Samuri's *UN*Official SlyPlayer(tm) Thread

[bda123]

Nice CYA there! We will just hope for the best and not hold you to it.

 

[DrinkLyeAndDie]

I remember that 10 months ago James was joking about a February Slyplayer release (it was in March I think), probably they never thought that the development of Slyplayer would take that long... Or he wasn't joking... these geniuses

He may have said "February" but he never said "February of 2010".

 

[DMD]

February 2012.
So it will be compatible with the Blu ray 3D


Happy 2010

 

[SirGCal]

Something I'd like to see in the player is a selectable amount of buffering. For example, in my HTPC, I have 4G of ram, I'd like to be able to use say 2G of that strictly for read-ahead buffering of what's playing. Right now for some weird reason (I suspect Win7 beta as the culprit, as well as the crappy PDVD (god I hate it...)), while playing a .M2TS file (20-40G each), the movie pauses a few times while it decides it has to re-initialize the HDDs again. Causes about a 5 second pause and the HDD light is solid. If there was simple buffering, it would still continue while the drives were doing, whatever... PLUS, it would allow network streaming easier. Streaming from my fileserver can be bad when it's doing something that uses IO. Obviously it just starts getting little pauses and jerks when the stream isn't perfectly smooth where-as if it was using a read-ahead, that wouldn't be a problem since it would only be lagging a bit keeping the buffer at 100% instead of trying to read and play the stream live.

Anyhow, just the thoughts I thought I'd toss into the pot. And you guys know if you do make this player, it doesn't have to be free. I think just about everyone here would gladly pay for some good software that worked (especially since nothing on the market really does very well). Still, thank you all the same for your phenomenal software. And Happy New Year everyone... (3 hours left here yet but...)

 

[Adbear]

never had that problem with PDVD when I was using Win 7 Beta or in the full version

 

[Dekyon]

I have the same problem too!

 

[el Filou]

Shouldn't read-ahead be the job of the source splitter with DirectShow?
For example Haali has a configurable read buffer (sadly, it's awful with M2TS).

 

[fortebab1]

Not a problem

Nor do I have that problem with PDVD I have Win 7 full version

 

[canachi]

He may have said "February" but he never said "February of 2010".

February 2012.
So it will be compatible with the Blu ray 3D

LOL... I'm afraid you are right, he didn't mention the year

For that reason I just purchased PowerDVD 9 (I waited patienly for 10 months) and I have to say man, what a WONDERFUL program (using AnyDVD HD of course), I have no idea why people all over the world hate them so much (joke).

Seriously, today PDVD is a good program, I'm using W7 media center with media browser and the integration is just great, I watched 3 movies without a single problem. I'm not bitstreaming the audio, but Transformes Revenge sounded magnifecent with my new Velodyne Subwoofer. For just $45 I can enjoy my movies this year 2010 and I can always switch to Slyplayer in 2012 Hopefully before the end of the world... these Hollywood movies.

 

[hajj_3]

any update from slysoft about this?

 

[bda123]

The reason why we don't like PDVD is that they charge you a small fortune just to be able to watch a Blu-ray. If you rip the blu-ray to the hard drive and mount it, it will no longer play it. If you turn it into an .mkv it will no longer play it. So, they only thing you get is the ability to play a disk. That defeats much of the advantage of having a Media Center PC. I like to be able to click on the blu-ray movies in my Movies in Media Center and watch the blu-ray content just like the dvd content. Microsoft didn't give the functionality because they didn't want to pay Sony's games. PDVD is willing to play their games which is why they don't allow playback of .mkv (which isn't a big deal) or mounted ISOs (which is a big deal). So, if all you are going to get is the ability to play you discs that isn't worth the money you pay. A simple player or a WMP12 add-in would do it. Total waste of money and they keep coming out with a new version every year with a relatively expensive upgrade price. I only paid $10 for the ability to watch .mkv blu-ray files from within WMP12 and W7MC via CoreAVC. Why would I pay $89 for less benefit? It will not be long before there will be several simple add-in solutions to WMP12 and W7MC for viewing the disc also and then PDVD will become obsolete. Slyplayer for free would destroy their business if it has the DXVA and CUDA features. They are just taking their last bit of profit from consumers while they can and will die within a few months. Besides you can use MPC-HC for DXVA and have MPC-HC us CoreAVC for CUDA graphics cards. Why would you even buy PDVD? Probably because it is simple. Well Slyplayer will probably be free and even more simple. That is my take at least.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

Seriously, today PDVD is a good program, I'm using W7 media center with media browser and the integration is just great, I watched 3 movies without a single problem. I'm not bitstreaming the audio, but Transformes Revenge sounded magnifecent with my new Velodyne Subwoofer. For just $45 I can enjoy my movies this year 2010 and I can always switch to Slyplayer in 2012 Hopefully before the end of the world... these Hollywood movies.

While I haven't used a version of PDVD since 7.3 (a Blu-Ray and HD-DVD compatible version that came bundled with my LG drive), I personally didn't find it to be that great a player.

However, on the recommendation of many people here, I did purchase Arcsoft TMT3 Platinum last week (while they still had a $35 end of year discount going on), and I've got to say it's a massive improvement over the PDDVD I knew. I also really like that TMT3 will play the HD audio track even when playing m2ts files directly from the hard drive, something PDVD (and any other player, from what I've read) won't do.

With the announcement today on Arcsoft's forums of HD Audio bitstream support coming for the Radeon HD 5xxx series, I think it's safe to say TMT3 is probably the best software player out there at the moment.

 

[canachi]

The reason why we don't like PDVD is that they charge you a small fortune just to be able to watch a Blu-ray. If you rip the blu-ray to the hard drive and mount it, it will no longer play it. If you turn it into an .mkv it will no longer play it. So, they only thing you get is the ability to play a disk. That defeats much of the advantage of having a Media Center PC. I like to be able to click on the blu-ray movies in my Movies in Media Center and watch the blu-ray content just like the dvd content.

I'm not going to be the one that defends PowerDVD, but did you read my post? this is exactly what I'm doing. I enjoy all my BD ISO rips in my hard drive within Windows 7 Media Center, the integration with Media Browser and PowerDVD is great.

While I haven't used a version of PDVD since 7.3 (a Blu-Ray and HD-DVD compatible version that came bundled with my LG drive), I personally didn't find it to be that great a player.

I was in the same situation until last week, do you know PowerDVD already has "support for bitstreaming" audio with the ATI cards? (well, sort of). By the way PowerDVD costs $45 upgrading from the version bundled with the LG drives.

I'm sure Slyplayer is going to be a great player, but in the mean time this is the simplest solution.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

I was in the same situation until last week, do you know PowerDVD already has "support for bitstreaming" audio with the ATI cards? (well, sort of). By the way PowerDVD costs $45 upgrading from the version bundled with the LG drives.

Yeah, I do know all that, but PDVD's inability to play the HD audio except when it's from a disc was enough to turn me off it... I don't always want to be using ISOs. I'm willing to wait for the upgrade for bitstreaming, though I don't imagine it'll be too long now.

TMT3 Platinum cost me $64 with the discount, so not quite as cheap as the upgrade cost that PDVD might've cost me, but the $20 or so extra wasn't something I minded paying for TMT3's superior features.

 

[ricoman]

Slyplayer for free would destroy their business if it has the DXVA and CUDA features.

Don't count on Slyplayer being free. Maybe you haven't noticed but Slysoft products are pretty expensive, they are in business to make money. I'm not knocking their products which are excellent, particularly AnyDVD, but they aren't exactly giving them away.

 

[SamuriHL]

Don't count on Slyplayer being free. Maybe you haven't noticed but Slysoft products are pretty expensive, they are in business to make money. I'm not knocking their products which are excellent, particularly AnyDVD, but they aren't exactly giving them away.

It's been said by SlySoft many times already that SlyPlayer IS being released for free.

 

[ricoman]

If that's the case, I'll apologize, but I'll believe it when I see it. This is not a knock against Slysoft, it's a business. Though pricey, they work as advertised and no one updates as frequently. I've been using their products for many years now with no complaints.

 

[SamuriHL]

Then you'll be apologizing. There are several reasons why they'd release it for free. You do understand it doesn't work with protected sources, right? So, for BD and HD DVD playback you'll need AnyDVD HD. Virtual CloneDrive is free, so, it's not unheard of, you know.

 

[ricoman]

OK then, I'll shut-up and wait patiently (or not so patiently). If it is free, it will be a great service to their customers and fans.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

Don't count on Slyplayer being free. Maybe you haven't noticed but Slysoft products are pretty expensive, they are in business to make money. I'm not knocking their products which are excellent, particularly AnyDVD, but they aren't exactly giving them away.

I guess it depends on your point of view, but personally I don't think SlySoft's products are particularly expensive when you take the frequency and quality of updates into account, not to mention the (almost unheard of) quality of their customer service.

Of course it probably also helped that I bought my SlySoft products back when they still charged in USD, and before the price increase. Even with the new prices, though, I still think it's a better value than you get with most other software.