Re: Re: Experiments in HD

[Mal Lansell <mal@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, that would make sense.  MS was thoughtful enough to include a
2-port hub in the Xbox360 drive, so as not to block the only socket on
the 360 itself.  On a PC of course these are not likely to be needed.

Mal



Rob Dobson wrote:

> I think the 2 memory devices you mention are USB hubs. The HD DVD
> drive has 2 USB ports on the back, they also appear under the USB
> section of device manager on my Vista system.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob
>
> --- In ukha_d@xxxxxxx <mailto:ukha_d%40yahoogroups.com>,
"Mal
> Lansell" <mal@...> wrote:
> >
> > I've been trying to get HD-DVD movies playing on my PC, with the
> > ultimate goal of making them streamable from a server, the same
as
> I
> > (and many others here) already do with DVDs and other video
sources.
> >
> > I finally managed to get it working, using the Xbox360 HD-DVD
> drive,
> > so I thought I'd share in case anyone else wanted to give it a
go.
> >
> > An unsurprising but irritating discovery was that the
"unbreakable"
> > DRM system did not prevent me from copying and playing an HD-DVD
> > from the networked hard drive but it did prevent me from playing
> the
> > original paid-for disk :-( No wonder people turn to downloads!
> >
> > Anyway, here's what I did:
> >
> > PC:
> > Core2Duo @ 2.13GHz,
> > 2Gb RAM,
> > MSI Fanless GeForce 7300GS with DVI, HDMI and HDCP.
> > Xbox360 HD-DVD Drive.
> > Monitor:
> > Asus MW221 22" 1920x1050 with HDCP.
> >
> > The Xbox360 drive just plugs into a USB port on the PC, and is
> > recognised as a Toshiba HD-DVD drive. A modified driver can
easily
> > be found with a quick Google.
> >
> > Windows will also attempt to install drivers for two memory
devices
> > in the drive - I don't know what they are, and I don't have
drivers
> > for them but they don't seem to be necessary. I just cancelled
the
> > install. The drive appears as a DVD-ROM in Explorer, and you can
> > freely browse the disk contents.
> >
> > For playback, I bought PowerDVD Ultra.
> > http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_112_ENU.html
> <http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/main_112_ENU.html>
> >
> > For testing I used the HD-DVD of Harry Potter and the Goblet of
> Fire.
> > PowerDVD was able to play the intro sequences directly from the
> > Xbox360 drive (interestingly, despite having a UK rating on the
> > case, the copyright warnings and rating screen in the movie
itself
> > were American). However, playback stopped when the main feature
> > started - a dialog warning that the card/monitor combination were
> > not HDCP compliant. This is not true. Both support HDCP.
> >
> > To get round the HDCP issue, I used a program called BackupHDDVD
to
> > decrypt the disk and copy the contents to the hard disk.
> >
> > BackupHDDVD requires you to enter the volume key for the disk
> (these
> > have been discovered for practically every title out there, and
can
> > easily be found on the web). It does not include any checking for
> > whether the key is correct, but HD-DVD menus (which are ripped
> > first) contain .png images - if you can view them, then the key
> must
> > be correct.
> >
> > Ripping took around an hour, the movie requiring ~25Gb of disk
> space.
> >
> > PowerDVD was able to play the movie from the hard drive without
any
> > problems. However, the graphics card could not keep up, and
> > playback was a bit jerky. When I turned off the
> > hardware "acceleration", playback was very smooth. The
Core2Duo
> > handled it without breaking a sweat - the CPU load went up from
> > around 30% to 50%, with the temperature staying at 35C, so there
is
> > plenty of headroom for more demanding scenes. This CPU runs so
> cool
> > that apparently it can be overclocked to 3GHz without problems if
> > need be. The image quality of course was outstanding. I even saw
> > things in the background that I hadn't noticed before.
> >
> > Conclusions:
> > A big middle finger to the DRM supporters, and a friendly wave to
> > those who cracked it.
> > A GeForce 7900 is probably the minimum spec for hardware playback
> of
> > HD movies, but a decent CPU will work just as well.
> > 1Tb+ drives are urgently required!
> >
> > Mal
> >
>
>