Samsung 500gb spinsafe SATA, 1 80gb Western Digital
Memory: 2GB Mushkin 800mhz
Video Card: 256mb XFX Geforce 7600GS
Sound Card: Realtek High Def. Audio

My question is in regards to my current video decoder. I use Nvidias Purevideo Platinum decoder and that is what also decodes my onboard 5.1 suround sound. I don't think the cyberlink software that AnyDVD HD says it works with includes those audio drivers, if I'm wrong please correct me, so would I be able to use AnyDVD HD with Purevideo HD if I upgraded?

Also, how does this software integrate with MCE 2005?
 
How are you passing your audio signla to your speakers? SPIDF, PC speakers?

Also AnyDVD HD simply rips the HDDVD to your hard drive and your software then plays it back using the same audio/video decoders as your current software uses. AnyDVD has nothing to do with audio and video drivers (unless you're using their conversion software).

As for MCE integration, if you're able to conver the rips to MKV or AVI, then that would be the solution. However, it is a very complicated process and as of right now, I don't think there is a Dolby TrueHD to AC3 converter and that wold be needed for most newer HDDVD rips. However, if your audio reciver has Dolby TrueHD, then you can probably pass the audio right to the reciver through SPIDIF and get it decoded at the reciver. To my knowlege, the only software that decodes this signal and converts on the fly is PowerDVD.

What I do is simply RIP my HDDVD's and save to a folder on my HD call 'HD Movies.' I use PowerDVD to play back each folder using the 'Open Movie on Hard Disk Drive' option. They all play back beautifully. However, I don't think PowerDVD integrates with MCE It would be awesome if it did but this option isn't yet (or will ever be IMO) available.

CyberLink has a Media Center version but I don't think it plays HD yet. You're better off waiting to see if they integrate with the HD PowerDVD on this. I'm sure a solution is right around the corner.
 
Ok thanks for the info on that. I'm just using PC speakers not spdif out. My mother board has Realtek 7.1 CH HD audio onboard. Right now maybe I should hold off until I can use it the way I want to.
 
Right! Make sure if you do get a receiver that is has the new HD decoders that way, you'll be able to use SPIDIF pass-through right from the EVOB (HDDVD), M2TS (Blu-Ray) files. Usually, the biggest file in the rip folder is the main movie. In the case of the EVOB, they can play right in windows media player and are simple mpeg2. The M2TS are a different story, you'll need different filters for that. HD is a really complicated format in that you have different technologies integrated in the source files. PowerDVD does a beautiful job as of right now, of handling them. Also beware; some of these filters do no work outside PowerDVD.

The technology is still emerging so give the software developers a bit of time to catch up. As of right now, the only 2 players that are supposedly fully HD are PowerDVD 7 and WinDVD Platinum. They are the fully 'authorized' players because they are HDCP compliant.

As for simple filters to decode HD and use with other players, they are out there but you'll need to do lots of homework to figure how to use them.

Ok thanks for the info on that. I'm just using PC speakers not spdif out. My mother board has Realtek 7.1 CH HD audio onboard. Right now maybe I should hold off until I can use it the way I want to.
 
Note that the new lossless formats do not go over optical, only HDMI. I believe this is was due bandwidth and security reasons. I do not believe there are any recievers that can decode these formats from optical input (not that is anything that will send it that way). You PC would decode the signal and output it via some other format.
 
Usually, the biggest file in the rip folder is the main movie. In the case of the EVOB, they can play right in windows media player and are simple mpeg2.

I'm sorry I really am going to sound stupid here I know. If it's just an mpeg file do you still need a special codec in order to play it in the full resolution or are the other codecs simply there to integrate the other aspects (such as audio)? I know for instance if I rip a SD DVD now it looks great, as far as SD goes, and plays in full DTS through those above mentioned PC speakers with purevideo platinum. That is a Video TS file though. Sorry I hate codecs confuses me every time I talk about it.

The reason that I ask about the integration with MCE is because my HTPC is all set up to be controlled from the remote on the couch. Opening another program means having the keyboard out which isn't that big of a deal but I would prefer not to have to operate that way. However if it will play in Windows Media Player I wonder if it would play from within MCE or if I could set it up to play from within some other program like maybe Mediaportal or GBPVR which I know use Windows Media Player as their starting point.

As far as the audio is concerned it doesn't have to be perfect as far as I can tell the current dolby 5.1 or DTS that I'm using is fine if they will play that but I don't want to go back to just plain stereo just so I can make the leap to HD.
 
so I got impatient. Happened to be at best buy saw the deal on the xbox360 drive and grabbed it. I'm trying to get it working but I keep getting a message that says format unsupported. Is there anything I can do with this or is cyberlink just not approving of my video card?
 
What program are you using to play back with, You need to be using Powerdvd 7.3 build 2911 upwards. As far as I'm aware you can't play HD-DVD's in Media centre
 
I am using powerdvd 7. I don't know what build it is. It's just the one that was offered from cyberlinks site.
 
ok so I had seen some others make a comment about this so tried downloading 6.5 instead ang guess what now it works. Well sort of. I need a little help just with setting up power dvd now. First, it pulls the menu up fine but when I hit play it gets past the rating screen then just plays audio. If I skip ahead to the next scene it will start to play but it's got everything you can think of open. I shows to pictures one full size and another smaller version in the upper left corner it's got closed captioning going. Where do I go in power dvd to shut these things off? I think it's probably hanging up at the begining because of precisely the fact that it's trying to start up everything on the disc.
 
Open powerdvd, right click on it's screen, goto about. When the next screen comes up click on your name in the 'This product is licensed to' section. Another screen should come up. Look down that list and there should be a section called UI. next to it should be the build number (2911) etc
 
Do you have AnyDVD running? I think your video card might not be HDCP compliant (but I could be wrong). But if you have AnyDVD running, it should scan the disk and mount it after it's been decrypted. At that point, PowerDVD drops the HDCP requirement and plays; no black screens or other stuff.

Also, though, you may try to download the HD advisor from cyberLink and see if your system can handle HD. At the HDCP section, anyDVD should take care of that. I'm saying becase if your system was somehow incomplatible, then PowerDVD would tell you so 'content is protected.. yada yada..".

You can get the advisor here:
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/support/bdhd_support/diagnosis.jsp


ok so I had seen some others make a comment about this so tried downloading 6.5 instead ang guess what now it works. Well sort of. I need a little help just with setting up power dvd now. First, it pulls the menu up fine but when I hit play it gets past the rating screen then just plays audio. If I skip ahead to the next scene it will start to play but it's got everything you can think of open. I shows to pictures one full size and another smaller version in the upper left corner it's got closed captioning going. Where do I go in power dvd to shut these things off? I think it's probably hanging up at the begining because of precisely the fact that it's trying to start up everything on the disc.
 
BTW, nVidia's Pure Video is only for standard DVD's (video codecs). PureVideo HD is a hardware feature integrated on some cards. The Pure Video decoders, platnium or otherwise, won't do HD.
 
BTW, nVidia's Pure Video is only for standard DVD's (video codecs). PureVideo HD is a hardware feature integrated on some cards. The Pure Video decoders, platnium or otherwise, won't do HD.

That's what I was looking for an answer to actually. However nvidias website seems to imply that this decoder is capable of HD playback.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html

That doesn't really matter though at this point.

Do you have AnyDVD running? I think your video card might not be HDCP compliant (but I could be wrong). But if you have AnyDVD running, it should scan the disk and mount it after it's been decrypted. At that point, PowerDVD drops the HDCP requirement and plays; no black screens or other stuff.

Also, though, you may try to download the HD advisor from cyberLink and see if your system can handle HD. At the HDCP section, anyDVD should take care of that. I'm saying becase if your system was somehow incomplatible, then PowerDVD would tell you so 'content is protected.. yada yada..".

Yes I do have AnyDVD running and no my video card is not HDCP compatible. That's the reason I decided to try AnyDVD HD so that I wouldn't have to upgrade my hardware (which is perfectly capable of outputting HD content except for the stupid industry DRM). I think that is a good question though it seems like powerdvd is looking for that HDCP on the newer version. However for some reason when I downgraded to the older version it does in fact play the hddvd from the xbox360 drive. It's a little buggy though. It comes up automatically with the picture in picture up (something that I have to wait to turn off until the hddvd ucontrol feature pops up) and plays the commentary on the disc whenever the ucontrol icon pops up. These are both things that I would like to figure out how to turn off.

On the ripped version it seems to have some trouble playing too. What file should I be looking for to play it? Not that I forsee myself ripping a lot of these anyways. They take up too much space.
 
If you can you should try and get the later version working. 6.5 is very buggy as it wasn't designed for HD, and you may well find a lot of discs won't play as they've had to tweak it a lot in the later versions to get menu's etc to work on all discs
 
If you can you should try and get the later version working. 6.5 is very buggy as it wasn't designed for HD, and you may well find a lot of discs won't play as they've had to tweak it a lot in the later versions to get menu's etc to work on all discs

Ok. That's fair enough. But will 7.3 play on my system if it's not HDCP compatible?
 
Ok. That's fair enough. But will 7.3 play on my system if it's not HDCP compatible?
When AnyDVD is running? Yes, certainly. You only need to have a graphics card which *driver* software understands the HDCP related commands. It must understand PowerDVD's question "who are you? are you HDCP capable?" The card itself doesn't need to be HDCP capable, because if AnyDVD is running, PowerDVD will accept "no" for an answer. But it doesn't accept no answer. :p
 
Ok well I downloaded 7.3 and if I try to play an HDDVD or even the ripped file it tells me my graphics drivers aren't compatible and offers a link. If you click on the link it lists the compatible ones and they're all the 8xxx series cards. I have a 7600GS. 6.5 may have been buggy but it played the movies from the drive. 7.3 doesn't even recognize that there's an HDDVD drive hooked up it just shows it as a generic drive.
 
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