[mavromatis]

Ok.


I've done the SDI to Rock Pro... I've done the HTPC, playing DVDs back from WinDVD. Now, I'm playing around with creating ISOs of the DVD and playing it back thru a plugin for Windows Media Center 2005 and Daemon Tools.


Here's the question...

I remember reading that the best way to watch a DVD is by outputting the SDI stream to a video processor and displaying that on your screen. I've done that, and have been very happy with the results.


I kind of understand why it's bad to watch a DVD with a software based DVD player because it doesn't give you good results, stutter or something. Can someone explain the reasoning? I haven't done an A/B comparasion myself yet, but want to know the thinking behind why it's not the best way to view a DVD. Is it an ATA IDE thing? Or just that the current DVD playback software doesn't compare with an actual video processor? Like the ability to fix the MPEG Color Bug?


I really like the idea of imaging my mostly viewed DVDs and playing them back via the hard drive. And with MCE 2005 and the third party plug-in it allows me to do this very easily.


I'd love it if someone could help me understand the reasoning of why watching a DVD via a PC is not ideal, and why SDI to a video Processor is better. Or is it?


Thanks,

Danny

 

[Joe Murphy Jr]

See topic #3 (Note: ) in the main menu from Alan. You may have to get SDI answers in this forum and HTPC answers in the HTPC forum. Put the info together to get "your final answer".

 

[oferlaor]

Danny,


There are two main issues (both non-existant if you're outputing the signal through SDI):

1. Stutter occurs when you can't sync the signal 100% to the vertical sync of the screen. If the software you are playing with is synced to the display card's vertical sync, it can be avoided. A second form of stutter occurs because windows is not real time, and sometimes another process or task superscedes the player and a frame is updated too slowly on the screen.


2. playing with WinDVD and other software has an added problem because of their relyance on flag reading. You can read all about this in hometheaterhifi, but essentially using flags to determine film/video mode - you get less than perfect results in disks where these flags have been incorrectly published. Also, in video mode, many players do bob/weave (or simple video mode algorithms) so disks with video mode content will not be shown in maximum resolution using this technology.

 

[Jay M]

Quote:

I really like the idea of imaging my mostly viewed DVDs and playing them back via the hard drive. And with MCE 2005 and the third party plug-in it allows me to do this very easily.

ok... I can't really help with your question...but please tell me about that plugin and where can i get it??


thanks,

~Jay

 

[megaman_y]

You could use the Xcard SDI converter with the Xcard to output a 480i signal from your PC to a scaler, thus having the flexibility of using your PC to output a digital signal from your DVDs.

http://www.pixelmagicsystems.com/pro..._converter.htm


What I dont know is if MCE will work with the Xcard.

 

[feds27]

So it sounds like the best results are yielded with an SDI DVD player to an SDI capable scaler. How does a dedicated scaler (Rock Pro) compare to using an HTPC with Dscaler?


I know this may seem like an HTPC question but I wanted to get some feedback from those that are using the Rock Pro (or other scaler) and chose so after comparing to an HTPC based scaler. THanks.