Finally finished downloading an hd rip of terminator 3 into divx format weighing in at 3.98 gig, just big enough for a normal dvd.

 

The picture quality is fantastic and easily as good as blueray/hd-dvd

 

Another format is H264 format on the mac, excellent picture quality and a small footprint.

 

So my gripe here is why should you bother buying a new super expensive player when they could just use divx/h264 codecs to compress the hdtv signal into a file format that will fit into a normal dvd and just uprate the chips to decompress the files in realtime?

 

I might be buying the hd-dvd format addon drive for the xbox 360 (£129.99) next week so i'll see if it's any better than the compressed movies but i doubt it

i am waiting till toshiba release there hybrid player which does both bluray and hd-dvd. also warner are going to release dual format discs, bluray on one side and hd-dvd on the other

Still costs a fair bit though, blueray players are a grand right now

 

360 + HD player is by far the cheapest: £199 for 360 and £129.99 for the drive with a free copy of king kong hd

 

By using a codec they could save investing in new technology and just use the present disc format

or my fav, iso file with a virtual drive. with dvid and toslink out the pc to the pre/pro and bobs your mothers brother

exactly, alot of wasted money i think this blueray malarky, plus the layer is thinner leading to the tiniest scratch will wipe out 4 gigs worth of data.

mmm I would be interested to see how xbmc handles the hd codec, burn us one off for sunday mate :)

i'm just downloading all the bbc wildlife documentries, sin city etc

 

(I DO OWN THEM IN STANDARD DVD BY THE WAY) :D

 

I'll bring what i have on dvd for you matey

 

I'm picking my replacement tv up tomorrow so i finally get to watch hd properly again and not just for 5 mins till the bulb overheats :D

where are you getting the hd versions from mate and what are you using to change them into divx bud

Im just about to whack a large hard drive into my hddvd recorder and store all my films on it in divx format as it has divx playback

Nice one Nick.

 

I use an original xbox, with the xbmc dashboard. xbmc kicks ass, I stream video from my pc over the lan and it never misses a beat. It will play absolutly everything i have thown at it so far. It will even mount iso and nrg (nero) images and play them as streaming video, never jumps or looses audio/video sync at all. All my videos are on a raid array on the pc, separate to the hdd running the os so doesnt interupt the pc much either. Would definatly recommend xbmc, you can have a very nice media machine for around 50 quid!

just downloading them from mininova.org through bitorrent (azureus)

 

keyword to use is "720p", although there's not a huge amount to get yet

 

Mainly film and tv shows

Would definatly recommend xbmc, you can have a very nice media machine for around 50 quid!

 

*cough cough*

 

Already there matey, xbox crystal, de shielded and 120gig hard drive installed :D

 

cool, me too maxtor 120gb hdd, blue clear case with leds.

 

you got your xbox networked to your pc with file sharing on?

 

if so share your dvd drive and see if xbmc can play the hd divx you have?

cool, me too maxtor 120gb hdd, blue clear case with leds.

 

you got your xbox networked to your pc with file sharing on?

 

if so share your dvd drive and see if xbmc can play the hd divx you have?

 

Unfortunately i haven't got the composite leads for the xbox yet, i'm going to try tversity on he xbox 360 though and see if it streams at full 720p

 

I'll get my new replacement tv tomorrow so i'll try it then matey :D

having watched the blu-ray film on my lads ps3

i can tell you m8 there is no comparison, the difference in a film on the 360 IS good (via component to hd) but no where near the quality of blu-ray via the ps3, not sure what these pictures will come out like as had to shrink the

ignore the mess it is my lads room lol

Just tried to take some piccys of this one but the bulb life is so short i only got a few shots but i'll post them up when i can find the cable

got loads of hd stuff m8

also got them on dual layer dvds so no loss of quality

and i THOUGHT they were the dogs until i saw the ps3 pictures

not worth paying the cash for blu-ray players off course, but the writers are tumbling so won't be long before the players are DOWN;)

I have owned a tosh hd dvd player since july and it is without doubt awesome . I have seen a samsung blue ray running ( on my own tv ) and it is IMO not as good as the tosh. The benifits of HD dvd are now pretty well documented as in the fact ( its not Sony - which is a very good plus point ) It plays back dvd's pretty good ( scaled as well ) allows users of older hi def screens to use the component connections for their hidef viewing ( blue ray does not ) Its also has none of that crap regional encoding ( blue ray adopts this ) and the fact my tosh cost half of what the samsung was....One last point.. you all have been mentioning the fact about divx etc looking really tasty with HD material, as most people do, you have forgotten about how much better these sound over standard DVD's. Makes dvd sound thin and harsh in comparision to HD dvd running say batman begins in true hd. Now that does sound outstanding

 

..Happy viewing

 

Mark

blu-ray does not because To utilize Blu-ray players' 1080p output, a high-definition television needs to have 1080p input capability via HDMI

so unless you have the proper set up at the moment would be hard to slate it,

don't get me wrong having had sky hd etc since day 1 its everything i'll need,

but i THINK? the component wont output at 1080p anyway, so can't be compared, also not sure if you were going down the blu-ray route why you would want it to play on an old tv

fair enuff point, though in fact hd dvd outputs 1080p as well as blue ray...I would like to think my equipment is up to the job..cost enuff! lol I've been using a projector for the last few years and yes I would imagine 1080p be ever so slightly better ( Slightly smoother ) in which case ..there is no resolution difference between an interlaced image and a progressive one. ( ps im using a crt projector - so using the component output - )

fair enuff point, though in fact hd dvd outputs 1080p as well as blue ray...I would like to think my equipment is up to the job..cost enuff! lol I've been using a projector for the last few years and yes I would imagine 1080p be ever so slightly better ( Slightly smoother ) in which case ..there is no resolution difference between an interlaced image and a progressive one. ( ps im using a crt projector - so using the component output - )

 

i aint no anorak m8, so half the bull that is bandied about just goes whoosh lol

i rely more on what i see and up to now the blu-ray and games via his ps3 ive seen on my lads telly is THE best ive seen, he has his 360 via the component and again superb picture, but deffo can tell the difference, after seeing the ps3 i was seriously thinking of getting another for us to watch films, but as we never get time to watch them would be SLIGHTLY wasteful lol

we have a couple of flashed 360's so think they will do

i may get to see him using his ps3 properly when mgs4 appears lol

just download them as an ISO file from http://www.demonoid.com and play them through a HTPC, cheapest way. I have a 8.2Tb server that streams into HTPC and it's as good as any player.

(i have demonoid invites if anybpdy requires them)

I'm taking delivery of my 1080p HD TV tomorrow. It'll be nice to see what all the fuss is about (even though I've got no HD components yet :rolleyes: )

 

Steve :)