| Author | MPEG-4/DivX Settop Players |
Androoski
Beatnik
Posts: 8 |
 Posted: Sep 28, 2003 - 03:10 PM |
Came to the hard reality last night that I'm not going to be able to convert my MST3K's into a format that my current dvd player will recognize. However, I noticed that MPEG-4/DivX settop players are becoming avilable and saw a few on eBay I'm interested in. Just wondering if any of you have had success watching raw MST3K avi's on these types of players.
Thanks! |
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WildCelt
Chicken of Tomorrow
Posts: 560 |
Posted: Sep 29, 2003 - 05:28 AM |
Take your favorite DAP encode to Best Buy and plop it in one of the players that are supposed to play MPEG4. Report back with results 
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Androoski
Beatnik
Posts: 8 |
Posted: Sep 29, 2003 - 09:04 AM |
Well, I just bought a reasonably priced one from eBay here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3048642692&category=50600&rd=1
There is another being mass-sold there that can also play DVD+R/+RW and Karaoke (uggg guuh ewwwww) but is a bit more expensive, and the seller had negative feedback.
I'm sort of surprised that no one else here has tried one yet. Guess I'll go ahead and be the guinea pig. I'll give a review here after I've put it through the paces.
Androoski
edited by: Androoski, Sep 29, 2003 - 05:06 AM |
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Pinski
Prince of Space
Posts: 1165 |
Posted: Sep 29, 2003 - 10:08 PM |
Please let me know, because that DVD Player looks awesome and I've been holding off on buying a DVD player at all until a good MPEG4 compliant one came out. I still just watch DVDs off of my computer or off of one of my roommate's Xbox or PS2.
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Women are like Voltron. The more you can hook up, the better it gets. |
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fade
Foolish Samurai Warrior
Posts: 578 |
Posted: Oct 01, 2003 - 09:08 AM |
| Let me put in a plug for a soft-modded Xbox as a HTPC solution. Current modding techniques allow you to do it without a chip or any soldering, and XBMP is probably the finest HTPC software out there. Another big advantage this has over the settop disc players is the ability to stream AVIs from a network share. Yes, it take a bit more effort to setup, but once get everything working, its very elegent and simple to use. And, as a bonus, you get to play all your old SNES games on the bigscreen TV. |
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Androoski
Beatnik
Posts: 8 |
Posted: Oct 01, 2003 - 01:06 PM |
To sum up here's what the deal is:
It can't play MPEG4v2 files, at least not yet, im holding out that one of the next firmware releases will handle it though. I assumed that being MPEG4 compliant would mean it handled v2, but apparently not. Alas, MST3K is still trapped on my PC. The ebay seller is looking into it for me, and I posted a message on the manufacturers website. I'll fill everybody in on what I find out from them.
However, the xvid files I've been playing are great. Sealab eps play beautifully, 5-stars.
If anyone has any other questions, I'll be happy to answer them here.
Androoski |
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Androoski
Beatnik
Posts: 8 |
Posted: Oct 01, 2003 - 03:41 PM |
Ok, here's what I got from the manufacturer's forum:
"Mpeg4v2 is an old standard and is not specifically supported however because it's mpeg4 some files may play. I would suggest transcoding your files to DivX."
Sigh.
Unless I'm mistaken, converting from MPEG4v2 to DivX would probably mean a loss in quality and an increase in file size beyond cd capacity. Am I right?
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walk
Delta Knight
Posts: 311 |
Posted: Oct 02, 2003 - 12:43 AM |
Divx is MPEG4. But you will lose quality transcoding of course.
Check out the Archos AV300 I posted a link here a while ago. I don't have one, and it's expensive, but it also does a lot (it has a screen and can capture live video to a HD also, like a portable Tivo). It is supposed to play MPEG4/Divx and Xvid.
You can also do what I did and build a HTPC out of spare parts. If you're like me you probably have most of what you need just laying around. There are even wireless remote controls available. I was looking at one that had a mouse/joystick so you could use it for anything but it also had plugins for Mediaplayer to do 1-button Play, Pause, etc.. It's IR too so you can use a home-theater type learning remote. That's what I plan anyway... I do also have a gamepad and play MAME on my big TV :) |
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WildCelt
Chicken of Tomorrow
Posts: 560 |
Posted: Oct 02, 2003 - 05:13 AM |
| You so crazy |
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Androoski
Beatnik
Posts: 8 |
Posted: Oct 02, 2003 - 09:43 AM |
The HTPC idea sounds interesting, what are some good tutorial websites?
Has anyone had success with a TV-out card from PC to television?
I tried using avi2divx to convert mpeg4v2 to normal mpeg4 with no success, just outputs an empty file. I think I'll try XVCD formatting this weekend. |
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xyz123
Big McLargeHuge
Posts: 226 |
Posted: Oct 02, 2003 - 10:18 AM |
Androoski, if you get a video card with an output for use on a TV, make sure that the video formats (NTSC, for example), match. I made the mistake of getting an ATI AIW capture card off of ebay without even considering the possibility that it would have a PAL output. A few months ago I tried it out for the first time and discovered the problem (it came with no docs as it was an OEM card). It still caps like a champ, though, thankfully.
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http://www.amusingfacts.com/stupid.html |
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Skenderberg
Delta Knight
Posts: 323 |
Posted: Oct 02, 2003 - 10:33 AM |
I'm assuming that HTPC means Home Theater Personal Computer. Something like that would be pretty easy and relatively cheap to build.
Pretty much any modern video card will have an S-Video out. If your TV doesn't support S-Video, adapters are easy to find. My experience with TV output is that it requires a little more processing power to play back the AVIs through the S-Video out than it does on the monitor. 1Ghz should be more than enough. Any NVidia or ATI video card ought to do the job for you, up to two generations back. If you don't care about 3d acceleration, then there are probably low-end PCI cards that will do the job for you too. Most sound cards have secondary line outs. An RCA adapter can plug this a TV or VCR.
Good luck.
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War of the Colossal MST3K Fanguide |
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fade
Foolish Samurai Warrior
Posts: 578 |
Posted: Oct 02, 2003 - 11:51 AM |
Quote:
| It can't play MPEG4v2 files, at least not yet, im holding out that one of the next firmware releases will handle it though. I assumed that being MPEG4 compliant would mean it handled v2, but apparently not. Alas, MST3K is still trapped on my PC. The ebay seller is looking into it for me, and I posted a message on the manufacturers website. I'll fill everybody in on what I find out from them. |
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This is true. To give you a little history: MS-MPEG4v1 was ISO MPEG-4 compliant (meaning that video streams encoded with it should be decodable by any ISO compliant MPEG-4 decoder). However, when they got to MS-MPEG4v2 and MS-MPEG4v3 (which was later hacked into the original DivX codec), Microsoft chose to forego ISO MPEG-4 compliance in favor of better compression schemes. It wasn't until OpenDivx/Divx 4.0/XviD came around that there were codecs available to the encoding community that would produce an ISO compliant MPEG-4 video stream. At the time, MS-MPEG4v2/v3 were the best available codecs....now, they're pretty much the red-headed stepchild of Microsoft's Window's Media platform; they're not MPEG-4 compliant, and they're less and less likely to be included in anything that supports WMV format stuff... |
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walk
Delta Knight
Posts: 311 |
Posted: Oct 02, 2003 - 12:35 PM |
Quote:
| The HTPC idea sounds interesting, what are some good tutorial websites?
Has anyone had success with a TV-out card from PC to television?
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Home Theater Forum : Computers and HTPC area
Just about any video card made in the last 3-4 years will have video-out. You don't need any special processing power, they handle that all on the card. To play back most DAP encodes in full screen without dropping frames you're going to want at least a PII-400 or Celeron 500. If you plan to play direct from CDROM I suggest a 8X or better with DMA mode. For sound, any sound card or built-in sound will suffice, you just need a 1/4" phono -to- 2-RCA plug adaptor cable, available at any Rat Shack or A/V-electronics store.
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Kered
Beatnik
Posts: 3 |
Posted: Oct 04, 2003 - 10:47 PM |
i was finally able to find a PCI Geforce4 card that had a video out. It was kind of frustrating though because I had to buy a video converter for $20 (which seems rather pricey) to convert the s-video plug to a composite plug. But nevertheless, it did work! I can now watch all my mst3k on my tv.
edited by: Kered, Oct 05, 2003 - 01:48 AM |
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