[solarsystems]

Hi I have been a user of XBMC on xbox for some time and have now decided i would like to put together a windows based XBMC system and would like a few questions answered

Does XBMC support HD DVD and Blu Ray?
I have a harmony 895 with wireless extender what ir device will allow me to use this with a pc and is there a way to programme/map the keys??
Whats gaphics card is recommended and diver version?

Any more advice for a freash setup would be welcomed

Thanks for your help in advance it just I dont want to build a system and find I got to change the setup to get it to work.

[waldo22]

All of these things have been answered over and over again on these forums.

1) no, it doesn't support BluRay and HD DVD yet, because ffmpeg doesn't support the decryption yet (and it may never support it). XBMC can play .m2ts files (native bluray) that have been decrypted, but I don't know if it can handle the native bandwidth. You may have to transcode. XBMC does NOT support the .EVO files of HD DVDs yet, because ffmpeg can't demux the .EVO container format, even if it can decode h.264 video. here are supported codecs:

Either way, you'll have to have a program such as AnyDVD HD to decrypt the disk, and you 'll have to rip both BluRay and/or HD DVD to your hard disk.

Then you may be able to play the BluRay .m2ts files, but you'll probably have to transcode them to h.264 or xvid at a much lower bitrate (12Mbps)

You'll Certainly have to at least demux HD DVD from the EVO container and remux into an MKV container or something, but you may have to transcode to a lower bitrate. I don't know, and I don't know if anyone's tried it yet.

Oh yeah, and XBMC doesn't support Dolby TrueHD or the new DTS format either yet, so you'll definitely have to transcode the audio.

See doom9.org for help with this stuff.

2) Not sure which dongle you'll need, but you can certainly map the keys. Do a search on this forum.

3) XBMC doesn't currently support video acceleration using graphics hardware, so any graphics that supports OpenGL 2.0 should work, even integrated graphics on new boards will work.

4) get an Intel C2D chip (that's Core2 Duo) E8200 or E8400 gives best performance per watt right now, and it has the extra cache needed for HD, along with plenty of overclocking headroom, if you're into that sort of thing.


You'll have to do a bit more research on that dongle.

Good luck,

Wes

[marlboroman1]

As far as remots go PS3 Bluray Remote event client some info on set up can be found below

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=EventServer#...or_Windown

Some people have had success using eventghost and xbmc keymap.xml to configure their own remotes. I've not looked into it but from first impression eventghost is fairly technical not something I would wont to play with.

Pepol have reported slite performance enhancements with the GT8500, but the main factor in choosing a GPU is do you intend to use your HTPC for playing games as well? For me any way that is the only real reason for using win32 as a base for a xbmc HTPC. which I guess is why I haven't built one yet as a decent GPU will double the pric.e

[rodercot]

Hi I have been a user of XBMC on xbox for some time and have now decided i would like to put together a windows based XBMC system and would like a few questions answered

Does XBMC support HD DVD and Blu Ray?
I have a harmony 895 with wireless extender what ir device will allow me to use this with a pc and is there a way to programme/map the keys??
Whats gaphics card is recommended and diver version?

Any more advice for a freash setup would be welcomed

Thanks for your help in advance it just I dont want to build a system and find I got to change the setup to get it to work.

There are several good guides for doing this on-line. you can search video help or doom 9 and they work well.

I use tsmuxer for bd and anyhd, and I use evo demux and eac3to as well as mkvmerge gui.

I convert bd to .ts files and they work perfectly in xbmc for windows. I convert evo to mkv and the eac3 1536 track to ac3 1536 and it work as well just fine in xbmc.

I have it down now where it takes me about 20 minuted to do a BD and 45 minutes to do a hd-dvd. Then I just copy them over to the server and appply my own HD or BD cover art following a imdb search for the movie.

XBMC for windows play both those formats perfectly with no tearing or playback (pass-through) issues. I have not tried a dts-hd track i normally with ts-muxer down-mix dts-hd to regular dts. I have not done an dts hd-dvd yet but will be soon. these movies all end up at between 18-23 Gb I have not tried to shrink although you can with a few more steps in the process. I feel for the price of adding a 750 or 1tb drive to the server is cheaper then the 12-16hours per movie in hydro and lack of the use of that machine doing the work is going to be.

I could not get an iso of bd rip to work that is why I convert to .ts they play fine for bd.

rgds,

Dave

[waldo22]

So Dave,

You're not transcoding at all? Your just re-muxing Bd and HD DVD into TS or MKV containers and they play fine under XBMC Win32?

That's Awesome!

[rodercot]

So Dave,

You're not transcoding at all? Your just re-muxing Bd and HD DVD into TS or MKV containers and they play fine under XBMC Win32?

That's Awesome!

I did try a couple movies to make them smaller but like a said in the previous post I found it cheaper to add another drive and leave the main movie as it is. They play great and I have watched the full versions od BD Total Recall, Dirty Dancing, RoboCop all DB in .ts and then The mummy, The Sting, The Aviator, Spy Game in MKV and all are fine and I have not had one issue yet with playback or sound problems. These are all at 1920x1080p with the latest nvidia driver.

rgds,

Dave

[Livin]

My understanding is that rips can be played with MPlayer patched for both MLP/TrueHD and E-AC3. The patches work with MPlayer SVN revision 25826. These same patches will work with FFMpeg revision 11584.

This actually brings up a great issue...

In order for XBMC to be used by the masses (which I assume is the whole point) and compete with other solutions (MythTV, SageTV, J River Media Center, Beyond Media, Media Portal, etc) it MUST support Blu-Ray... even if it means having a simple plug-in or integrations with another app (like PowerDVD or WinDVD) to do so. BUT, it MUST be easy to install and use, for anyone, not just techies.

People rent discs and will not want to buy a stand-alone player or want to go through the trouble of ripping just to watch a rental disc.

Here are the current apps I know of that support BD playback...

Cyberlink's PowerDVD

[rodercot]

My understanding is that rips can be played with MPlayer patched for both MLP/TrueHD and E-AC3. The patches work with MPlayer SVN revision 25826. These same patches will work with FFMpeg revision 11584.

This actually brings up a great issue...

In order for XBMC to be used by the masses (which I assume is the whole point) and compete with other solutions (MythTV, SageTV, J River Media Center, Beyond Media, Media Portal, etc) it MUST support Blu-Ray... even if it means having a simple plug-in or integrations with another app (like PowerDVD or WinDVD) to do so. BUT, it MUST be easy to install and use, for anyone, not just techies.

People rent discs and will not want to buy a stand-alone player or want to go through the trouble of ripping just to watch a rental disc.

Here are the current apps I know of that support BD playback...

Cyberlink's PowerDVD

I do agree with that. Ripping a BD with anydvd and then using tsmuxer is child's play. you rip you open you pick the stream and choose how you want to save it. iso, bd format, .ts etc.. and then save it. It is one step.

rgds,

Dave

[icekiller]

My understanding is that rips can be played with MPlayer patched for both MLP/TrueHD and E-AC3. The patches work with MPlayer SVN revision 25826. These same patches will work with FFMpeg revision 11584.

This actually brings up a great issue...

In order for XBMC to be used by the masses (which I assume is the whole point) and compete with other solutions (MythTV, SageTV, J River Media Center, Beyond Media, Media Portal, etc) it MUST support Blu-Ray... even if it means having a simple plug-in or integrations with another app (like PowerDVD or WinDVD) to do so. BUT, it MUST be easy to install and use, for anyone, not just techies.

People rent discs and will not want to buy a stand-alone player or want to go through the trouble of ripping just to watch a rental disc.

Here are the current apps I know of that support BD playback...

Cyberlink's PowerDVD

windows<=> linux.. xmbc is multiplatform aka what works on windows needs to work on linux and macos... i'm pretty sure you can write a python script for windows that calls up powerdvd

[Djsnake]

yo guys, if we put this:


into the pc will ever XBMC for win read blu-rays?
I'm not in a hurry, it's just a curious question

[phunqe]

I did try a couple movies to make them smaller but like a said in the previous post I found it cheaper to add another drive and leave the main movie as it is. They play great and I have watched the full versions od BD Total Recall, Dirty Dancing, RoboCop all DB in .ts and then The mummy, The Sting, The Aviator, Spy Game in MKV and all are fine and I have not had one issue yet with playback or sound problems. These are all at 1920x1080p with the latest nvidia driver.

rgds,

Dave

Man, I'm getting very frustrated reading this. Every 1080p movie I watch the image stutters.

It's not aproblem with the file reading.
It's not a CPU problem (the CPU never goes up to 100% even).
All latest drivers are used.
All movies work flawlessly in other players.

[Gamester17]

I have not tried it myself but if you run the latest version of AnyDVD HD then yes the latest XBMC SVN should be capable M2TS files on a Blu-ray disc, (playback speed would depend on your CPU but you would need something like a 2,4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo to be playback the majority), however you would not get the menu or any interactive features of Blu-ray, ...for that you would have to wait until someone else codes and open source library to handle all of that, (similar to libdvdnav is an open source library for the 'old' DVD-Video format), I do not think anyone on Team-XBMC will code a such library for Blu-ray themselves.