Cheap DivX Solution For Your Entertainment Center

joemite writes "I-O DATA recently announced the release of their LinkPlayer, which can decode DivX files from DVDs, CDs, USB thumb drives, and network file shares. At $249 suggested retail, I know what I'm wishing for this Christmas!" For simpler (no network shares, no thumb drives) and even cheaper set-ups, a few standalone DVD players -- the Philips DVP642 is one -- will play DivX files from recordable CDs andd DVDs.

Comments

But does it support Xvid?

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us that prefer a better, open-source codec?

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[lakin]

From the iodata product page:
Supported Video MPEG-1/MPEG-2/DivX® VIDEO/XviD/WMV9

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[teko_teko]

Yea, I wish there's some kind of video/dvd player that has small harddrive where we can install the latest codecs/plugins to.

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[Cocodude]

Most DVD players that support DivX support MPEG-4 based codecs, of which XviD is one. My DK Digital DVD player supports DivX, but in reality plays most of my XviDs and no doubt other MPEG-4 codecs.

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[tepples]

I wish there's some kind of video/dvd player that has small harddrive where we can install the latest codecs/plugins

There is. It's called an Xbox. And even if you live in an area with anti-modchip laws and strict enforcement thereof, there's always Mini-ITX boxes.

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[Naffer]

Does it do Xvid with Global Motion Compensation? Last I'd heard there weren't any Xvid standalone players that could handle it.

Re:But does it support Xvid?

[deltaromeo]

Divx and Xvid offer very good results, but IMO it's almost never good enough - even spread out over 1400MB (2 CD's). Dark scenes come out poorly with a lot of obvious grey banding. Fast motion and camera pans turn out jerky and in my opinion it detracts from the overall viewing experience. If you watch the original source side by side with the compressed version the differences are blatant.

The $249 would be better spent on a DVD Writer (especially since they are so affordable these days), several hundred blank DVDs and a copy of DVD Shrink.

MythTV

[dorward]

Cute, but I still plan to build my own around MythTV. That will work both ways (allowing me to record TV and then view it over the network) as well as dealing with DVDs and MAME.

Re:MythTV

[Anonymous Coward]

Let us know when u r done

Re:MythTV

[homer_ca]

Now can you build an HTPC that's quiet, not 3 times the size and weight, and doesn't use 4 times the electricity of a DVP642? I have one now, and I'm retiring the HTPC. But to be fair, I never got it working as well as I wanted, and I could have spent more time on tweaking it.

Cheaper Divx

[Buster Chan]

For cheapter DIVX, you can buy a Sega Dreamcast, then download the DIVX playing boot-disc from http://www.dcemulation.com

Re:Cheaper Divx

[Joe Tie.]

As much as I love the dreamcast (and still write for it), I don't think it'll meet most peoples needs for movie playback. It's worked well for me simply because I do my own captures and so encoding to a size and bitrate which would go along well with the player. But the size and bitrate limitations come down pretty hard on a lot of what's out there right now, without re-encoding, if it's used with the DC player.

Re:Cheaper Divx

[AnyoneEB]

VCDs are compressed with MPEG1 at a resolution about a quarter of regular TV. More info on the VCD format. In my experience, VCDs look pretty bad no matter what device you're playing them on.

Re:Cheaper Divx

[ImaLamer]

In my experience, VCDs look pretty bad no matter what device you're playing them on.

Well, you've not had the right VCD's! I've encoded some beauties. Plus you need a good decoder, because as I mentioned some don't fully decode the entire stream (they do their best giving you artifacts).

The issue about resolution is *almost* pointless when you realize your TV (if not HD) isn't that great to begin with and it scales very well.

But then again it all goes back to good encoding.

Won't the MPIAA have a hissyfit?

[rei_slashdot]

Weren't they suing ESS or whoever made chips for a bunch of the lowcost/cheap DVD players?

Sounds a bit pricey

[neo5064]

At $249, that seems to be a bit pricey for a DivX decoder. Although I suppose the money you'd save by stealing the movies off of your favorite P2P network or torrent source would eventually overcome that.

But what about buying an S-Video cable to hook into the TV, and play it from your computer? Or even better, some cheap DVD encoding software to play it on anyone's system?

Re:Sounds a bit pricey

[NETHED]

Walmart has a great DIVX player for REALLY Cheap. Here's a Link

I bought one a few weeks back and it plays pretty well.

Re:Sounds a bit pricey

[fireboy1919]

Yeah? What about if you have a bunch of cartoons you recorded from television and converted to DIVX and you want to make a DVD?

Do you have any idea how long rerendering to MPEGII takes? Not only that, but you have to create some kind of menu system to even read the files!

I'd much prefer the hour or two it takes to Burn to the eight hours of computation + hour of human labor of creating a DVD from scratch. I can even do that right before bed and have a brand new DVD waiting for me in the morning.

I WANT!

[shaneFalco]

Seems quite interesting. What would be really nice would be the option of connecting to a network wirelessly in order to access video files stored on other computers in the house. Maybe even a file browser akin to Konquorer for the computer illeterate in my house. I want one!

I'd rather wish for a chipped Xbox

[ttlgDaveh]

Because it plays DVDs (region free too), media in almost every format under the sun and games too.
On the downside the chipping process may be on the wrong side of "legal" depending on where you are, and the majority applications are, as they're compiled using MS's SDK. Other than that it is excellent, much better than any stand-alone appliance I have come across.

Not that great of a value....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not buy an Xbox($149 new), mod it ($50 shipped) and use XBMC? It does all of that plus music and weather.....and you get a kick ass console.

You save $50 and you have a lot more functionality.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[Stevyn]

And you can play xbox games by just ripping them to the hard drive (which you can upgrade to hold a LOT of games. You can also play any NES, N64, Sega Genesis, and I'm sure several other console games. Few people know how amazing a modded xbox is. The only downside is you're taking revenue away from Microsoft.

Did I say downside?

Re:Not that great of a value....

[Tyrdium]

You mean copying games he already owns? I do the same thing on my computer, with Daemon Tools; it saves me the hassle of swapping disks.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[cdrudge]

Turn your mod chip off and yes. Keep it on and be banned.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[lakeland]

That the sale of an xbox costs MSFT money is a popular myth among people who don't understand economics. Let me try and explain it simply:

Microsoft spent a lot of money developing the xbox. Microsoft also spent a lot on infrastructure, advertising, and other such 'fixed' costs. When you calculate the cost to MS of every xbox they sell, you amortise these fixed costs over all xboxes sold, along with the variable cost (the cost per unit). A naive conclusion from this is that when you buy an xbox, Microsoft loses money. If you instead compute the raw cost of producing an xbox to MS (i.e. just the variable cost), then you find it costs them less than you paid for it. Conclusion: Every time you buy an xbox, MSFT's coffers are increased.

How do you reconcile those two things? Pretty easily. MS makes money off the sale of their xbox hardware, but not enough to justify them developing the xbox. Some people buy xbox games, and these people make MSFT a lot of profit. Is this profit enough to justify the money they've blown bringing a product to market? Perhaps, or perhaps not, we'll see. But every time you buy an xbox, you know you're helping make Bill just that tiny bit richer.

In case you haven't got it yet, let me give you an analogy. Say you've got a business idea, your company: "Winc" is going to start selling bottled water for $50/bottle. You plan to spend $50M on advertising to convince people that they really want to buy your water - it is much more cool than the water evian sells, for instance. Now, anybody could tell you this is a stupid business plan, and it is going to lose money because hardly anybody will buy the water. But an accountant would describe it in terms of the profit (loss) per bottle sold. In this case, you might be loosing $10,000 for every bottle you sell. But if I walk into a shop and buy a bottle, you make almost $50 profit. Do you follow?

Re:Not that great of a value....

[KronicD]

The latest version of the Xenium OS for the xenium modchip supports USB Devices, as do many of the media players for the Xbox.

Of course an adapter is needed to connect a USB device to one of the controller ports, but these are widely and cheaply available, microsoft will even supply these! (offically to be used with PSO for keyboards, PSO is an MMORPG)

It is worth noting that the controllers include a "usb hub" of sorts, with the two memory slots in the top of each controller, as an unmodded xbox seems unable to tell the difference between an official memory card and a usb thumbdrive pluged into a controller port.

This support of USB devices is currently being widely used for TSOP softmod exploits.

The xbox is an excellent media center and has served me well, altho xbox modchips are currently legal where I am (Australia), altho that is set to change in early 2005 when the free trade agreement (and dmca like provisions) come into effect.

If its still legal where you are, I reccomend getting a modded xbox, its a great console, great media player and a great general purpose machine :)

Something lesser known is that the memory and CPU in the xbox can actually be upgraded (soldering required), or you can buy a pre-upgraded xbox from here.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[Skuld-Chan]

I'd like to second that - I bought a dvd player that is supposed to be divx certified (even has the divx.com logo on it). So far if its a perfect divx clip, with mp3 soundtrack it works great. If its anything but - forget it. Many times it seems to have poor audio.

Xbox on the other hand with xbmc plays it all, divx, wmp, xvid, quicktime, real media, you name it. I have seriously yet to see a media format it won't play with absolute perfection.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[afidel]

Well I'm not sure about today, but when the XBox first came out the variable cost of the XBox was in fact greater than the MSRP. I will quote a Cnet article from 2001:
And production costs are expected to be an unusually high $375 per machine because of the console's advanced features, Blodget said in the report. Blodget estimates Microsoft will "lose $125 on every Xbox console--and that's before taking into account" sales, marketing and other administrative costs.
linky

I don't doubt that the cost of parts have come down enough that today MS is in fact no longer losing much if any money on the XBox, but they most certainly aren't making a whole lot of money on them either. The console industry is all about licensing costs from content creators. Why else do you think three titles cost as much as the console?

Re:Not that great of a value....

[hohead]

Why does everyone think you *NEED* to buy a modchip for the Xbox?
Using the proven "UDE softmod" method, all you need is a rented game, a homemade USB2Xbox adapter and a USB thumbdrive to mod your Xbox.
Total cost: $5-10

And yes, this will 100% unlock your Xbox just the same as a $50 modchip would.

For more info, check out: http://how2xbox.com/ and/or http://www.xbox-scene.com/

Re:Not that great of a value....

[moonbender]

Keeping in with your bottle analogy: After an initial investment of $50M, you sell your bottled water at $50 per bottle. However, since your making bottles of solid crystal, each costs you $60 to manufacture. You're actually losing money on each, and not recouping investment costs. You're hoping will come back with the bottle for water refills you sell over price, though.

Your point is well taken, and the popular belief that Microsoft loses money on the consoles might well be wrong. But you didn't really give me a reason to think so - people don't think MS loses money on each box due to their initial investments, but simply because the hardware in that box - ie. not a "fixed cost" - comes in fairly expensive.

Re:Not that great of a value....

[XMage]

Although you have a grasp of micro economics, you need also to take a closer look at the underlying business strategy before you can understand the bigger picture. Microeconomics alone does not cut it. As all the other child posts point out, your thinking is flawed in certain respects.

So you say that it is a "popular myth" that MS does not profit from the sale of individual XBoxes?

I understand your economic reasoning. In substance you are saying that although the initial, fixed, sunk costs in the XBox project is large, the variable cost of producing an XBox is materially lower than the selling price. By your own admission, what you have is a gross profit, and a net loss after taking into account the fixed costs.

Taking your bottling analogy and simplifying:

Sale of one Bottle US$50.
Cost of bottle US$0.
Gross profit US$50.

Other costs US$50,000,000
Net loss US$49,999,950

No matter how you slice it, despite making a gross profit, you've made a loss selling bottles. You need to hit the "sweet spot" and sell AT LEAST 1 million bottles before you break even and start to make money. This is a little simplistic.

So no matter how you slice fixed costs & variable costs, this does not detract from the fact that the XBox division is not a profit generating business unit.

Also, you need to have a closer look at one of your biggest assumptions: that the marginal cost of producing the XBox is very small. It's not, because the last time I checked MSc ontracted out the production of the XBox to a 3rd party contractor. And MS does not control all the technology in the XBox: Intel and NVidia do. Contrast this to Sony, who operates at all levels in the manufacture of the PS2, and after 3-4 years can simplify the silicon andm anufacturing processes to produce a "slimmer" version. You only have to see the PSOne (The PS2 has a PS-on-a-chip, and the PSOne used this technology) and the upcoming PS2.

The marginal cost of producing an XBox to Microsoft is not very small.

Although I understand economics, rephrasing the question in terms of fixed & variable costs does not assist in our understanding of the underlying business. Let me try and explain it simply: You are either profitable or you're not. And if you're not profitable, then there should be a damn good reason for spending cash and losing money.

At the end of the day, the bottom line is the net loss of US$50m. And if I've contributed to
increasing MS's bottom line losses, then I would say that by buying an XBox I've "cost" Microsoft money.

So why should Microsoft go into a loss making business?

The way I see it, the XBox is a part of a wider MS strategy to break into the home entertainment market. Maybe MS saw that the Sony PS2 holds up Sony's profits worldwide and that they want to get into that game too.

You ever read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash? The way I see it, MS want to have a hand in designing the infrastructure for the Metaverse. Do you see all those fixed costs in developing the XBox and the XBox Live service? One of the big selling features of the XBox was it's network connectivity built into the machine.

Sony and the PS3 will have a lot to catch up on to match Microsoft's investment in XBox Live (the network infrastructure and software code) and to deliver an experience that is as compelling. To be honest, I suspect that Sony will miss the boat entirely and XBox 2 will stomp all over the PS3's online capability.

One day we may all get to experience something like the Metaverse. I won't be surprised if it's delivered via technology & infrastructure that was developed for the XBox.

Don't Jump the Gun

[Pugio]

I would wait to see how the reviews pan out with this thing. Besides the very bad english on their product page (here) players like these don't always work up to spec (obvious but still needs to be said at least once). A fact I found very interesting was the "(Testing)" entry next to their DivX support halfway down the page.

Commercial DivX DVDs?

[ShadowFlair]

I wonder if companies will produce DivX DVDs/CDs for retail sales... that would be pretty neat.

Come to think of it, this is kind of like buying an MP3 stereo/player. I still haven't seen any MP3 CD at my local CD retail yet, but I've seen people burning their own MP3 CDs. At least there aren't record companies going after these MP3 player makers yet, hopefully this will hold true for these divx players.

Philips DVP642 player mentioned

[nyquil]

i have 2 of these, theyre really great. amazon has them usually for around $67, they work flawlessly, and will play almost everything you could put in there. i guess theres a couple divx encoders that it cant handle (yet), and i have come across a file or 2 that it wouldnt play, but if you're ripping your own stuff it should be fine. firmware upgradeable as well, just burn new firmware to cdr and follow the instructions. it will play divx/xvid/mpeg4 off cdr, cdrw, dvd+r/rw and dvd-r/rw, as well as being region free and progressive scan. best $67 i've ever spent.

Re:Philips DVP642 player mentioned

[Danny Rathjens]

I have a similar problem playing files on the dvp642 even without hdtv resolutions. I am going to try a lower bitrate, as someone else suggested. Here is the way I record from regular cable now:

mencoder -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:norm=NTSC:chanlist =us-cable -vf crop=625:478:8:2,pp=de/lb -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=2000 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64 -o /home/dkr/vid/tv.avi tv://

With that method, the dvp642 just plays the sound. Too bad it doesn't have an error console to say exactly why it isn't playing something. :)

Re:Philips DVP642 player mentioned

[Anonymous Coward]

More precisely, most standalone DivX/XviD players have problems decoding XviD-files that were encoded with QPEL, GMC or BVOP turned on. If you rip yourself this is not a problem, but most downloadable xvid movies use BVOP and a smaller portion of them use QPEL and/or GMC. I'd guess that about 50% of the movies that I download would work in a standalone player like the dvp642 without any reencoding.

Standalones are cheap

[phozz bare]

They sell standalone DVD players capable of playing DivX, Mp4, Mp3, Jpg, Photo CD, etc etc for about $90 (incl. delivery) here in Israel. These are Chinese players pretending to be German, but they do the job. Please, find something better to do with your $249.

phozz

Xbox, cheaper, more effective

[Oz0ne]

a modded xbox

New Xbox $150
Mod Chip $30-60
40 Gig HD $40

Total: $220-250

Will play DVDs region free, divx, xvid, quicktime, wmv, mpeg, avi, dv, mp3, view photos/slideshow, stream mp3 from internet radio stations, get the weather... etc.

Only true geeks will want the hardware mentioned in the article... and true geeks can do much better, cheaper, and have more fun doing it themselves.

Mmm, Engrish.

[modifried]

From the product page:

"And DHCP server function help you to setup IP address automatically.We guarantee you, your familiy or your guest have an exciting time!"

"Oustside enjoy listening music or shooting photos, and then after going back home, you just insert your gadjet to this USB port. LinkPlayer can pickup inside any files for your relax time."

"LinkPlayer remote controller is not normal. Many buttons for your convinience."

"We will keep to make much effort for your satisfaction. Now the following certifications have already been passed. Also we'll update more after finish. Don't miss anymore."

Re:Mmm, Engrish.

[zakezuke]

(Sadly, I *was* fixing DHCP last night... but I have a baby boy, and can't go out anyways...)

Your baby boy handles DHCP? I try to assign children IP address but they can't be bothered to remember even the most simple of subnets. They all drop packets too, and where the hell do you put the RJ-45 jack?

philips dvp642

[tie_guy_matt]

I love my philips dvd/divx player. It is a pretty good stand alone dvd player but it plays a million other formats too. The only problem is that mine has trouble playing divx4 movies. In mencoder instead of using vcodec=mpeg4 I have to use vcodec=msmpeg4 (divx 3.) Divx3 is nice (alot better than mpeg2) but when I play with divx 4 I see that it has higher quality at lower bitrates. If anyone has gotten their philips player to play divx4 movies I would be interested to know.

Divx player prices:

[ImaLamer]

From Divx.com, "official" players.

DVD Player Compatibility List at VideoHelp.com

Goodmans DivX Decoder

[amembleton]

Goddmans make a DivX Player model: DVD161DIVX 5.1 DVD Player.

If you are in the UK you can pick one up for £60 from Argos. I have one, and find that it works very well whilst also looking good. All my videos play fine except for Real Player ones.

DVP642 FFmpeg problems, and PC tv-out issues

[tachyonflow]

I bought a Phillips DVP642 DVD player a while back, and was rather disappointed. I've recorded a great deal of content with FFmpeg (with VBR mp3), and very little of it would play well on this box. I ended up getting rid of the box. (And I did upgrade the box to the latest firmware.)

My main annoyance with PC tv-out's (i.e. the one on my MythTV box) is that they don't provide 1:1 scanline mapping output of the video. In other words, the video card provides you with a framebuffer of arbitrary size (640x480, 800x600, etc.) and maps that into about 400 or so lines of NTSC output. In other words, it destructively scales the image and breaks the ability to show true interlaced content. It's possible to "overscan" the output, but this in no way guarantees a 1:1 scanline mapping. I do have a PVR350, which does have a proper 1:1 scanline mapping, but the last time I tried using it for general video output (i.e. playing MPEG4 files with mplayer), it was not fast enough to keep up. It's incredible for playing back MPEG2 content with the decoder, though.

If the LinkPlayer works well and has a proper, well-designed TV out, it may be worth looking into.

Nobody mentioned the best bit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless I am mis-reading the article the LinkPlayer supports playback of HD-DIVX. I assume the output is also HD (whats a D4 connector?). If so, that is indeed a big deal. None of the other players I am aware of can playback HD content.

What's wrong with laptops?

[prostoalex]

What's wrong with attaching a laptop with S-Video output to the TV? I also plug my 5.1 audio-system into the audio jack of the laptop and get the full surround sound. Plays DivX, WMV, RealVideo, MPEG and whatever they come up with.

Re:What's wrong with laptops?

[prostoalex]

Why? Can you elaborate on that? A DivX is a DivX whether played from the dedicated player or laptop. What am I losing on S-Video?

Re:What's wrong with laptops?

[Johnny Doughnuts]

If the resolution on the video is greater than 480p, you lose quality on the s-vid. Your only other options are to get a tv with dvi or vga inputs, or use the ati -> component video (Y Gr Br, i believe). Mind you, it requries an ati card.

ATI Video Cards with TV Out

[frank249]

I had been looking for a way to play Divx files on my TV for awhile. I had considered a Divx capable DVD player but you cannot just go to Best Buy or Future Shop to get one. I thought about a wireless solution but they are still very pricy. I found the easiest and cheapest solution was to buy an ATI video card with TV out.
The 9200SE supports the latest games and dual monitors with DIV and has TV out/s video all for about $80cdn Yes my computer has to be close to the TV but I also have it conected to my stereo for home theatre and mp3s. Playing movies from the hard drive also saves having to burn DVDs/CDs. For me, it was the cheapest way to have my home multimedia centre.

Re:ATI Video Cards with TV Out

[Keebler71]

You didn't look very hard. I bought this one at target today for $69. Early verdict... neat but I can hear the disc spinning which is annoying... stay tuned.

Re:Quality

[tomstdenis]

flamebait...

You know you can

1. Do two pass encoding
2. Use a ***HIGHER BITRATE***

Those rips off kazaa you got 2 years ago were probably one-pass 384kbps files or something...

Two-pass 2Mbps should look perfect even at 720x480. If you're not so anal you can get by with as little as 800Kbps.

Tom

Liteon DVD players

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an LVD-2001, but the LVD-2010 is it's replacement model. There was some bitching and moaning about end-user formats and stuff, so the 2010 doesn't do as much as my 2001. But it plays Xvid absolutely perfect, and there's really no reason to ever use MPEG2 for it. Divx plays ok, as long as you keep to the "standards" for it's encoding.

I also have a LVW-5001.
It's wonderful, too, even though it doesn't play mpeg4. I swapped out the original Liteon 401M optical drive, for a newer 812S drive. I also added some vent holes; it had none from the factory, since the 401M is a class-1 laser device, and put a heatsink on the main encoding/decoding chip. I also managed to get some metal shavings somewhere in the 401M, which is why I had to swap it out for a 812S. It's encoder probably isn't the best in the world, but the 1 and 2 hour formats are absolutely wonderful.

Liteon makes absolutely wonderful Xvid/Divx solutions. They aren't made for playing mp3's (they can, thought the play options are limited).

Standalone players

[Phatmanotoo]

a few standalone DVD players -- the Philips DVP642 is one -- will play DivX files from recordable CDs andd DVDs.

Well at least here in Europe we've been having cheap (under $100) DivX-capable players since the beginning of the year. Last time I went to our local supermarket I could spot FIVE different ones, all under $100 except for the Philips one. And guess what, the cheap ones tend to accept a much wider range of disks and formats.

I've got an "El-cheapo" one, based on a MEDIATEK 1389-DE chip, and it plays *all* DivX and Xvid files I have tried so far. Only $60, bought it two months ago.

DIVX + Ethernet Compatibility List

[meehawl]

Cool. According to the DVD Player Compatibility List, there are just 5 players currently available with DIVX and ethernet. There are now, however, about 223 standalone DIVX players, around 13% of the total, which is much more than this time last year. Even the most modern ones, however, still sometimes have trouble with advanced or unsupported DIVX/XVid profiles.

any player that plays them all (qpel, gmc) ?

[Festering Leper]

it seems that all of the divx players won't play files with these enhancements. some types of content need these options during encoding in order to have accepable quality during playback.

Is this really news? There's tons of these.

[bigtallmofo]

I'm surprised that someone submitted a story about a device that can play video files of all sorts from your computer on your TV. There's got to be a dozen of these things, some of them have been around for a few years now. Linksys has one, Gateway has one, PRISMIQ has one, Hauppage has one, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Skippy Peanut Butter brand media center that could do this at this point. The fact it can play DivX and XVid is old news too. My PRISMIQ unit could do that for the last 18 months, and to top it off it's an open source box running on Linux that I can even telnet to. Oh, and the price isn't $249 like it used to be - I think they're having closeout prices currently for $149. A wireless keyboard for it is an additional $29. And the recording (think PVR) version of it comes out 4Q. That's the good news on these things. The bad news is that they hardly ever work as advertised. I've tried several of them and they all have their good points and bad points.

My solution- playing DVD's & DivX from the net

[Beatlebum]

I have hundreds of DVD discs lying around. For a while I've been pondering what it would take to build a
networked video server, recently I finally got it working. The objective
was to be able to play DVD's seamlessly from a server share, by seamlessly I
mean complete with menus, extras etc., with high quality video and digital
sound. In theory a 100Mbit LAN should have enough bandwidth since DVD's
video stream is at most 9Mbit, the most difficult part was putting together
a quiet client machine capable of generating a good quality analog video
signal. I ended up buying a cheap ($400) Dell Poweredge machine on ebay,
it's practically silent, this is important since it sits beside the TV. For
DVD decoding I'm using something called the XCard
(http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard .htm), it decodes video and
outputs digital audio. On the software side I am using TVedia
(http://www.8dim.com/default.asp?linkid=vc dhelp), it generates menus on the
TV to access media on the LAN. It also works quite well with the XCard,
which comes with a serial port IR remote sensor. To make a DVD playable from
the network I use DVDDecrypter to create an iso image and daemon tools to
mount the image on a virtual drive, TVedia can then play the "disc" as if it
was in the local machine's drive. The system is pretty neat if I do say so
myself. I picked up a couple of Maxtor 250G drives from Frys, that's about
50-100 DVDs online. In theory I could stick another cheap PC in the bedroom
and have access to the movie collection there also.

Cheapo DVD players rock my world.....

[Morden]

I bought a Digitrex off Ebay for about AU$160.

Plays DivX, MOV, etc. Pretty much anything you can throw at it, except WMV and Real (but who cares about them anyway...).

About the only thing I'd want it to do that it doesn't currently would be handle multisession data disks so I can add files to compilations as new ... er ... "episodes" become "available".

It's also got a monitor output, so if my housemate's using the TV I can plug it into my computer's monitor and deprive /. of posts like this one :)

Oh, and it even plays DVDs...

Have had this for a few months now

[Koutarou]

In Japan this model has been out for about 6 months. Played 99.9% of all video files I threw at it, DivX and Xvid of just about every origin.

IO-DATA also sells a nice embedded linux NAS (120, 160, 250, 300gb versions available plus you can add 2 external usb2 drives) that has the server-side support to stream video to the linkplayer so you don't have to leave a PC on.

Firmware updates are distributed directly from the net too.

I'm really happy with it - makes me glad I bothered to wire ethernet to my living room wallplate.

Re:Have had this for a few months now

[cpaluc]

Koutarou, are you able to tell us whether it will play ripped DVDs (on a hard drive) perfectly? By "perfectly", I mean with all the menus and subtitles/audio tracks etc.

The only device I've found that does is the TViX (www.tvix.co.kr). With the TViX, you simply dump a DVD onto its hard drive, and then play the video_ts.ifo file and it's indistinguishable from playing the disc on regular player (eg. you get the menus). It even has optical audio out and component video out. Unfortunately the TViX doesn't have network capability.

I know XBox media center and other 'media center'-type devices can play ripped DVDs but I'm yet to find one that does it as well as the TViX does. It seems that they generally just allow playback of the main feature from the disc. Correct me if I'm wrong, but MythTV, XBMC and Freevo use Mplayer as the default video playback software. Mplayer doesn't support menus.

Another advertisement post ?

[elpapacito]

Excuse my candor, but isn't this a link to a press release ? Personally I've got nothing against press releases as useful tools to let customers know a new product exists, but in what does this particular press release "matter" more or less then another thousand necessarily different press releases ?

Other then literal/graphic differences, press releases are no different as they serve the same purpose. Why is this one particularly significant ?

Re:I have the Philips DVP-642

[bloo9298]

Hold down the STOP button on the remote for a few seconds to eject the disk.

No MPEG-4 Global Motion Compensation

[linuxguy]

Sigma 8620L that is used in this player does not support GMC.

All that's missing

[Stavr0]

is a firmware upgrade that installs a bittorrent client and you don't even need a PC anymore.