BluRay,1080p, DLNA, MKV, HTPC, etc.

falconcry72

Ok so now that I'm getting into HD video, I'm exploring different playback methods. The streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu etc. are cool, but they're all 720p or 1080i max, only some content has real 5.1, and none of them have TrueHD or MA. So let's keep this thread to playing back HD video that you own, not that you're streaming or renting from a service.

I have a BluRay. I can rip that BluRay to an uncompressed, 1080p MKV file that retains whatever original audio I want, including DD TrueHD, DTS MA, etc. Here are the playback methods I've come up with in my system as it sits today:

- MKV file Wireless via DLNA straight to TV > Audio return to pre/pro
- MKV file Wireless via DLNA to BluRay player
- MKV file via USB drive hooked to TV > Audio return to pr/pro
- MKV file via USB drive hooked to BluRay player
- MKV file played on HTPC
- MKV file burned as data and played on BuRay player
- Original BluRay disc played on BluRay player

I'm thinking that if you have a BluRay player with high quality video processing, your best bet is to go through that player, whether it be via DLNA, USB, or a disc.

Do people have buffering issues streaming 1080p via DLNA?

I am LOVING being able to hook an external USB drive (thumb, flash, or big old 2TB) straight to the BluRay player and play files from there. The 1080p video quality is not discernible form the original BluRay to my eyes, and my reciever picks up the DD TrueHD or DTS MA audio no problem, plus you don't have to rely on the internet. Using my HTPC is easier and faster, but the image quality is slightly better out of the BluRay player. Most players will play MKV files (as well as FLAC for music).

Other suggestions, ideas, questions, comments??? NAS?

EndersShadow

Most of the time the second you talk about streaming a digital dvd or blu-ray rip most folks will be using a dedicated HTPC to do that. Given the size of high quality digital rips most folks tend to have a NAS or server setup to contain the files and then have a HTPC that streams/decodes them from that server and plays them back to an AVR connected to a TV.

I myself when I built my hi-fi computer basically built a HTPC capable of 3d playback (via a slot loading blu-ray drive which isnt installed) and one that could decode/transcode those types of files and play them via HDMI to my AVR.

Also most folks are using either AMD's LLano (A6-3500 and up) or Trinity APU's (A8's and up) or Intels Sandy Bridge (G530) or Ivy Bridge paired with Micro-ITX or Micro-ATX motherboards.

falconcry72

Yea the video card in my HTPC does 1080p, 3D, 4K, DD TrueHD, DTS MA, etc via HDMI, and don't get me wrong it looks really good, but I think the video quality is a little better with a USB drive plugged directly into my BluRay player.

monepolk

May I ask what are you using to rip your bluerays to your pc?

falconcry72

monepolk wrote: »

May I ask what are you using to rip your bluerays to your pc?

I'm new to this... but what I'm using now is MakeMKV. You can deselect audio or video channels that you don't want, and it keeps the quality 100% uncompressed. You lose the menus, but I don't really care. MKV seems to be pretty commonly supported among newer players and tv's.

I didn't realize that most players and tv's allow you to just hook up an external hard drive or flash drive via USB and play video from there. It's so easy, and you don't have to worry about any wireless, buffering, or other networking issues.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I'm all for ripping my DVDs and have about 1200 movies and TV shows in my library. I'm not quite on board with ripping blu rays yet.

falconcry72

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

I'm all for ripping my DVDs and have about 1200 movies and TV shows in my library. I'm not quite on board with ripping blu rays yet.

Why's that? File size?

monepolk

falconcry72 wrote: »

I'm new to this... but what I'm using now is MakeMKV. You can deselect audio or video channels that you don't want, and it keeps the quality 100% uncompressed. You lose the menus, but I don't really care. MKV seems to be pretty commonly supported among newer players and tv's.

I didn't realize that most players and tv's allow you to just hook up an external hard drive or flash drive via USB and play video from there. It's so easy, and you don't have to worry about any wireless, buffering, or other networking issues.

Thanks I'll check that out.

EndersShadow

falconcry72 wrote: »

Yea the video card in my HTPC does 1080p, 3D, 4K, DD TrueHD, DTS MA, etc via HDMI, and don't get me wrong it looks really good, but I think the video quality is a little better with a USB drive plugged directly into my BluRay player.

What blu-ray player are you using? I would also suggest checking that when your connected to your HDTV that overscaling is not on (which it always was for my AMD card till I turned it off). It made things look a little bit not right.

falconcry72 wrote: »

I'm new to this... but what I'm using now is MakeMKV. You can deselect audio or video channels that you don't want, and it keeps the quality 100% uncompressed. You lose the menus, but I don't really care. MKV seems to be pretty commonly supported among newer players and tv's.

I didn't realize that most players and tv's allow you to just hook up an external hard drive or flash drive via USB and play video from there. It's so easy, and you don't have to worry about any wireless, buffering, or other networking issues.

Interesting, hadnt seen/heard this. IIRC you've got a Panasonic Plasma right? What model (I have one too curious if this would work for me)....

falconcry72

EndersShadow wrote: »

What blu-ray player are you using? I would also suggest checking that when your connected to your HDTV that overscaling is not on (which it always was for my AMD card till I turned it off). It made things look a little bit not right.

It's just a mid level panny player (DMP-BDT320)... but it seems a lot of newer players have USB inputs, including all the Oppos.

Overscaling is not on. And please don't get me wrong, my PC looks awesome on the TV. My 1080p rips played with VLC look excellent... MUCH better than my 1080i FiOS cable... it's just that using an external drive connected to the BR player (or the TV) is just a hair better. Not even always noticeable.

EndersShadow wrote: »

Interesting, hadnt seen/heard this. IIRC you've got a Panasonic Plasma right? What model (I have one too curious if this would work for me)....

TV is a Panny VT50. It has 3 USB inputs, right alongside the HDMI inputs. I think most people use those USB inputs for viewing photos etc, but they'll play 1080p video, DD TrueHD, DTS MA, and FLAC flawlessly too! I could literally hook (3) 2TB drives straight to the TV and play my whole media collection through there. I can do that with the BR player too, which is preferable, but it only has one USB input. Pretty sweet. It's just nice to have options in addition to the HTPC. Computer dies, I just hook up a backup external drive to the tv or player and I'm in business. No wifi required.

And seriously, the USB inputs on my TV and BR player were not even marketed at all! You have to dig through specs to even know that they're there... but they provide such an awesome feature if you know how to use them!!!

falconcry72

monepolk wrote: »

Thanks I'll check that out.

People use AnyDVD HD for BluRay rips too. I use MKV because that file type is compatible with my TV and BR player, plus it's lossless, non-compressed. LOTR FOTR was 30GBs! Oh well, it looks fantastic!

falconcry72

When I get home I'm going to compare the quality of playing MKV files via USB vs. over DLNA. Shouldn't be a difference, but you never know..

tonyb

falconcry72 wrote: »

LOTR FOTR was 30GBs! Oh well, it looks fantastic!

Holly smokes. 30 gb's ?

People need some serious storage then to put a movie collection all digital.

falconcry72

tonyb wrote: »

Holly smokes. 30 gb's ?

People need some serious storage then to put a movie collection all digital.

lol yea, that's true. Most movies are more like 10GB I think. If the average is between 10-20 per movies, then you could hold 100-200 movies on a $100 2TB external drive, making the cost per movie between 50 cents and a buck.

You can use programs like handbrake to compress the total size waaaaaaaay down without losing much quality, but I'm all for lossless all the time. There's a huge philosophical difference between 99.9% and 100%.

LOTR was so big because it's a 3 hour movie, in full 1080p, and I kept the DTS-MA 6.1 audio as well as the DD 5.1 audio.

EndersShadow

Falcon, we need to talk one of these days :biggrin:.

I am wanting to do what your doing as well with my DVD collection but simply havent "done" it or looked for info on it in a long time. Whats the program your using cost as I know its not free lol....

As an FYI just for resources, [H]ardOPC's forum [H]ardforum has a great Small Form Factor and HTPC section as does AVSForum. Also if you are interested in using a SLICK playback program check out XBMC. It is similar to Windows Media Center but MUCH better (plays more formats) and can pull the cover, info, and SOOOOO MUCH MORE.

Right now its what I am using for my music playback on my hi-fi computer :biggrin:

Lots of folks are running XBMC as their entire front end on their HTPC's as its just PIMPIN!

falconcry72

EndersShadow wrote: »

...Whats the program your using cost as I know its not free lol...

MakeMKV is free while it's in Beta, which it has been for a few years. I'm not sure how much AnyDVD HD costs.

I will DEFINITELY check out XBMC. VLC works well, but it's kinda boring lol.

EndersShadow

falconcry72 wrote: »

MakeMKV is free while it's in Beta, which it has been for a few years. I'm not sure how much AnyDVD HD costs.

Well my weekend just got busy

falconcry72 wrote: »

I will DEFINITELY check out XBMC. VLC works well, but it's kinda boring lol.

I can help ya out with XBMC, been playing with it for a year or so and honestly I LOVE the interface. The way it shows the library, plus the fact you can download and use different skins, its totally open source and has a HUGE developer/forum membership is great too.

falconcry72

EndersShadow wrote: »

I can help ya out with XBMC, been playing with it for a year or so and honestly I LOVE the interface. The way it shows the library, plus the fact you can download and use different skins, its totally open source and has a HUGE developer/forum membership is great too.

I'm guessing XBMC can pass through DD TrueHD and DTS MA without a problem?

EndersShadow

falconcry72 wrote: »

I'm guessing XBMC can pass through DD TrueHD and DTS MA without a problem?

I believe it can, but let me double check for you

Found this: http://xbmc.org/dddamian/2012/05/30/xbmc-audio-goes-hd/ (see quote below)


Also like I said, huge community of info out there (they build a wiki for XMBC :biggrin:) http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=AudioEngine

XBMC Audio goes HD
May 30th, 2012 dddamian
It’s been long-awaited, oft-discussed and it’s finally here – AudioEngine for XBMC!

What is AudioEngine? A complete re-write of the core audio sub-system of XBMC, and a two-year project comprising some 22,000 lines of code.

Spear-headed by lead-developer gnif, with contributions from many other team developers (dddamian, gimli, fneufneu, anssi, memphiz and others!), AudioEngine brings high-definition audio to the already amazing XBMC. No matter the audio source, AE handles the decoding, resampling, transcoding, encoding and streaming of your media, including for the first time DTS-MA, TrueHD and 24-bit audio. XBMC has never sounded better!

With full floating-point audio pipes, even mp3’s sound audibly better, with dithering built-in to further reduce quantization noise.

After a herculean effort and many lost evenings, the team is happy to announce that AudioEngine has been merged with the master branch as of May 15th 2012. As such, it is now possible for the team as a whole to participate in it’s further development and for users to enjoy via the nightlies or your own builds.

Features of AE include:

- support for DTS-MA / Dolby TrueHD Bluray formats (OSX pending)
- support for 24-bit and floating-point audio at up to 384,000hz
- mixing of all streams including GUI sounds even when transcoding audio
- start-up enumeration of hardware audio devices and their capablities with log output
- bitstreaming support in PAPlayer (XBMC’s music player)
- upmixing of stereo to full channel layout
- tighter syncing of A/V streams
- floating-point processing of audio
- 24-bit and floating-point decoding/handling of mp3
- full support for ReplayGain
- built-in sample-rate conversion and transcoding
Planned Features for upcoming AE releases:

- rules-based decisions for output formats based on hardware capabilites
- a range of DSP’s (digital signal processors) including headphone head-related transfer function processing, DRC (dynamic range compression), low-pass filtering for subs and an equalizer function
- custom channel-mixing/mapping for up and downmixing

It’s still early days for AE. Bugs will be found, and new and exciting features added. It’s stability and feature-set will develop as it matures and grows in the amazing open-source environment of XBMC. We’d especially like to thank all the testers who helped make it possible to bring this merge about.

If you want to give it a try just grab one of the nightly versions on one of XBMC’s mirrors. For further details and support links please visit the AudioEngine page in our Wiki where you will also find links to the support threads in our forum, if you have additional questions. From the development team, enjoy

Tbone289

falconcry72 wrote: »

People use AnyDVD HD for BluRay rips too. I use MKV because that file type is compatible with my TV and BR player, plus it's lossless, non-compressed. LOTR FOTR was 30GBs! Oh well, it looks fantastic!

I own MakeMKV. Yes, I paid the guy because I feel he deserves it. Well, that and I don't have to constantly update the registration code.

I watch the movie once from the MakeMKV lossless copy, then archive it using Handbrake to compress. With the correct Handbrake settings, I can rarely tell the difference between the lossless and lossy copy, but the lossy is usually about 1/3 the size. I do this with DVD and BluRay, and I'll even reduce some of the less-important (to me) archival copies from 1080p to 720p to cut the size even more.

I don't use NAS yet. I just store it all on HDs in my HTPC and use externals for backup.

falconcry72

Tbone289 wrote: »

I don't use NAS yet. I just store it all on HDs in my HTPC and use externals for backup.

Same here. (3) 2TB internals and (3) 2TB external copies.

What settings do you use in Handbrake???

monepolk

Ok, now I have to by a BR drive for my PC so I can check this out.

Tbone289

falconcry72 wrote: »

What settings do you use in Handbrake???

I'll take some screenshots tonight showing my settings. I should warn you--it takes about ~6 hours to encode one 1080p movie in H.264. I just add a bunch to the queue on my HTPC and let them process.

falconcry72

Tbone289 wrote: »

I'll take some screenshots tonight showing my settings. I should warn you--it takes about ~6 hours to encode one 1080p movie in H.264. I just add a bunch to the queue on my HTPC and let them process.

Yea.. I'm probably gonna stick with lossless for now... while I still have space, but I'll play around with Handbrake for fun.

falconcry72

monepolk wrote: »

Ok, now I have to by a BR drive for my PC so I can check this out.

I'm thinking about getting a new burner:

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Internal-Rewriter-WH14NS40/dp/B007YWMCA8/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1361996368&sr=8-2&keywords=wh14ns40

Tbone289

monepolk wrote: »

Ok, now I have to by a BR drive for my PC so I can check this out.

It's worth trying. I actually started using MakeMKV to rip to HD simply because I didn't want to buy BR playback software. Now I prefer this method and still have not purchased playback software. I actually don't own any equipment that will play a BR, but I buy them all the time.

EndersShadow

Tbone289 wrote: »

I'll take some screenshots tonight showing my settings. I should warn you--it takes about ~6 hours to encode one 1080p movie in H.264. I just add a bunch to the queue on my HTPC and let them process.

Awesome, I will be playing with this too :biggrin:. Thankfully my Intel Quad Core Q9650 overclocked to 4 Ghz 8 with gigs of dual channel DDR2 1066 needs a good test

Tbone289

EndersShadow wrote: »

Awesome, I will be playing with this too :biggrin:. Thankfully my Intel Quad Core Q9650 overclocked to 4 Ghz 8 with gigs of dual channel DDR2 1066 needs a good test

It will certainly help. I'm running it on an i3 with the same memory.

EndersShadow

Tbone289 wrote: »

It will certainly help. I'm running it on an i3 with the same memory.

Not to threadjack but any thoughts on if my AMD Llano A6-3500 APU with 4 gigs of DDR3 1333 will be able to trancode a file compressed like that over my network?

Tbone289

EndersShadow wrote: »

Not to threadjack but any thoughts on if my AMD Llano A6-3500 APU with 4 gigs of DDR3 1333 will be able to trancode a file compressed like that over my network?

I think you'll just have to give it a try and see. I think your encode times will likely be similar to mine. The way I see it, if it's going to take 5-6 hours anyway, why would it matter if it took a couple of more hours?

GospelTruth

falconcry72 wrote: »

Here are the playback methods I've come up with in my system as it sits today:

- MKV file Wireless via DLNA straight to TV > Audio return to pre/pro
- MKV file Wireless via DLNA to BluRay player
- MKV file via USB drive hooked to TV > Audio return to pr/pro
- MKV file via USB drive hooked to BluRay player
- MKV file played on HTPC
- MKV file burned as data and played on BuRay player
- Original BluRay disc played on BluRay player

I'm thinking that if you have a BluRay player with high quality video processing, your best bet is to go through that player, whether it be via DLNA, USB, or a disc.

Do people have buffering issues streaming 1080p via DLNA?

From my experience I would stay away from wireless transmission of HD files - especially if you are leaving them as is and not compressing them further. Wireless has a lot of potential issues with interference, number of users in the house using it at any given time and distance from router to your player. I've never had luck with it. With DVD rips, it can be hit or miss for me depending on how bad the neighborhood is lit up with cross traffic on the same router channels.

I use a wired connection for all streaming from my NAS to my media player and don't have any issues. If you don't have a possibility for wired, you can look at ethernet over your power lines as an alternate solution. I've used that with success as well.

I went the NAS route to store all my media files (photos, music, DVDs in ISO format). This way any device or computer in the house can access the files. Additionally, I don't have to have a computer up and running every time I want to watch a movie or listen to music. I used to have an external drive hooked up to my media player before I got the NAS. I liked that as it provided fast access and there are no buffering issues using USB. However, I got sick of unplugging the drive, copying new files to it from the computer, hooking it back up again and so on. With the NAS, I just log onto my computer, rip my music from a CD or movie from a DVD and put it on the NAS and any device can see it (with security of course). I do the same with camera pictures - a feature my wife likes so she can have access to them from any computer.

Michael