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SlySoft Player?

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I can tell you that ArcSoft has basically yawned at the news of SlyPlayer. I think you'll find that the market for each is quite different. While they may loose some sales, ArcSoft and Cyberlink tend to focus on the OEM market. Plus they are fully licensed players with full support. (I'm not suggesting SlyPlayer wouldn't have support, just that ArcSoft and Cyberlink get 'official' support from the AACS LA). In any case, ArcSoft does not seem to be concerned and they're taking a "wait and see when it's released" attitude towards it. I also think anything that "ups the ante" in terms of competition is a good thing for all involved. That being said, I suspect both ArcSoft and Cyberlink (to a lesser degree probably) harbor a little bit of jealousy in what Slysoft will be able to do with SlyPlayer. By having to abide by the AACS LA's rules, they're more limited in what they can get away with. By not having all the protection garbage hanging around, we can expect SlyPlayer to be lean and mean and less prone to crashing. I look forward to it. :)
 
SamuriHL said:
By not having all the protection garbage hanging around, we can expect SlyPlayer to be lean and mean and less prone to crashing. I look forward to it. :)
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You mean no MovieLink and BD Jive. Horrors ;)

- Rich
 
Yea, none of the bloat of other players. I think Slysoft has proven time and again that they make excellent quality software that specializes in what it does. AnyDVD for removing protection. Reclock for solving some playback issues, CloneDVD for remastering DVD's, CloneCD for copying CD's and DVD's bit for bit, Game Jackal for handling game backups, Virtual CloneDrive for mounting images, etc. All top notch programs that I consider best of their class. So it's exciting to think about what they can do with a player software. Everyone needs to remember, these guys like movies and the HTPC experience more than even us hardcore HTPC enthusiasts. :) They'll do it right.
 
Any chance of adding Media Center Integration

I apologize if this was already asked and answered, but is there any chance of providing a media center plug-in for this potential app?
 
Does anyone have any idea approximately when the beta might be release? I was thinking of upgrading my PowerDVD 8 to PowerDVD 9. But, I might hold off if this will be released soon.
 
SamuriHL said:
Right. I agree. I understand why the bitstreaming people are so adament though. They've had nothing to show them why it's not necessary. When you rely on crap like PowerDVD and to an extent TMT to decode your audio and then have it get molested, well, it's easy to see why they're hung up on bitstreaming. I want it to sound as it was meant to sound. Meaning how the audio engineers who put the track together meant for it to sound. That's it. Bit exact or not, I don't care, as long as it faithfully reproduces the track.
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Ugh. The bitstreaming people are adamant because of the long, troubled history of players that have been molesting and downsampling audio, in some cases like PowerDVD where there wasn't even a legal requirement to do so but did it anyway, and they wrote them off as "bugs" but then didn't ever fix them. My A/V receiver was designed to convert the bitstream to LPCM, so why shouldn't I have the choice to do it there? I don't care that it "sounds" the same than if the player software decodes it to LPCM first. Bitstreaming to the receiver is a simple guarantee, a certification, that the audio got there unmolested - that it need not be second guessed and analyzed any time the AACS feels like mandating something new, and/or the software player company changes the way it handles audio from one version to the next. Bitstreaming to the receiver is like an SSL connection that keeps the freaking AACS and its jelly-spined licensees out of the audio path without worry.

Not sure why its so hard to understand, but in any case I am looking forward to SlyPlayer and would pay up to $200 for it based on the money it would be saving me in other crap (Arcsoft, Asus, etc).
 
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Yea, I agree. Bitstreaming does give us a guarantee of sorts that the audio won't be molested. However, look at the current situation I'm in. TMT3 is currently broken with my Xonar card because ASUS hasn't released a driver that's compatible with my OS of choice. I can force TMT3 to use compatibility mode, but, that doesn't work completely either as I get audio dropouts. So, nothing is perfect it seems. SlyPlayer will hopefully be a game changer and allow us to just simply play our movies and get everything else out of the way.
 
if even half the SlyPlayer claims are true and it sees the light of day then James will need to change his name to Jesus.
 
odditory said:
if even half the SlyPlayer claims are true and it sees the light of day then James will need to change his name to Jesus.
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James is a King among kings but let's not overlook the other amazingly critical developers that work for Slysoft including Peer, Fernando, and others.
 
I just simply can't wait this player come out :agree: :rock: :bowdown: :clap:
 
odditory said:
Bitstreaming to the receiver is a simple guarantee, a certification, that the audio got there unmolested
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Ahh.. but you're solving one problem with another problem. Okay, so you don't want molested audio? Solution: Don't molest the audio.

Bitstreaming brings with it another level of complexity and possibility of error that should be avoided.

The real life problem you're talking about is that PowerDVD doesn't decode audio properly and, to a lesser extent, the audio is being processed by the windows mixer.

The SlyPlayer promises to fix both these problem PROPERLY.

Edit - Besides, you don't know what your receiver does internally.. It may have bought DSPs that downsample everything to 48/16 so it can apply processing before sending out to DACs.
 
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fuzz! said:
Ahh.. but you're solving one problem with another problem. Okay, so you don't want molested audio? Solution: Don't molest the audio.

Bitstreaming brings with it another level of complexity and possibility of error that should be avoided.

The real life problem you're talking about is that PowerDVD doesn't decode audio properly and, to a lesser extent, the audio is being processed by the windows mixer.

The SlyPlayer promises to fix both these problem PROPERLY.
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Yes it does. But unfortunately, SlyPlayer is not CURRENTLY released and I suspect no one really wants to let their movies sit on the shelf until it is released. :) So there's a couple options: live with downsampled audio in a less than perfect player, attempt to do bitstreaming with a Xonar and ASUS TMT2 or retail TMT3, or use a PS3. :D (Ok, that last one could be any stand alone player, but, I use a PS3) I do all 3 of those things, personally, and I anxiously await the day I can use SlyPlayer and forget all this ugliness ever happened.
 
SamuriHL said:
Yes it does. But unfortunately, SlyPlayer is not CURRENTLY released and I suspect no one really wants to let their movies sit on the shelf until it is released. :) So there's a couple options: live with downsampled audio in a less than perfect player, attempt to do bitstreaming with a Xonar and ASUS TMT2 or retail TMT3, or use a PS3. :D (Ok, that last one could be any stand alone player, but, I use a PS3) I do all 3 of those things, personally, and I anxiously await the day I can use SlyPlayer and forget all this ugliness ever happened.
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True I suppose I was talking purely from a theoretical standpoint :p If things were ACTUALLY done properly we wouldn't have the joy of dealing with all these nightmares.. Interlacing, Telecining, messed up ranges, HDCP, AACS, bitstreaming, cropping, 24-25fps conversion, blah blah blah..
 
Exactly. But then, what fun would James, Peer, and Fernando have? :D
 
Oh, I wanted to ask something. Right now latest drivers from ATI and (I think) Nvidia don't expand levels for anything except bluray both on TMT and PowerDVD. I understand there is a H.264 expansion flag that tells the decoder to do it (though I don't know if it happens too with VC-1, or if it has a similar flag). If I tune Catalyst to expand my videos in Media Center, I will get double expansion for bluray on PowerDVD and TMT.

So is it possible that Slyplayer be able to ignore this expansion flag, and make the bluray video behave like any other video in all other programs?
 
hamiltonguy said:
I apologize if this was already asked and answered, but is there any chance of providing a media center plug-in for this potential app?
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I'd also be extremely interested in this and would be happy to pay for it.

For what it's worth I'd further add that without meda center integration equivalent to what Arcsoft does, which is really of course just a standalone player that can run/exit fairly seamlessly from within media center, I'd stick with Arcsoft.

Media center integration is important to me. I realize I may be in the minority of most users interested in this player in that regard...

(edit) Just did a quick search and see I'm not the only one asking for this. Maybe still a minority, but I bet there are plenty more not reading this thread.....
 
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