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.

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

[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.

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?

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....

[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....

[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/

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.

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?

Divx player prices:

[ImaLamer]

From Divx.com, "official" players.

DVD Player Compatibility List at VideoHelp.com

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.

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.

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...

Re:I have the Philips DVP-642

[bloo9298]

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