Suppose I make it easy for all the newbies and budget folks? - Page 15

Kapone

On that "very occasional stutter on certain titles"

Could you be referring to layer change issues? hd-dvd and blueray both are "supposed" to buffer this and not show any stutter.

Have you attempted to rip one of those titles to see if the stutter goes away?

The things I think about when I can't go to sleep...

Troy

"Having worked in the power industry, I always "padded" budget estimates somewhat, and even then most times they ended up being UNDERestimates. Therefore, I think that the $1350 total for the system in that article will likely be in the same neighborhood as this project's complete solution."

$1350? Maybe if you paid retail for everything. Remember it won't be that long before hd-dvd and blue-ray drives really drop in price like other optical drives did. Combo BR/HDDVD/DVD-RW's will just become the standard at some point like current multi format +- dvdrw/cd burners are today. Drives that were $300 a couple years ago are now $30. Add the overhead of the extra licensing costs for the new technology and we could easily see $100 and less combo HD drives in the near future.

One of the biggest draws I think DIY will have over a pre-built is that it's an investment that can be made over time, starting with the most basic parts and adding things as people can afford them. The savings on finance charges alone make that very attractive, and it won't be too long before add in video and optical drives aren't needed at all anyway. (to still get legal HD content, not talking about all the pirates)

Paypal keeps track of the cost of everything luckily, I don't have to think about such things. You know there's no way I'm buying anything retail at brick and mortar stores.

Anyway I've said before we never need to fear Dell, at some point we'll just support them too.

Troy

I think Kapone said that people using his systems don't even realize it's a PC running windows.

Correct me if I'm wrong Kapone, but it sounds like he's not making a general use PC at all. He seems to be headed towards a very dedicated, specialized, and locked down system.

Either way we will support third party builders using our works to create turnkey solutions, provided they support us fairly in return, so there will be plenty of options both ways.

Binary64, great! I sure do like the way you're headed there.

My work on the standardized PC hardware is to give even further levels of stability and predictability and other advantages that you can only get with consistent hardware, but we won't ever just limit our works to that and that alone.

I just grabbed a lightly used xbox360 hd-dvd kit off ebay for $115/free ship for the project.

Should I plan to test that internally AND externally and get an adapter or would USB externally be satisfactory?

Troy

Yes, agreed, but I think Kapone's is going a step further to be locked down to where you can't get out of his shell and into the rest of the OS. (for enhanced reliability so people can't possibly mess it up)

Thanks guys. I didn't want to mess with converting it for internal anyway. I still do not plan to keep it. I'll test with both hd optical drives and dump them on ebay ASAP when I'm done with them hopefully before their value drops too bad so most of the money can be tossed right back into the dual format replacement.

Troy

Custom boot splash and windows splash sound cool, I've done that before too, but like Greeniguana pointed out it could just end up looking like flickers or like there's a problem if the display doesn't support all those resolutions like so many HD sets don't.

It may be better to have blank black screens if it turns out to whip through them so fast you can't enjoy the effect you're going for anyway. It'll be cool to see what you come up with either way.

Troy

What titles on Hd-dvd and blueray are the toughest and or highest quality to test with? Transformers? Got any links to a list?

Is the free Kong movie that comes with the drive a suitable title to test with? Some say the quality is really good, but how would it rank for a test disk?

I plan to grab HD versions of DVE for the calibration and optimization part of things, unless anyone has a better suggestion. I already own the SD version and like it pretty well.


Troy

"Just a question of which OS you are thinking about using and which programs?"

We are headed toward supporting all O/S's and a whole host of front ends, which can all be installed together for the ultimate "taste testing" type of system where you can multi boot linuxMCE, xp, mce2005, and Vista and flip around though all the popular frontends also with the greatest of ease. Plus with the option to install only what O/S you want specifically or only the front end and apps you want. Applications will also be included like Firefox and possibly Thunderbird, all the needed codecs for any common internet video and audio files, plugins needed for browsing and using the web, flash etc, to make all the O/S's as similar in function and complete and working "out of the box" as possible. In addition VMC and MCE will include a whole host of preconfigured and working plugins like mymovies, netflix and blockbuster, commercial skip, etc just like Binary64 already has Meedios stuffed with it's load of add ons. FFdshow, Haali media splitter, Anydvd-hd, MPC, Zoomplayer, Powerdvd, Eventghost, 7zip, perhaps down the line BeyondTV, Sage, you name it. Whatever we can "get away with" legally and "reproduce reliably". Some things may need to be added by the user manually if legal restrictions get in the way (anydvd-hd, dvdshrink, dvdfabdecrypter for example) but even still some programs setup and making it all work together can be automated even if we can't automate their download. There is tricky legal ground to tiptoe around with certain things as you can imagine but we're going to be 100% legal about it while still making it all 100% open.

You'll need the standardized hardware platform for some of the full automation to get everything all at once and have it all just work without much if any fiddling on the users part, but at the same time we are also headed towards making it as hardware open as possible (requiring some user setup) so you can get the same features on any machine.

When it's all complete you should be able to flip through OS's, frontends, multiboot, and do everything you can imagine with zero effort just from your remote control.

This will put everything right there for you to test and follow progress of them all, to easily compare them, or just use what you ultimately like the best at any moment after you have tried them all. We'll have them all directly competing against eachother on the same systems without having to be "geek boy super genius" to get everything to work together and not stomp on and interfere with each other.

The standardized hardware platforms are being selected based on hardware that's available and the same worldwide. (well, probably not in other languages, just english, for now)

It will support variations of tuner cards and video standards also, so you aren't limited to just NTSC or just PAL, we're not just aiming for a US market we want every market we can manage. We are located on both coasts of the US and in the UK.

(speaking of which, we are well set up to become distributors of hardware or turnkey systems ourselves if we wanted to do that at some point) Just not under the same business name or licenses as the the non-profit.

It may be something to consider given our locations and how well that could work. It could be another way to help the non-profit continue and grow, and a way to allow us to be full time on this rather than part time.

As long as none of that is hidden and it's all disclosed up front I don't think it would cause a problem legally or a conflict of interest for the non-profit. However we'd need to find out for sure and we haven't discussed this possibility yet. We won't be exclusionary if we do go down that path though the Non-Profit will support all 3rd party system resellers that support us back.

Basically the whole hog, the entire world handed to you on a silver platter.
And the system is totally open for the user to add any software they want on top of what we have included. Nothing is locked down or limited but it will be heavily backed up and redundant, and easily recoverable.

Binary64 and Greeniguana when you see this software list please go over it
and make your own additions or subtractions in your own posts to follow and clarify what software you both already plan to cover for sure in the first release and what may need to be left for the future. Once we get a good solid list of hardware and software I'll assemble that info into the first post of the thread and create more of a faq there as has been suggested before.

Anyone that has better alternatives to the software posted or additions of your own you'd like to see included please chime in. Remember to try to stay with mostly open source so most things can just be on our disk and ready to work out of the box but do also include any retail stuff that you'd also like to see covered.

Openoffice, some kind of picture viewer and editor, winpar/winrar, tmpegencode, dvrmstoolbox, video editing stuff, winamp, foobar, kernel streaming and ASIO plugins, powertoys, microsoft freebies, admin and network monitoring tools, antivirus and anti spyware stuff?

Windows updates and security fixes

This is a LOT of software when you start really thinking about it...

Troy

I don't think that's going to help. True the projects are somewhat separate but they rely on each other heavily also. Plus I have to know easily my work doesn't contradict or interfere with yours and Greeniguana's and we all have to be on the same page to have a consistent experience across OS's.

We'd be doing ourselves a great disservice to think of them being very independent. They are co-dependant.

thank you for that done section..

Troy