LinuxMCE Forums

General => Users => Topic started by: gazlang on January 07, 2008, 02:23:20 pm

Title: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: gazlang on January 07, 2008, 02:23:20 pm
Does LMCE 0710 support HD / Blu-ray DVD playback??

I looking at getting this drive :
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(28997)LG-GGCH20L-BluRay-HD-Combi-drive-Black-SATA.aspx

Any ideas if it is supported??

I have a Athlon 5600+ processor, 1gb PC6200 DDR2 Ram, and GeForce 7300gt Graphics, so I assume it can handle HD

Cheers
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: totallymaxed on January 07, 2008, 02:35:57 pm
Does LMCE 0710 support HD / Blu-ray DVD playback??

I looking at getting this drive :
http://www.microdirect.co.uk/(28997)LG-GGCH20L-BluRay-HD-Combi-drive-Black-SATA.aspx

Any ideas if it is supported??

I have a Athlon 5600+ processor, 1gb PC6200 DDR2 Ram, and GeForce 7300gt Graphics, so I assume it can handle HD

Cheers

Yes LinuxMCE 0710 does support HD-DVD/BlueRay playback. I can't comment on that specific drives suitability/compatibility under Linux however. Your overall hardware looks to be adequate for HD playback though.

Hope this helps

Andrew
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: gazlang on January 07, 2008, 07:14:05 pm
Cheers!
Really considering that drive over others as it plays both blu-ray and HD. Didn't really want to buy one format to find the other had taken the market later on!

Has anyone got HD / Blu-ray DVD drives working under LMCE? If so what makes/models?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Marie.O on January 07, 2008, 07:30:05 pm
gazlang,

I assume you want to view BluRay and/or HD-DVD movies on your LMCE, right?

As far as I understand the current situation, LMCE is utilizing MPlayer as the engine to play the HD contents. However, I do not know of ANY system right now, capable of directly decrypting the copy protection scheme of BluRay and/or HD-DVD available under Linux.

The MPlayer homepage (http://www.mplayerhq.hu (http://www.mplayerhq.hu)) has some small note on this

Quote
Support for VC-1 in MPEG-TS and MPEG-PS will make many HDTV streams work. Blu-ray or HD-DVD playback is not possible yet, but MPlayer can play the EVO files after they have been decrypted.

This might change in the future, but I would not hold my breath (I have small lung capacity :-))

rgds
Oliver
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Matthew on January 07, 2008, 09:00:00 pm
gazlang,

I assume you want to view BluRay and/or HD-DVD movies on your LMCE, right?

As far as I understand the current situation, LMCE is utilizing MPlayer as the engine to play the HD contents. However, I do not know of ANY system right now, capable of directly decrypting the copy protection scheme of BluRay and/or HD-DVD available under Linux.

The MPlayer homepage (http://www.mplayerhq.hu (http://www.mplayerhq.hu)) has some small note on this

Quote
Support for VC-1 in MPEG-TS and MPEG-PS will make many HDTV streams work. Blu-ray or HD-DVD playback is not possible yet, but MPlayer can play the EVO files after they have been decrypted.

This might change in the future, but I would not hold my breath (I have small lung capacity :-))

Is the upshot of that status that while MPlayer can play, say, Blu-Ray discs mounted in an LMCE Blu-Ray drive on a display connected locally to that LMCE drive's host, that is the full extent of HD support? Ie. the BD cannot be copied to an image file on a harddrive  (even remaining encrypted) and played from there, and neither BD nor an image can be played across the network? Or does that status actually mean that while MPlayer can in theory play a BD (disc or maybe image file), until someone delivers a BD decrypter (a la DeCSS for SD DVDs), there is no way to watch a BD movie with LMCE?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Marie.O on January 07, 2008, 09:21:21 pm
Is the upshot of that status that while MPlayer can play, say, Blu-Ray discs mounted in an LMCE Blu-Ray drive on a display connected locally to that LMCE drive's host, that is the full extent of HD support?
Quote

It is my understanding, you can not play any encrypted BluRay or HD-DVD on LMCE. Period.

Quote
Ie. the BD cannot be copied to an image file on a harddrive  (even remaining encrypted) and played from there, and neither BD nor an image can be played across the network?

I do not know, if you can COPY the encrypted media to the PC, as I do not have a BlueRay drive in my PC.

Quote
Or does that status actually mean that while MPlayer can in theory play a BD (disc or maybe image file), until someone delivers a BD decrypter (a la DeCSS for SD DVDs), there is no way to watch a BD movie with LMCE?

This is my understanding. As long as there is encryption, you can not play BD or HD-DVD under Linux. A better place to look for information might be the doom9.org forum.

rgds
Oliver
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: colinjones on January 07, 2008, 10:02:55 pm
It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: 1audio on January 07, 2008, 10:26:41 pm
The good news is that the real bandwidth required for the H.264 and VC1 codecs is no more than the MPEG2 HD files. They use variable bit rate and the peaks exceed 50 Mbps but the continuous rate isn't more and can be less. So 100MB ethernet can handle the content.

However the capability is wound up into two Linux challenges- decryption of the protected media; a commercial/legal minefiled and decent H.264 playback on un-accelerated hardware because the card guys are not giving Linux the accelerated drivers.

It will be possible but probably a power hungry kludge that could crash at any time for a while.
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: gazlang on January 08, 2008, 12:18:00 pm
Ok then, so hold off on investing in HD / Blu-ray drives for now I guess!

Why does Microsoft get exclusivity on HD decoding? And graphics accellerating? Bit of a joke really. I don't see why HD playback is prevented on Linux systems but allowed on Windows; both have the ability to abuse the privilege (copying etc.)
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: totallymaxed on January 08, 2008, 01:05:28 pm
It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?

Yes Collin you are correct the HD discs have to be copied to the Core first... they cannot be played direct from the HD optical drive. You cannot commence playback until the copy has completed. A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core. This tool currently does not reproduce the discs original menu system... but all video content on the original Disc is reproduced. The HD Disc copies are 40-50Gig  :o
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Matthew on January 08, 2008, 03:51:40 pm
It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?

Yes Collin you are correct the HD discs have to be copied to the Core first... they cannot be played direct from the HD optical drive. You cannot commence playback until the copy has completed. A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core. This tool currently does not reproduce the discs original menu system... but all video content on the original Disc is reproduced. The HD Disc copies are 40-50Gig  :o

To be clear: what you're describing is my putting a standard Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) disc I bought on Amazon, like Blade Runner, into a BD drive on my LMCE/0710 Core, copying it to the Core's local harddrive (probably with an LMCE GUI), then using an Orbiter to play the BD ISO file from the harddrive to my MD-connected TV (assuming my Core CPU and LAN are fast enough, that my TV-out does 1080P - and that I had 50GB free on by harddrive). Is that correct?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Marie.O on January 08, 2008, 06:42:22 pm
Hello Andrew,

A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core.

is it true, that this tool is called ripBDHD.sh and is currently 0 bytes, or is there another tool. I am at the brink of buying a Pioneer BD-202 for 150€ and a test Blu-Ray Disk just to try  ;)

rgds
Oliver
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Marie.O on January 08, 2008, 09:58:40 pm
is it true, that this tool is called ripBDHD.sh and is currently 0 bytes, or is there another tool. I am at the brink of buying a Pioneer BD-202 for 150€ and a test Blu-Ray Disk just to try  ;)

I hereby certify that I shall never post again, without first checking my health  :-X

Sorry, you can download the high-def stuff from the addon software page within LMCE. Me = Stupid.

rgds
Oliver

PS: I will go out and get the Pioneer to test this.
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Matthew on January 08, 2008, 11:52:48 pm
It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?

Yes Collin you are correct the HD discs have to be copied to the Core first... they cannot be played direct from the HD optical drive. You cannot commence playback until the copy has completed. A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core. This tool currently does not reproduce the discs original menu system... but all video content on the original Disc is reproduced. The HD Disc copies are 40-50Gig  :o

To be clear: what you're describing is my putting a standard Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) disc I bought on Amazon, like Blade Runner, into a BD drive on my LMCE/0710 Core, copying it to the Core's local harddrive (probably with an LMCE GUI), then using an Orbiter to play the BD ISO file from the harddrive to my MD-connected TV (assuming my Core CPU and LAN are fast enough, that my TV-out does 1080P - and that I had 50GB free on by harddrive). Is that correct?

Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: tschak909 on January 09, 2008, 08:47:04 am
if you look at the code in svn, you see that it pulls the EVO files and stores them.

-Thom
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: totallymaxed on January 09, 2008, 12:43:54 pm
It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?

Yes Collin you are correct the HD discs have to be copied to the Core first... they cannot be played direct from the HD optical drive. You cannot commence playback until the copy has completed. A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core. This tool currently does not reproduce the discs original menu system... but all video content on the original Disc is reproduced. The HD Disc copies are 40-50Gig  :o

To be clear: what you're describing is my putting a standard Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) disc I bought on Amazon, like Blade Runner, into a BD drive on my LMCE/0710 Core, copying it to the Core's local harddrive (probably with an LMCE GUI), then using an Orbiter to play the BD ISO file from the harddrive to my MD-connected TV (assuming my Core CPU and LAN are fast enough, that my TV-out does 1080P - and that I had 50GB free on by harddrive). Is that correct?

Yes that is correct
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: totallymaxed on January 09, 2008, 12:45:40 pm
is it true, that this tool is called ripBDHD.sh and is currently 0 bytes, or is there another tool. I am at the brink of buying a Pioneer BD-202 for 150€ and a test Blu-Ray Disk just to try  ;)

I hereby certify that I shall never post again, without first checking my health  :-X

Sorry, you can download the high-def stuff from the addon software page within LMCE. Me = Stupid.

rgds
Oliver

PS: I will go out and get the Pioneer to test this.

No problem...  ;D
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: totallymaxed on January 09, 2008, 12:47:06 pm
It was my understanding from what totallymaxed has said in the past, that although 0710 will not be able to play BD/HDDVD directly from the optical media due to the encryption schemes, that the scheme 0710 would use is to rip the content to hard drive, use a local decryption system and have the LMCE box do the work, then use mplayer to play it.

The only restrictions that seemed to be apparent when this was last discussed was the CPU power needed to process all that data, the disk space required (although it only need be temporary, I guess) and the network bandwidth needed to stream it to MDs - certainly Gb required...

Is that right Andrew? So encrypted (normal) HD DVDs and BD should be fine? Certainly the copy protection keys have been circumvented since May last year, look at SlySofts AnyDVD product.

Final question, Andrew - if this is how it will work, will LMCE allow you to start playing the ripped movie before it has finished ripping, or do you need to wait for the whole disk to finish before starting? How long does that typically take?

Yes Collin you are correct the HD discs have to be copied to the Core first... they cannot be played direct from the HD optical drive. You cannot commence playback until the copy has completed. A special HD tool is provided to allow you to copy the discs to the Core. This tool currently does not reproduce the discs original menu system... but all video content on the original Disc is reproduced. The HD Disc copies are 40-50Gig  :o

To be clear: what you're describing is my putting a standard Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) disc I bought on Amazon, like Blade Runner, into a BD drive on my LMCE/0710 Core, copying it to the Core's local harddrive (probably with an LMCE GUI), then using an Orbiter to play the BD ISO file from the harddrive to my MD-connected TV (assuming my Core CPU and LAN are fast enough, that my TV-out does 1080P - and that I had 50GB free on by harddrive). Is that correct?

Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Yes that is correct  ;)
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: cirion on January 09, 2008, 03:24:44 pm
Will the BDHD ripper care about regions?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: totallymaxed on January 09, 2008, 03:57:48 pm
Will the BDHD ripper care about regions?

No
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Matthew on January 09, 2008, 04:30:29 pm
Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Yes that is correct  ;)

Well that is quite cool. I presume that the original menu content on the BD (and HD-DVD) cannot run because LMCE doesn't have the operating environment that the BD drive has embedded in its HW, which is where that menu content runs. I suppose that's a function of the BD driver, which we won't see getting that access to the BD HW anytime soon. But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: totallymaxed on January 09, 2008, 04:39:50 pm
Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Yes that is correct  ;)

Well that is quite cool. I presume that the original menu content on the BD (and HD-DVD) cannot run because LMCE doesn't have the operating environment that the BD drive has embedded in its HW, which is where that menu content runs. I suppose that's a function of the BD driver, which we won't see getting that access to the BD HW anytime soon. But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?

Yes I think that is likely to be the case in the future... when I can't say though.
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: Matthew on January 09, 2008, 05:24:34 pm
Or maybe 0710 doesn't rip a BD to an ISO, but to some other files (that don't include the original BD menu system). But still, once ripped, can I use the Orbiter and MD/Hybrid to watch Blade Runner in glorious 1080P?

Yes that is correct  ;)

Well that is quite cool. I presume that the original menu content on the BD (and HD-DVD) cannot run because LMCE doesn't have the operating environment that the BD drive has embedded in its HW, which is where that menu content runs. I suppose that's a function of the BD driver, which we won't see getting that access to the BD HW anytime soon. But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?

Yes I think that is likely to be the case in the future... when I can't say though.

I am really glad that LMCE will offer me the ability to actually use the content on BD that I paid for, even under Linux. FWIW, my Blu-Ray player is my PS3, which runs Ubuntu and now has an accelerated MPlayer driver using the Cell's DSPs.

Though I don't see that the PS3's embedded BD-J (Blu-ray Disc Java) support is exposed to Linux (probably locked out by the PS3 Hypervisor just like the RSX is), BD-J (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J) is a J2ME CDC (http://www.blueboard.com/bluray/). As is DVB. Maybe there's something in the new DVB support in LMCE 0710 that could also support BD-J... And maybe that kind of convergence also means that a "Mobile Orbiter" in Java, rather than targeting just Symbian 60 phones, is the future for mobile access to LMCE (and everything else LMCE opens up).

If we do this stuff right, it will just snowball. Especially now that Blu-Ray looks like the default HD storage format, now that Warner has left the HD-DVD camp.
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: teedge77 on January 13, 2008, 10:22:00 pm
can an image that is ripped to the hard drive, then be burned onto a disc that has enough space (HD DVD or Blu Ray i suppose) and then played directly from the disc?
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: kir on January 15, 2008, 01:50:12 pm
can an image that is ripped to the hard drive, then be burned onto a disc that has enough space (HD DVD or Blu Ray i suppose) and then played directly from the disc?

Hmm... interesting question :) As far as I know, it is achievable, but currently not possible - because when you will insert this disk, the system will detect the "HD/BD media" and will ask you if you want to rip  ;D Kind of loop situation. I think it is possible to change this behavior later.
Title: Re: HD / Blu-ray Drive
Post by: kir on January 15, 2008, 01:53:36 pm
But I believe that Blu-Ray at least is just a Java VM. Which could mean that the entire BD could possibly run, menu content included, in a JVM running on the LMCE host. Does that seem plausible?

From what I know, the Blu-Ray is truly a Java VM plus some libraries providing the general support - last time I was reading about that somewhere on www, it was said that BD-player implements the Java TV API, so I suspect that to make the BD menu system run on Java host, we would need not only the Java VM, but also the missing libraries, and layer implementing Java TV API (e.g. wrapper around MPlayer that will expose this API (play/pause/etc./whatever.) to Java applications). The libraries and API are completely not implemented.