Is power dvd nessacary when using VMC?

M

Mac[X-D]

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 5, 2001
Messages
1,646
Hi all

Just a quick question, i have my HTPC set up software wise using wiretaps guide, now i haven't purchased anydvd or power dvd yet because i am not really sure if i will need them, now i have PS3 for blu ray but i am thinking i may buy a blu ray drive and back up my blu ray movies. now will My Movies play the blu ray titles through VMC like it does with my DVD back ups? now with my DVD's i have some encoded to MP4 files and the rest are straight VIDEO_TS folder rips, and My Movies plays everything without a hitch now by the time i buy Power DVD Ultra and AnyDVD/HD its going to be almost 180 CND so is it needed or worth it?

Thnx
 
Yes, blu rays will play through VMC. I do it regularly.

For powerdvd all you really need is the codec for HW acceleration on your GPU(assuming it supports this). Or you can do it via the CPU if it's powerful enough(and use the CoreAVC codec).

Some people use the free MPC-HC codecs for hardware acceleration but I haven't had luck with those.
 
HTPC specs are

AMD X2 4800+
2GB Crucial DDR2 800
ATI 4350

guess i won't really know unless i get the blu ray drive and rip some movies.
 
Archer75 said:
Yes, blu rays will play through VMC. I do it regularly.

For powerdvd all you really need is the codec for HW acceleration on your GPU(assuming it supports this). Or you can do it via the CPU if it's powerful enough(and use the CoreAVC codec).

Some people use the free MPC-HC codecs for hardware acceleration but I haven't had luck with those.
Click to expand...

windows of any version doesnt natively support bluray. you'll need a player in one form or another do you not?hardware wise the hd decoding youre talking about is offloaded to the gpu if it supports it, which is the better way to go, because if it doesnt then your cpu will bear the brunt of it all and will have to be much faster to compensate.the 4350 should be fine. far as i know the two most used methods of playing back bluray is either arcsoft totalmedia or powerdvd. totalmedia will integrate into vmc for seamless playback where powerdvd does not, but its supposed to be more reliable. that being said i believe the last versions of powerdvd8 do not allow for file browsing to playback bluray. ive been using the oem version that came with my lg hl20 and its been great. so you shouldnt need anyting more than anydvdhd, assuming the bluray drive you buy comes with a player.
 
Rogue71 said:
windows of any version doesnt natively support bluray. you'll need a player in one form or another do you not?hardware wise the hd decoding youre talking about is offloaded to the gpu if it supports it, which is the better way to go, because if it doesnt then your cpu will bear the brunt of it all and will have to be much faster to compensate.the 4350 should be fine. far as i know the two most used methods of playing back bluray is either arcsoft totalmedia or powerdvd. totalmedia will integrate into vmc for seamless playback where powerdvd does not, but its supposed to be more reliable. that being said i believe the last versions of powerdvd8 do not allow for file browsing to playback bluray. ive been using the oem version that came with my lg hl20 and its been great. so you shouldnt need anyting more than anydvdhd, assuming the bluray drive you buy comes with a player.
Click to expand...

No, with the cyberlink codec I play my bluray rips through VMC. I don't need the player itself, just the codec. I don't play discs directly on my HTPC. Just rips.
I believe with anydvdHD installed to break the copy protection the disc will then just play in VMC assuming you have the necessary codecs, but I haven't tested this.

Yes, arcsoft will integrate but mymovies never worked right after that happened so I don't use it.
Mymovies along with daemon tools will mount disc images and play them seamlessly.

Without hardware acceleration my 2.2ghz Core 2 Duo can handle bluray just fine.
 
You rip bluray then mount, then play? Seems like a hassle..

I was researching this over the weekend and ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre supposedly will let you play Bluray from within VMC without having to rip it beforehand. I couldn't get it to work as it appears Vista 64 doesn't support it, or something along those lines.

The setup now I have is that VMC will call PowerDVD when a bluray disc is inserted, but I haven't tested it yet.
 
nitefallz said:
You rip bluray then mount, then play? Seems like a hassle..

I was researching this over the weekend and ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre supposedly will let you play Bluray from within VMC without having to rip it beforehand. I couldn't get it to work as it appears Vista 64 doesn't support it, or something along those lines.

The setup now I have is that VMC will call PowerDVD when a bluray disc is inserted, but I haven't tested it yet.
Click to expand...

Not if you have a server where you store all your movies. Or one can just download movies. Whatever the case may be, just install anydvdhd and then try to play the movie direct in VMC without a player.

But like I said, mymovies will mount and play for you. All seamlessly. You don't have to do anything beyond hitting the play button.

But yes, of course you can play bluray in arcsoft without ripping them.
 
Archer75 said:
Not if you have a server where you store all your movies. Or one can just download movies. Whatever the case may be, just install anydvdhd and then try to play the movie direct in VMC without a player.

But like I said, mymovies will mount and play for you. All seamlessly. You don't have to do anything beyond hitting the play button.

But yes, of course you can play bluray in arcsoft without ripping them.
Click to expand...

What's the average bluray movie size? I just popped in a 1TB drive and I'm wondering if I should get more.
 
Can someone else with Arcsoft TotalMedia confirm whether the integrated VMC plug-in works seamlessly with VMC. Thanks!
 
well i went and picked up a LG SuperMulti drive this morning and it came with a copy of Power DVD so now the fun begins with backing up my blu ray disks, now i want them on the hdd because i don't want to put in a disk every time. so whats the best method iso image? rip to hdd do i have re encode?
 
nitefallz said:
What's the average bluray movie size? I just popped in a 1TB drive and I'm wondering if I should get more.
Click to expand...

40-50gb.

Mac[X-D];1033517822 said:
well i went and picked up a LG SuperMulti drive this morning and it came with a copy of Power DVD so now the fun begins with backing up my blu ray disks, now i want them on the hdd because i don't want to put in a disk every time. so whats the best method iso image? rip to hdd do i have re encode?
Click to expand...

re encoding to mkv's will save a ton of space.

You can go to .iso's and strip out the extras if you choose too.

The HTPC section of avsforums.com has tons of info on how to do this.
 
Archer75 said:
40-50gb.



re encoding to mkv's will save a ton of space.

You can go to .iso's and strip out the extras if you choose too.

The HTPC section of avsforums.com has tons of info on how to do this.
Click to expand...

yea i am been looking around there isn't a lot of consensus on how to do it, my movies won't do blu ray file structure, so iso's seem the best if space isn't a problem, and it seems ripbot if you want to convert to mkv

so if anyone wants to share some experience on this the help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Mac[X-D];1033518120 said:
yea i am been looking around there isn't a lot of consensus on how to do it, my movies won't do blu ray file structure, so iso's seem the best if space isn't a problem, and it seems ripbot if you want to convert to mkv

so if anyone wants to share some experience on this the help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

I back up my blu-ray to .ISO using AnyDVD-HD.
Store them in folders:
X:\Spider-Man\Spider-Man.ISO
Double click file and let PowerDVD 8 Ultra auto run (PowerDVD is also set to go fullscreen automatically)
Enjoy movie

The only thing I have not done yet is find a nice program, or way in Vista, to browse the folders by say movie poster. I could add the image file to the folder, but I would like something where I could click the image and it auto plays the .ISO file.
If you are going to use PowerDVD 8 then you cannot play from the hard drive, must be a .ISO file; I ended up having to convert a few of my back-ups that I did for tests to .ISO, no big deal though.
 
theDreamer said:
I back up my blu-ray to .ISO using AnyDVD-HD.
Store them in folders:
X:\Spider-Man\Spider-Man.ISO
Double click file and let PowerDVD 8 Ultra auto run (PowerDVD is also set to go fullscreen automatically)
Enjoy movie

The only thing I have not done yet is find a nice program, or way in Vista, to browse the folders by say movie poster. I could add the image file to the folder, but I would like something where I could click the image and it auto plays the .ISO file.
If you are going to use PowerDVD 8 then you cannot play from the hard drive, must be a .ISO file; I ended up having to convert a few of my back-ups that I did for tests to .ISO, no big deal though.
Click to expand...

Mymovies will let you browse by DVD art. It also auto downlods the art and integrates into media center.
And with daemon tools it will automount. You don't need to use a mouse, sit back on your couch and use the remote.
Seeing as you broke the DRM to rip it, it should then just play in VMC with the proper codecs.
 
Mac[X-D];1033518120 said:
yea i am been looking around there isn't a lot of consensus on how to do it, my movies won't do blu ray file structure, so iso's seem the best if space isn't a problem, and it seems ripbot if you want to convert to mkv

so if anyone wants to share some experience on this the help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

Try this thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1033822
 
theDreamer said:
The only thing I have not done yet is find a nice program, or way in Vista, to browse the folders by say movie poster. I could add the image file to the folder, but I would like something where I could click the image and it auto plays the .ISO file.
If you are going to use PowerDVD 8 then you cannot play from the hard drive, must be a .ISO file; I ended up having to convert a few of my back-ups that I did for tests to .ISO, no big deal though.
Click to expand...
http://www.mymovies.dk/
 
ok well i decided to just do a iso rip of my blu ray movies using anydvd and with getting power dvd ultra 7.3 with the lg drive everything seems to work great, the only thing i don't really like is that my tv is 720p/1080i and when watch movies through vmc i have set to play at 1920x1080i but when i play a blu ray rip with power dvd it plays at 1280x720, is there anyway to get power dvd play at 1920x1080 or do i have change my desktop resolution? i find it hard to read the desktop with it is set higher then 720
 
Yup.. your desktop resolution has to be set to whatever you want it to play at.
 
Mac[X-D];1033519849 said:
ok well i decided to just do a iso rip of my blu ray movies using anydvd and with getting power dvd ultra 7.3 with the lg drive everything seems to work great, the only thing i don't really like is that my tv is 720p/1080i and when watch movies through vmc i have set to play at 1920x1080i but when i play a blu ray rip with power dvd it plays at 1280x720, is there anyway to get power dvd play at 1920x1080 or do i have change my desktop resolution? i find it hard to read the desktop with it is set higher then 720
Click to expand...

Why set to play at 1920X1080? What's the native resolution of the TV? 1280X720 (720P)?
 
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