[Alec]

Hi all,


Now that MCE2005 has been out a bit, I thought it would be good to gather the early adopters' expert impressons of the overal DVD playback experience it provides, versus the other popular HTPC options, such as InterVideo WinDVD 6 Platinum, ZP, PowerDVD, etc., as far as:

1. Video Quality: decoding (macroblocking, color depth artifacts, black enhancement, highlights)
2. Video Quailty: stability and smoothness of playback (stutter on pans, etc.)
3. Video Quality: upscaling DVD to higher resolutions (sharpness, artifacts, deinterlacing/progressive scan, frame rate conversion)
4. Video Adjustments: gamma and/or tone curve; contrast; brightness; color
5. Video Behavior: menu navigation (menu navigation speed, bookmarks, etc.); layer change speed
6. Audio: S/PDIF, TOSLINK pass-thrpough: lip sync, dropouts, latency, any other issues
7. Audio: Breadth of hardware support; decoding to analog, speaker config options, audio format support, features
8. Compatibility: DVDs backed up to HD; WindowsMedia, Real, XViD, Divx, MP4, DVD-Audio[/list=1]
   
   
   Perhaps it would make sense to rate it and the popular competition on a scale of:
   
   0% (broken) ... 50% (basic implementation, few glitches) ... 100% (a cutting edge and flawless/solid implementation)
   
   
   Alec

 

[pdermody]

But MCE2005 by itself can not play DVD's, unless I am mistaken it requires a codec pack from say the likes of Nvidia, or Intervideo etc.


-pd

 

[Alec]

OOPS that is rather unfortunate - that it is not a self-contained product, that is...

 

[barhoram]

Don't think you fully understand the product. For dvd playback, MCE is a front end that encorporates a DVD codec...similar to the way zoomplayer does. User has the option to pick or choose the software dvd player of choice. Playback through MCE looks identical to playback of the stand alone software decoder. Some of the options, like using FFDshow, etc, may not be availiable in MCE, or require some tweaking to achieve.

 

[fulabeer]

So are you saying that any adjustments i make in say TT2.0, will effect playback in MCE2005 DVD Player frontend?


ie if i choose overlay or VMR in TT2.0, it will the make MCE player playback with overlay or VMR etc?