SlySoft Media Player

[SamuriHL]

sam the wise!!!

HD DVD only backed studios should just start releasing ALL its movies in the DVD/HD combo format at a pricepoint between current DVDs and HD. That way customers get both formats and are ready for the future (clearly should and WILL be HD DVD) but also be able to to watch SD.

Yea, I thought that was the original plan for HD DVD, but, the added expense of having the combo format has put off customers who are apparently hating the combo discs. I like them myself, but, to each their own I guess.

 

[SamuriHL]

I don't think it's wise to abandon any of the two Next Gen formats.

I recommend the commentary by Joshua Zyber:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Joshua_Zyber/Commentary:_Living_in_Fear_of_the_Niche/1154

Any argument for or against one format can be used against or for the other, they are both guilty of non service to their customers, only the degree may vary!

All I want is watch HDTV-movies, and AnyDVD is helping me, thanks!

I read his commentary shortly after he posted it. I agree with him and I personally have the ability to play both formats. If the studios are going to keep on playing this little game then I have no choice if I want HD content. However, Slysoft feels VERY strongly that we should resist HD content on Blu-ray so that the format dies off and all the movies are released in HD DVD. And I say that once again, it's their right to take that stance just as it's Sony's right to stay Blu-ray exclusive. People need to learn to vote with their wallet. If an HD DVD only player doesn't appeal to you, simply don't use it. That's the point Slysoft is making in the first place...if you don't like Blu-ray, which they clearly don't, don't buy it. I don't fall into that category, however, I DO buy HD DVD when possible.

 

[Clams]

I don't think it's wise to abandon any of the two Next Gen formats.

I recommend the commentary by Joshua Zyber:

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Joshua_Zyber/Commentary:_Living_in_Fear_of_the_Niche/1154

Any argument for or against one format can be used against or for the other, they are both guilty of non service to their customers, only the degree may vary!

All I want is watch HDTV-movies, and AnyDVD is helping me, thanks!

It's not about the technical aspects of the formats at all. It's that we don't want Sony in charge of DRM for the next couple decades. Sony has a long history of engaging in "strange behavior" that tramples all over fair use rights. And it seems a lot of people have very short memories once they start salivating over some "must have now" Blu-Ray title.

Sure Sony is gonna release thier titles exclusively on Blu-Ray - for now.
But just like Sony Betamax, once Blu-Ray fails... Sony will release all those back titles on HD-DVD anyway. All we need is a little patiance, and a little less dedication to the instant gratification disease that grips america.

-W

 

[TM2-Megatron]

It's not about the technical aspects of the formats at all. It's that we don't want Sony in charge of DRM for the next couple decades. Sony has a long history of engaging in "strange behavior" that tramples all over fair use rights. And it seems a lot of people have very short memories once they start salivating over some "must have now" Blu-Ray title.

Sure Sony is gonna release thier titles exclusively on Blu-Ray - for now.
But just like Sony Betamax, once Blu-Ray fails... Sony will release all those back titles on HD-DVD anyway. All we need is a little patiance, and a little less dedication to the instant gratification disease that grips america.

-W

Let's just hope the HD-DVD people get their acts together and put together a reasonably functional solution for burning. If they could do that, I'd have less reason to support Blu-Ray, if only so it survives to give a decent storage solution. With all the non-existent HD-DVD burners out there, there won't be a whole lot of point in Slysoft continuing HD support beyond any new AACS keys. Certainly, a CloneDVD HD would be useless.

As it stands, I really don't think HD-DVD is as ahead as some people seem to think. The only players that are really cheap right now are inferior, 720p units. For me, it's either 1080p or I'm quite happy sticking with SD until real HD is affordable. I don't see the point in buying a $1500 TV now and replacing it a year and a half down the road when good 1080p sets are finally cheap.

 

[Iota]

It's not about the technical aspects of the formats at all. It's that we don't want Sony in charge of DRM for the next couple decades. Sony has a long history of engaging in "strange behavior" that tramples all over fair use rights. And it seems a lot of people have very short memories once they start salivating over some "must have now" Blu-Ray title.

-W

Exactly! For those of you that never heard of, or that may have forgotten about the rootkit fiasco where sony basically installed a trojan on your pc as a form of 'copy protection' feel free to catch up with the before and after at: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2005/11/69601

The icing on the cake is when the executive basically said people are dumb so why protect them. (from the rootkit)

*That* is the reason why I would never support sony in control of any format/product I used.

 

[bk1987]

As it stands, I really don't think HD-DVD is as ahead as some people seem to think. The only players that are really cheap right now are inferior, 720p units. For me, it's either 1080p or I'm quite happy sticking with SD until real HD is affordable. I don't see the point in buying a $1500 TV now and replacing it a year and a half down the road when good 1080p sets are finally cheap.

the new cheep players out put 1080i and 720p and im not here to debate but 1080i and 1080p will look the same on these units as long as the original disk was encoded at 1080p. as for HD DVD being ahead, not yet but when the A2 went on sale for $99 they sold out, i dont think they could make them fast enough. also im not 100% sure but there are like some 4.5 million ps3 out there and only about 500,000 HD DVD players thats like 9 to1 advantage bluray has in terms of players but they only out sell hd dvd by 1.75 to 1, thats not very good for the BLU boys

 

[stanger89]

I registered here just because of this thread. First, kudos to Slysoft for thier work on "releasing" media for us.

But I wanted to say that I think it would be much more beneficial to the community as a whole, if SlySoft created DirectShow Filters for HD playback that other players can use, rather than to just make yet another player.

There are already a number of great players out there (TheaterTek, Zoomplayer, etc), there's really no need for a new player, what the community really needs is a way for these existing players to incorporate support for HD, a way without dealing with the ramifications of AACS licensing (protected paths and $8M fines).

 

[Laddy]

TM2-Megatron

If the original source material is 1080p24 which I think most movie titles are, any decent 1080p set should be able to construct an identical 1080p60 encoding from either a 1080i encoding (telecined from the 1080p24) or the 1080p24 encoding itself. They contain identical information. It just needs to be combined differently for each to arrive at the 1080p60. Only if the original source material were 1080p60 would any difference be discernable and maybe not even then to most.

 

[James]

Let's just hope the HD-DVD people get their acts together and put together a reasonably functional solution for burning. If they could do that, I'd have less reason to support Blu-Ray, if only so it survives to give a decent storage solution. With all the non-existent HD-DVD burners out there, there won't be a whole lot of point in Slysoft continuing HD support beyond any new AACS keys. Certainly, a CloneDVD HD would be useless.

You are right, HD DVD as a recording medium at the moment is ... useless.
However, recording to Blu-ray is very slow and quite expensive. Backing up movies to Blu-ray is not economical (at least at the time of this writing), and I am a little worried about the reliability over time as well. Blu-ray is superior as a backup medium over HD DVD (which really isn't that hard), but any external harddrive wins over Blu-ray speed and capacity wise. For professional backup solutions, tape drives still have advantages.

 

[Clams]

Exactly! For those of you that never heard of, or that may have forgotten about the rootkit fiasco where sony basically installed a trojan on your pc as a form of 'copy protection' feel free to catch up with the before and after at: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2005/11/69601

The icing on the cake is when the executive basically said people are dumb so why protect them. (from the rootkit)

*That* is the reason why I would never support sony in control of any format/product I used.

Exactly... this should not be another Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD debate.

The real issue here is: ANYBODY BUT SONY!! :doh:

-W

 

[multiblitz]

For "political" reasons, we're not really interested in creating a BD player. We're even thinking of creating a freeware DVD / HD DVD player, to emphasize our support for HD DVD.

Here is an idea:

- Make the HD-DVD-VErsion free
- Charge for the BD-VErsion a 100$
- If you really want to supprt HD-DVD: Time to market is the key...giv us theis thing before christmas...pleeeeeaaaaaase.

 

[SamuriHL]

- If you really want to supprt HD-DVD: Time to market is the key...giv us theis thing before christmas...pleeeeeaaaaaase.

ROFLMAO! Yea, you've never been involved in software development, I can tell you that.

 

[joakim_46]

The HD-DVD will only expand when PC HD-DVD burners are available like Blu-Ray are right now.

 

[multiblitz]

ROFLMAO! Yea, you've never been involved in software development, I can tell you that.

Wrong. I led software-dev programms with 150 developers..not joking.

 

[SamuriHL]

Wrong. I led software-dev programms with 150 developers..not joking.

Then God help them. There is NO WAY IN HELL Slysoft can put out something this complicated in just over 4 weeks. I doubt they've even started working on it. Given the amount of development and testing that needs to be done, there's just NO WAY it'll get released any time soon.

 

[Slinger07]

Here is an idea:

- If you really want to supprt HD-DVD: Time to market is the key...giv us theis thing before christmas...pleeeeeaaaaaase.

I think you better call Santa back and ask for something else for Xmas :agree:

Give these Slysoft guys a break. I wish other companies (ahem Cyberlink) worked half as hard as they do. Thanksgiving is only a few days away and I do believe they are entitled to a few days off..right Giancarlo? :clap:

Happy Holidays Slysoft

 

[seeya]

For "political" reasons, we're not really interested in creating a BD player. We're even thinking of creating a freeware DVD / HD DVD player, to emphasize our support for HD DVD.

That sounds quite awesome! I do have some suggestions, if you don't mind:

We already have some nice freeware media players which work rather well (e.g. ZoomPlayer and the latest MPC HC builds). So I'm not sure if it's worth it if you just add another player. Of course if you do it really well, that would be great! But in order to be able to replace ZoomPlayer/MPC you would have to duplicate a lot of functionality (e.g. allowing custom filter chains and all that kind of stuff).

Would you consider creating DirectShow filters which allow ZoomPlayer & MPC to playback HD DVD titles? I think this way you could save noticable time and we end users had all the flexibility we could ever ask for.

Thanks!!

 

[StaticSurge]

Then God help them. There is NO WAY IN HELL Slysoft can put out something this complicated in just over 4 weeks. I doubt they've even started working on it. Given the amount of development and testing that needs to be done, there's just NO WAY it'll get released any time soon.

I agree, I'd say give it 3-6 months minimum for a beta and even then it may not be feature complete. I can wait though as long as it's coming

 

[SamuriHL]

I agree, I'd say give it 3-6 months minimum for a beta and even then it may not be feature complete. I can wait though as long as it's coming

That's what I'm saying. This isn't a situation where you slap together an MPEG2 codec and throw a shell around it. I don't think people quite understand the task at hand here.

First, there are 3 video codecs to support. VC-1, AVC, and MPEG2
Second, there are a ton of audio codecs that have to be supported, as well, with I believe slight variations between Blu-ray(won't be supported anyway) and HD DVD.
Third, the menu-ing structure is ridiculously complex and must be dealt with in order to get a fully functional playback system. It's one thing to simply play the main movie, but, that's uninsteresting. We want a player that gives the FULL HD DVD experience and to do that will require fully reverse engineering the menu structure.
Finally, all this has to be put together into a usable front end that works well.

All of you asking for directshow filters miss the freaking point. All that would do is give you play back of the main movie. In about a month the freeware community is going to have that done anyway. That's not what's being asked for. We want a FULLY FUNCTIONAL HD DVD player software. And that will take time to develop.

P.S. I forgot to add HDi support to that which I'm not even sure they could do. However, that's on the wish list, as well.

 

[MHTPC]

Well... if SlySoft is going to publish a HD player, they definitively can count me as a buyer.

Given that AACS and BD+ would be handled by AnyDVD HD, what I think is the minimum requirement for the SlySoft Player:

- Unprotected HD main movie playback (both BR and HD)
- Play from hard disk and media
- MCE integration

What would be nice in a later version:

- Full HD-DVD emulation (menus, u-control, etc.)

So.. humm.. Where do I send my money?