Hi there .. I am an HDTV / blu ray newbie. I got my first LCD HDTV yesterday and my first blu ray player today (I haven't even used it yet), so please be gentle with me.

My question concerns converting blu ray video files into a format that will play on my blu ray player. (NOTE: THESE ARE VIDEO FILES THAT WERE NOT ILLEGALLY OBTAINED!) I have a colleague who tells me that he is able to play all Hi-def file formats on his HDTV using the blu ray in his PS3, but I understand that is not the case for my Samsung BD-P1500. The movie/TV files I have seen are ina number of different formats: mkv; avi; mov; mp4; m2ts. As best I can see, the 1080p/i files are either m2ts or mkv, while the 720p files can be mp4, avi, mov or mkv.

How'm I doing so far?:confused:

The question is: can I covert these files into a form that can be burned onto a DVD (either single or double sided) and played on my blu ray player? Before I got a DVD player that played avi/divx files, I would use various kinds of software to convert these files into playable DVD's. Is there anything I can use to do the same thing for these blu ray file formats, without losing the advantage of hi def?

Many thanks for your patience in reading this and for your response.

Regards,
Rob

Can your player play AVCHD files? (AVC is a subset of BD).

If it can, then that may well be your answer. You can get 1 hours of video on a DVD9 (double layer). However, be prepared for massive amounts of transcoding (going from one to the other) and time waiting (try overnight).

Do you have, or have access to, a BD burner? if so, get your self a couple of BD REs and try to convert stuff into BDAV discs (no menus etc). Not sure how that will turn out, but you should get more than an hour per disc. But again, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The reason your friend can play everything on the PS3 is not actually the PS3 itself, which only supports a couple of CODECs, but a piece of software called PS3MediaServer.

It sits on a PC and sends stuff to the PS3 over the air or a netwrok. If the PS can't cope with it natively (such as AVI), PS3MS will transcode it on the fly into something the PS3 will cope with.

I have both (PS3 and PS3MS) and I wouldn't have another BD player because of it. The wife gets all misty eye'd when she watches our PAL AVI based wedding video on our Region A US PS3.......

Seggers

Edit: There are other types of sw that will send stuff to the PS3 and may even transcode, like tversity...

Does the BD-P1500 support AVCHD? Many of the early Samsung players did not. My Magnavox did not either.

Also, on a related note, my Panasonic AVCHD camcorder files were not compatible on my PS3. I think their first implementation of AVCHD was screwed up and different than Sony's.

I do now save all my files in the AVCHD format an play them on my PS3s.

Hi ... don't have a PS3. I wanted to get one, but after paying for the TV, all that was left in the budget was the 2nd hand Samsung!! I haev read on some forums that some of the recent firmware updates allows the BD-P1500 to play DivX files!! Does that sound at all plausible??

The reason your friend can play everything on the PS3 is not actually the PS3 itself, which only supports a couple of CODECs, but a piece of software called PS3MediaServer.

It sits on a PC and sends stuff to the PS3 over the air or a netwrok. If the PS can't cope with it natively (such as AVI), PS3MS will transcode it on the fly into something the PS3 will cope with.

I have both (PS3 and PS3MS) and I wouldn't have another BD player because of it. The wife gets all misty eye'd when she watches our PAL AVI based wedding video on our Region A US PS3.......

Seggers

Edit: There are other types of sw that will send stuff to the PS3 and may even transcode, like tversity...

I am a PS3 owner and have used PS3mediaserver and found that it works fantastically!

But I am trying to research an idea to take it one step further. My wife bought one of those small WD passport portable drives (250gb) for her computer. We have some old divx videos that we acquired and found that copying them to the passport drive and connecting the drive to the PS3 via the usb port, we could watch movies that way. I find this to be an ideal way to store and watch movies at our liesure - it beats the old practice of perusing the DVD shelf, finding a movie you like, popping it out of the case and into the player. PS3mediaserver is pretty close to what I'd like to do, but you still have to go to the computer that it's running on to set it up when you want to watch a movie. With the portable drive idea you can have hundreds of movies already loaded and ready and waiting to be viewed via simple USB connection. With several of these cheap portable drives, well you get the idea..

But I have had a very difficult time finding out how to rip our massive DVD collection to these portable harddrives. Looking around various forums I've found it is more or less a taboo subject. A couple of other sites have a great deal of information about the many freeware tools that can be downloaded to accomplish this objective...but I've found most, if not all, are geared towards ripping/converting onto discs, not physical harddrives. I understand that the HTPC is a popular way to watch movies in the same why that I'm describing here. So, I'm wondering how the heck are they accomplishing the process of getting movies onto THEIR harddrives...??

Majorwest,

A good few DVDs these days ship with no copy protection on them. This means you should just be able to copy them directly to a HDD from the disc.

Then you would need to ensure that you only keep the VOB files that are the films (as opposed to the extras, trailers and other rubbish) and away you go....

There is, and was, good software out there for ripping protected DVDs, I had one before it was forced out of business by Hollywood and its attack dogs.

And then there are torrents, which is a whole other large can of worms......

And before I get half a ton of Mods falling on my head, remember that piracy is theft, fair use, DRM, MIPPA, YMMV etc etc.....

I tend to prefer the use of PS3MS and it give the illusion of still playing a disc. I am a little old school that way.....

Seggers