Gateway network connected DVD player [Archive] - DealDatabase Forum - Deals, Freebies, and TiVo & DirecTivo Hacking

gsxrpilot

10-29-2003, 12:21 PM

Interesting. I had a related experience with the Hauppauge MVP which strems video over ethernet. The problem I had was it couldn't keep up with the bit rate of the video (either that or my network couldn't keep up, which is strange since it is a wired 10/100 network in my house) I guess the question is, have you seen such a problem with a wireless (802.11b) setup? Does the DVD player keep up with the video (or the 11MBs the 802.11b gives you) Another thing I tried was to convert a DVD to MPEG-2 and tried playing it and the MVP didn't even come close to keeping up (unwatchable pauses in the video). I love the idea of distributing video source other ethernet but I am wondering if the tecnology is really there now.

scottf

10-29-2003, 02:53 PM

No, have not tried with wireless. I'm running cat5e @ 100meg.

Please understand that I've only tried approx a dozen ty converted mpeg2 cuts but was very impressed with the results. I did have a few problems importing into the media center till I removed the filters.

I've been playing around with mpegs exported from .mov to mpeg 2 at varous bitrate settings from my mac with no luck.

Been sidetracked trying to get my Directivo back up after the upgrade. I've lost my bash prompt and telnet for now. :D

Generiq

10-29-2003, 05:14 PM

Do you have a link to the Gateway DVD player? I'd like to see it (just for kicks).

Thanks.

scottf

10-29-2003, 08:02 PM

http://www.gateway.com/home/ce/dvd.shtml

Just noticed on sale 199.98 which includes a nic card, Deal!

wkozun

10-30-2003, 12:59 PM

Digital 5 (which makes the software for this plus several other similar players) introduced an update to their software that plays AVI and DVR-MS files in addition to MPEG. (DVR-MS appears to be the file type that the Windows Media Center uses for its recorded files).

I wonder if it would be possible for this device to play files from vserver directly off of a TiVo or to play ty or tmf files off of your PC?

rc3105

10-30-2003, 02:46 PM

Originally posted by wkozun
I wonder if it would be possible for this device to play files from vserver directly off of a TiVo or to play ty or tmf files off of your PC?
possible, sure. getting them to do it'll be the trick.

Originally posted by scottf
http://www.gateway.com/home/ce/dvd.shtml

Just noticed on sale 199.98 which includes a nic card, Deal!
not as good a deal as an Xbox for $150 :D

with a little extra sw (no modchip needed) you can

1) stream recordings directly from the tivo
2) stream tmf/ty/avi/divx from a pc
3) play tmf/ty/avi/divx from cd/dvd
4) run linux & really annoy MS - BONUS! ;)

--
Riley

wkozun

10-30-2003, 02:58 PM

not as good a deal as an Xbox for $150

Is there software to allow the Xbox to play MP3s? What about digital photos? Does the Xbox have digital audio out? I would think that it would pass on all of these counts.

One nice feature of the Gateway is that it has digital audio out, unlike many of its competitors in the digital media receiver field.

The Audiotron, which only plays music, not video nor photos nor dvds, sells for $300.

rc3105

10-31-2003, 07:18 AM

Originally posted by wkozun
Is there software to allow the Xbox to play MP3s? What about digital photos? Does the Xbox have digital audio out?
digital audio, s-video, vga & hdtv are all available, just get the cable for whatever you're connecting

mp3, ogg, wma, realmedia, quicktime... most codecs & formats are allready supported, the few / new that aren't are being added. if it's available for the pc it's available for the xbox

while it's basically an embedded device when you pick it up at wally world, 20 mins spent installing free sw turns it into a P3 multimedia pc built on an nvidea chipset. it's easier to hack than a tivo (don't even need to pull the drive), has motherboard 100bt and the factory config has 4-6 gig of free hd space

--
Riley

tangent1138

11-02-2003, 04:11 PM

riley--

i thought you needed a mod chip to make xbox hacks work? where can i find out more about sw modding the xbox?

thanks

Generiq

11-02-2003, 06:18 PM

You can find plenty of info at www.xbox-scene.com.

rc3105

11-02-2003, 10:56 PM

nope, no modchip required. using a font exploit and the phoenix boot loader is more or less equivilant to monte for the S2

another good xbox resource is http://gentoox.shallax.com, you can dl a full gentoo distro including kde & freevo that's ridiculously easy to install

I'm currently working on freevo <-> tivo integration :D

--
Riley

tangent1138

11-06-2003, 06:03 PM

does the gentoox install include the font exploit/phoenix loader, or would i need that separately?

sorry, still learning all this, and the number of options on xbins.org is overwhelming.

rc3105

11-08-2003, 07:07 PM

mechassault / 007 gets you in

fonts exploit gets the ability to run unsigned code (you have to sign it with the habibbi key, but that's easy)

phoenix lets you shadow any bios you want in ram, unlocking the hardware w/o a hardware mod :D

if you can solder, flash a bfm bios into the tsop to totally unlock the box. if that's greek then stick with the sw mods :p

xbox-scene (http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php) has faq's & help threads for everything

HuMan321

11-19-2003, 03:49 PM

Scotts post and wkozun (quoted below) contradict each other.

I am looking at this Gateway unit and being able to play my TYTool created mpegs would be a large part of it.

Has anyone else had experience with this unit? Did the editing that Scott did make the difference? If so, could you elaborate on the edit.

Will this unit stream a vob file?

Also the statement wkozun makes about wired networks supporting up to 5Mbps is something that I cannot find any verification of.

I would appreciate input from anyone using this Gateway Player

Thanks

Originally posted by wkozun
I have the Gateway which is essentially the same as the GoVideo.

I have been able to play MPEG-2 files over it that have been extracted from the TiVo, however it does not appear to recognize files extracted with TyTools. I have been told that this is because TyTools mpeg files do not have a proper mpeg header. I have been able to play files that were re-encoded with TMPGEnc.

Music and photos work well.

The software for this player has recently been upgraded to allow AVI files and DVR-MS video files (the format of the PVR on XP Media Center Edition). It appears as if it recognizes Divx files, but when I tried to play one I got major stuttering which would indicate that the bandwidth is too high.

FYI on wired networks it is supposed to allow video files at up to 5Mbps.

wkozun

11-19-2003, 04:20 PM

The latest version of the software supports 5Mbps if you have a wired connection. This is not mentioned in the user guide but there is now a check box in the software where it asks whether you have a wired or wireless connection.

Additionally there is a file called (I believe) filters.cfg that is installed in the Media Server directory. It has entries in it specifying what bitrate you can use for different types of files. With the new version of the software it has a separate section for wired and wireless. In this file it specifies the maximum bitrate it is 3000000 for wireless and 5000000 for wired.

One or two people I have conversed with said that they have increased these values and that it appears that you may get higher bitrate files to play if your network is fast enough.

With regards to TyTool MPEGs.

I have not been able to play TyTool MPEGS that are directly downloaded into MPEG files which is the method that I normally use.

However, if you follow the process that scottf mentions (Tytools 8.3 -> ty -> make key -> edit key -> multiplex to mpeg) then I can get the files to work.

The files also work if I open them (files directly downloaded to MPEG) in TMPGEnc and reencode or edit and save to MPEG.

Presumably this is because the MPEG files created in the direct download to MPEG do not have a proper MPEG header or there are some other problems with the MPEG file such as missing chunks.

HuMan321

11-19-2003, 04:38 PM

Thanks for the info. This is great news for how I was hoping to use it.

It sounds like if the make a few more changes in the ability to sort and / or make random play it will be quite some system.

So the stream was throttled through the software and not the hardware. That is good news also. Wonder if that could even be tweaked up more if the network would handle it.

Sorry for this dumb question, but what kind of format is the vob file? Is there potential that this player could stream this in the future if it does not now?

Thanks again

wkozun

11-19-2003, 04:47 PM

A VOB file is (I believe) just an MPEG-2 file that is in a slightly different wrapper and differenet extension(.vob) but someone like jdiner knows a lot more about this.

You may even be able to just change the name of the file from .vob to .mpg but I haven't tried this.

It would be possible to rip a DVD to your hard drive and convert the VOB to MPEG and you should be able to play it with this player. You may have to re-encode at a slightly lower bitrate so that you are below 5Mbps.

I haven't tried this yet but I will.

Therefore you could store all of your DVDs to your hard drive and have them instantly accessible through a player like a Gateway - the same for your music.

Another option is to convert a vob to a Divx file - this would use up less disk space.

scottf

11-19-2003, 04:52 PM

Gateway connected will not play vob's, at least I couldn't find a way. The file format that I've had the best luck with is mpeg2. I even play home movies now exporting from final cut and keeping the bitrate at 5 or less and it works like a champ.

I've not burned a dvd since getting this player, the quality of the dowloaded ty's is amazing!

wkozun

11-21-2003, 03:10 PM

I have set up a group to discuss this at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mediaclients/

cullen_simpson

12-15-2003, 08:08 PM

I just bought one of these (the wired version) and it works great.
The only difference between the wired and wireless versions is which LinkSys PCMCIA card they supply.

I chose the wired since TiVo has a wire already and I just put a small hub in my rack. I also wanted to have higher throughput.

As far as playing the mpg files from tytool, I did have to edit the filters.cfg file and set the filter for wired access to > 15Mbit since most of my tytool mpgs are at that rate.

Once I did that, it worked like a champ.
The only drawback is running the media server software. I had hoped it would look for samba shares and just use those, but the media server seems OK.

I has also played every DVD that I have thrown at it so far including ones from tytool, DVDLab and DVD X-Copy.

I used DVD+R and +RW to test and it handles them with ease.
I do not have any -R media to try, but I will get some.

The X-Box idea is pretty good as well, but I have so many projects that I just wanted something to work out of the box.
It does.

Also, fit and finsh is very nice, but the remote is sort of pathetic looking. I will be programming it into the pronto anyway.

tards

12-28-2003, 08:48 AM

This is interesting. How does the player handle the tivo MGPs as far as navigation? Fan you FF, RW, skip, jump, pause, etc. smoothly? Is there a status dislplay or "time" bar like Tivo?

I have been looking for a quality, reliable remote media client to play MPGs. Yes, I have been using XBMP/XBMC for a while, but it is very far from perfect. It uses mplayer which is not great, and depending on the version you may get FF/RW/SKIP/STATUS but it is not "good" playback navigation IMO. Also, XBMC will not stream files over 5GB or so.

The other client that looks interesting is the linux-based Hauppauge MediaMVP ($99), but it also has issues with playback control (limited playback navigation).

Thanks for pointing this player out!

cullen_simpson

12-28-2003, 11:18 AM

This is interesting. How does the player handle the tivo MGPs as far as navigation? Fan you FF, RW, skip, jump, pause, etc. smoothly? Is there a status dislplay or "time" bar like Tivo?

The navigation is not as good as TiVo and not even as good as the DVD playback on the same player.
With DVD playback you have several levels of FF up to 60x (if I remember correctly).

When streaming from the PC, it seems that every time you hit FF, it jumps 10 or so seconds. It does display the time and you can watch it jump, but to get from 0 to 1:30:00 seems would take quite a few clicks.

This is understandable given that it is streaming and to do a real FF like TiVo, it would have to double the rate of the data coming in or the player would have to communicate with the software on the PC to have it drop x out of y frames or something like that.

I am not home now, so I can not test it, but if I remember correctly then the pause worked fine. I think the picture quality is great and I have a 65" Mitsubishi TV that really shows flaws compared to a 13" set.

Try checking out the yahoo group mentioned earlier in this thread. Some of the guys there may have more useful info on the FF/RW.

wkozun

12-28-2003, 12:17 PM

This is interesting. How does the player handle the tivo MGPs as far as navigation? Fan you FF, RW, skip, jump, pause, etc. smoothly? Is there a status dislplay or "time" bar like Tivo?

I agree with what Cullen said - it only seems to skip about 10 seconds or so with each press of FF, but you can hold down the FF key and it runs through pretty quickly. There is no 15 minute skip like the TiVo has.

Unfortunately there is no "time" bar like the TiVo. In terms of playback I would say that the TiVo is much better.

But it is fine for watching things that you will watch in a more linear fashion, such as movies, not so good at watching stuff where skip a lot, like sports. I have gotten used to watching hockey or basketball games on my TiVo in 1-1.5 hours.

I have nopw archived about 10 movies from my TiVo to my PCs that I watch with my Gateway client.

Another option, albeit more involved and expensive, is to use a full-fledged HTPC.

tards

12-28-2003, 06:27 PM

Thanks. I've tinkered around with an HTPC a little, using myHTPC frontend. It is still alot of work and there are so many variables. I haven't really been happy with myHTPC or XBMP/C.

I think I will give this Gateway player a try. Thanks.

wkozun

12-28-2003, 06:58 PM

The advantage of an HTPC is that you can get rid of your DVD player, PVR and all of your content (i.e. CDs and DVDs) from your TV/ Home Theater room. All you need is a TV, A/V Receiver, Cable/Satellite box and HTPC.

And maybe someday you will also be able to get rid of the cable/satellite box as that could be integrated into an HTPC.

You can also use an HTPC to play HD quality DVD-ROMs such as Terminator-2 or other stuff that use WMV-9.

tards

12-29-2003, 10:24 AM

Are there any problems streaming LARGE files to this gateway player? What's the largest file you've tried?

Thanks

cullen_simpson

12-29-2003, 10:37 AM

Are there any problems streaming LARGE files to this gateway player? What's the largest file you've tried?

Thanks

I have streamed movies from Tivo that were about 2GB.
I do not know if I have gone over that mark.
My videos are all 15Mbit, so you have to edit the filters.cfg file as described earlier to even see them on the player.

I have the wired version (only diff is the supplied PCMCIA card). I have heard people with the wireless card complaining of comm problems with high bitrates.
Since I had ethernet in the rack for TiVo anyway, I added a cheap (100Mbit) hub/switch to provide a port for this
player without having to run a whole new line.

I did not want to have to lower the bitrate of the videos to watch them on the player.

wkozun

12-29-2003, 11:34 AM

Are there any problems streaming LARGE files to this gateway player? What's the largest file you've tried?

I would think the only size problem you would have is if your drives were not NTFS then you would be limited to 4Gig.

tards

12-29-2003, 02:24 PM

cullen_simpson

12-29-2003, 03:57 PM

One last question...I promise;-)

I've been contemplating the Happauge MediaMVP unit, but the biggest gripe on it is it only does 2x FF for streamed videos (plus won't do avi format). At 2X, it takes 1 hour to FF through a a 2 hour movie.

Does the gateway allow faster "skipping" than this through video media?

Each press of the FF button is a 10 sec skip.
6 presses per minute, 360 presses an hour.
Not great, but it can certainly be done in less time than
waiting for 2x.

wkozun

12-29-2003, 04:10 PM

I am pretty sure that the Media MVP only has analog audio out. The grand-daddy of all of these players (at least for music) is the Turtle Beach Audiotron and it did not have good playback of music from the analog, but it did have digital out. Apparently that was also true of some of the other players that are competitors of the Gateway Connected DVD.

The Gateway has both coax and optical digital out.

On the upside with the Gateway (or Go) you also get a pretty good DVD player.

tards

12-29-2003, 10:07 PM

OK, I picked up a mediaMVP at Circuit City today to play with. My local Gateway store did not have the DVD player in stock, so I'll have to order it online.

The MediaMVP is pretty cool. Plugged it into my router and it started working immediately. I have a 7GB football game which I converted to MPG usint tytool and it plays BEAUTIFULLY on the mediaMVP! It looks as good as it did on the DTivo and much better than on XBMP/C mplayer. This 7GB file will not stream to XBMP/C (not sure what the limit is with SMB/Relax on NTFS...).

Very nice device that almost hits the mark. But I am taking it back because...

1. The FF @ 2X is not acceptable.
2. It will not play AC3 audio, so my ripped DVD samples with AC3 have no sound. This would require alot of work to make DVD rips useable.
3. No optical output
4. No avi/DIVX playback.

Off to order the Gateway.... Does the Gateway do AC3 audio from a DVD rip?

keith721

12-30-2003, 10:33 AM

Thanks for the review. I haven't seen a lot of user opinions on this device, and really liked it based on the size, advertising, Linux use, etc. I guess the Gateway/Go networked DVD is the better choice. ;)

OK, I picked up a mediaMVP at Circuit City today to play with.
<snip> Very nice device that almost hits the mark. But I am taking it back because...

1. The FF @ 2X is not acceptable.
2. It will not play AC3 audio, so my ripped DVD samples with AC3 have no sound. This would require alot of work to make DVD rips useable.
3. No optical output
4. No avi/DIVX playback.

cullen_simpson

01-01-2004, 12:57 PM

FYI, I tried streaming some stuff I converted from a tytool mpeg to a DIVX avi with Dr. Divx last night.

The player played them A-OK.
The video sucked eggs, but it sucked on the computer as well. I kept hearing great things about Divx, but I have yet to create a useable stream. Yes, it turned a 300MB file into a 45MB file, but it was unwatchable.

Perhaps, it really was watchable, that is, the video would have looked OK if the screen was the size of a watch.

I tried 4 different scenarios and all had VERY blocky video and too a VERY long time to process.

Perhaps mpegs from tivo are not the optimum source material for the transfer.

I will stick with my larger mpeg files for now.

But, anyway, the Gateway player will play the Divx files.

wkozun

01-01-2004, 01:23 PM

Cullen, what version of divx were you using 4.something? I have been playing around with Snapstream-BeyondTV which is a PC-based PVR. It records shows in MPG and then will convert them to divx or wmv as those files are much smaller.

I am unable to play the divx files it creates on my Gateway. I believe BTV uses divx 5 and the Gateway can only read up to divx 4, but I can't confirm all of this.

I haven't had too much success with divx, but I am playing around with it.

cullen_simpson

01-01-2004, 02:25 PM

I used whatever the latest stuff in the Dr. Divx package as of 10 days ago was. Not sure of the version.

tards

01-01-2004, 09:29 PM

I picked up one of these PINNACLE SHOWCENTER players this weekend.

REVIEW (http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20031205/)

It is a very cool device and plays my Tivo MPGs fine. All kinds of connections. It has a lot of potential. But $299 is too steep. I took it back to the store.

mtntrx

01-03-2004, 11:56 PM

Each press of the FF button is a 10 sec skip.
6 presses per minute, 360 presses an hour.
Not great, but it can certainly be done in less time than
waiting for 2x.

I just picked up the wired verison of the Gateway Connected DVD Player, and I am having some trouble.

I can't FF past 10:30 on multiple mpgs. A press of the FF button gets me 10 seconds too. Holding it down runs it pretty fast. All good. BUT, once I hit 10:11, it won't go any further. Anyone else seeing this?

How I made the mpgs (i tried 3 diff .ty streams total):
tytool8r3 -> make-key-file -> edit-key-file -> multiplex
I edited the Filter.cfg and removed the bitrate entry under [MPEG]

This limitation makes it less than fun to use, since once you get past 10:11, on press of the FF button takes it back to 10:11.

Anyone else seeing the same thing????

cullen_simpson

01-04-2004, 01:36 AM

I can't FF past 10:30 on multiple mpgs. A press of the FF button gets me 10 seconds too. Holding it down runs it pretty fast. All good. BUT, once I hit 10:11, it won't go any further. Anyone else seeing this?

I just tried this on mine and found similare results.
On Star Trek First Contact I could get to 20:20, but no further. On a few other shows I got to 0:18, 4:38, etc...

In all cases, it playes fine after that point, but the FF will not go any further.

In all of my tests, the shows had been edited for commercials, I will try later with an mpeg that has not been cut to see if that is the culprit.

If I cut the commercials, I rarely FF anyway unless I was in the middle of a show. It would be great if this device would "bookmark" the way the TiVo does.

Few things are as well thought out as the TiVo though.
I was at Circuit City this weekend and watched a guy looking at the $99 deal for the DTiVo. He considered it a bit and then went over and selected a $67 stand alone DirecTV receiver. I just hung my head in disgust.

mtntrx

01-04-2004, 01:42 AM

I tried both cut and uncut mpgs (from dtivo). Same results in each case.
I tried mpgs from elsewhere, they work fine.

I know so little about all this, but my guess is that the stream server thinks the stream is only 10:30 long and therefore won't FF beyond that.

Is there some header info missing from the .ty->mpg stream that defines
the real-time length of the mpg?

cullen_simpson

01-04-2004, 01:48 AM

Is there some header info missing from the .ty->mpg stream that defines
the real-time length of the mpg?

Have you tried running the mpegs through TMPGENC or something like that? Maybe the timecode needs to be rewritten, I thought that was only a problem with VOBs from tytool not mpegs though.

You could ask your question to jdiner, but be careful not to set off a war in that extraction thread.

I have not ever tried tystudio, I wonder if it has the same issues. I will ask a friend who runs it to send me a sample file.

mtntrx

01-04-2004, 02:18 AM

Have you tried running the mpegs through TMPGENC or something like that? Maybe the timecode needs to be rewritten, I thought that was only a problem with VOBs from tytool not mpegs though.

You could ask your question to jdiner, but be careful not to set off a war in that extraction thread.

I have not ever tried tystudio, I wonder if it has the same issues. I will ask a friend who runs it to send me a sample file.

No attempts yet to recode. That'll take me a while. Never done it...

Anyway, here is some addl info. The time it gets stuck at seems to be
proportional to the overall length of the mpg. After three more experiments,
FF seems to always get stuck at 20-25% of the actual length. Hmmmm...

cullen_simpson

01-04-2004, 12:15 PM

FF seems to always get stuck at 20-25% of the actual length. Hmmmm...

That is consistent with what I saw.
The time I got it to 20:20 it was a 2 hour +/- movie.

It would stop around 4:30 on 30 minute shows.

Very odd indeed. I thought it may have something to do with commercial cuts, but come to think of it, the movie had only cuts at the start and end.

wkozun

01-04-2004, 12:27 PM

Anyway, here is some addl info. The time it gets stuck at seems to be proportional to the overall length of the mpg. After three more experiments, FF seems to always get stuck at 20-25% of the actual length. Hmmmm...

I just tried this on two movies that I recently converted to MPEG with TyTools. I had no problems FFing right to the end of the movies - 2 hours or more. Neither of these movies had any cuts, I wonder if that could be an issue?

cullen_simpson

01-04-2004, 02:56 PM

I just took the movie that FF stops at 20:20 and ran it through TMPGenc.

I used the mpeg tools to "simple de-multiplex" and then "simple multiplex"

The FF worked A-OK on this one.
So, there is something in the file that is goofy, but I don't know anything about the file format.

Perhaps one of the MPEG experts in the tytool thread would have an idea.

Hi8

01-13-2004, 08:49 AM

I also took the dip ... bought a gateway DVD (wired) It seems quite nice; I also have a prismiq which I hated the ff/rw functionallity - but the player has promise - when the newer software comes out.

I had issues with the FF/RW on the gateway too, I upgraded to the latest media-server last night, and it had a definite effect on the FF/RW.

Not sure if it works perfectly yet, as one show I recorded - as soon as it started, the timecode refelcted 30mins had passed! I'm assuming that there is a problem reading the timecode within the file?

Overall the quality of the image is perfect. I can NOT tell the difference between the gateway and my dtvio playing on the same TV.

You need to still edit the filters.cfg to allow tivo created mpgs to play

cullen_simpson

01-13-2004, 10:54 AM

I upgraded to the latest media-server last night, and it had a definite effect on the FF/RW.

A definate effect in a good way or a bad way?

What version of the software are you using?

Also, does anyone know how to get the thing to stop after watching the selected movie. Mine just goes ahead and plays the next movie just like it was another picture or mp3 in a directory.
I do not like this behavior. Sometimes the next movie in the list should not be viewed by the person watching the current one.

wkozun

01-13-2004, 11:02 AM

A definate effect in a good way or a bad way?

What version of the software are you using?

Also, does anyone know how to get the thing to stop after watching the selected movie. Mine just goes ahead and plays the next movie just like it was another picture or mp3 in a directory.
I do not like this behavior. Sometimes the next movie in the list should not be viewed by the person watching the current one.

The safest thing to do would be to put these movies in different folders, but I believe if you press enter when you have selected a movie (or song) then it just plays that movie (or song) pressing play goes through all in the folder.

wkozun

01-13-2004, 11:04 AM

Hi8

01-13-2004, 12:04 PM

wkozun

01-13-2004, 12:52 PM

not sure of the date...

I'll have to check when I get home, but it's what is available for download NOW... ver 2.1 I believe.

when I say it effected the FF/RW that's what it did. It is now different. Better/Worse ?? humm.. if it's not working correctly I can't say. I can say it's different!

I will say that the rest of the changes are MUCH better. You can now define more clearly what is scanned. and You have much better control of the media content.

Have you noticed that the capitalization is now changed. For example:

Pink Floyd- Dark Side of the Moon

is now:

Pink floyd - Dark side of the moon

In each field only the first letter is ever capitalized.

Too bad this player doesn't play wmv files, but maybe that is coming soon.

RxMan

01-13-2004, 04:32 PM

I think I may give one of these players a shot as well. I need a new DVD player for the living room now (have a ps2..ugh) and this looks like it can do all that I need it to. I have a few questions though. If I decide to put most of my mpeg2s on my primary computer could a person theoretically stream to the dvd player while someone uses the same computer to surf the net or whatever? Does the server software run in the background?

I have been thinking about setting up a HTPC for some time now...then, I see these little toys that look like they could do just what I need. What are the advantages of a full-blown HTPC over having units like these or an xbox at each area of viewing?

I am the one that posted about the xbox streaming. After seeing this, I am considering just extracting and converting to mpeg and storing. Then I could access those files from either the xbox or the gateway player? This would basically give me what I need at this time.

I would also need a way to convert VHS tapes for storage on the hard drive. Having all of these coverted and in the same folder would be great.

Am I missing something here?
Why would I go with a HTPC?

RxMan

01-13-2004, 04:38 PM

BTW, I noticed when reading the online manual...if you select a movie and hit ENTER it will only play that movie...if you select a movie and hit PLAY it will play all of the movies in that folder.

wkozun

01-13-2004, 05:03 PM

Am I missing something here?
Why would I go with a HTPC?

Advantages of HTPC:
Can support all audio, video, picture types - you won't find one of these players that can play everything but with an HTPC you can play wmv, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DIVX, Xvid, Quicktime, MP3, MP3Pro, Ogg Vorbis, AAC, WMA and everything else.
Can browse the web.
If you don't like the UI you can choose a different program - don't like MusicMatch for music use iTunes or WinAmp or WMP or whatever.
You can use it as a PVR - why do you need a TiVo?
Can play HiDef WMV files such as T2, Coral Reef - may be useful if you have an HDTV.
High geek approval factor! :p

Disadvantages
Complexity - it may crash occasionally and it can be tricky to set up the video on your TV correctly.
Cost - you will likely pay > $1000 for everything you want. (High end video card, Hauppauge PVR 250 capture card, etc., quiet fans and PS, heat sinks, custom case, wireless keyboard and mouse, LCD as 2nd monitor)
WAF - it may not look good and be noisy.
Can be tricky to interface with satellite or dig cable STB.
Unable to use as HD-PVR except for OTA signals.

The Gateway can work pretty well for most things and it will look nice with your other A/V components. It costs less than $200 and is a decent DVD player. I have had one for several months but I am still considering getting an HTPC. I have HD digital cable so that is a potential issue - there is no way to get the signal from my HD cable box to the PC unless the next gen of cable boxes has firewire out.

RxMan

01-13-2004, 05:42 PM

wkozun

01-13-2004, 05:50 PM

Yeah. If I did the HTPC route I would put all of my componets in a separate closet in the laundry room then route everything over to various TVs. I am considering upgrading my main TV as well. My only way to get HD right now would be to get a DTV HD receiver. Basically, cost is the primary factor. Plus, I read these horror stories of wives/kids not being able to run the damn TV!!

I make take the plunge and get one of these. I will be able to store stuff in separate folders right?

Yes it gives you a number of options on playback including what it calls "Albums" which is really folder. So you could set up one called "Sopranos" and have all of this shows, etc.

To answer an earlier question you had, you can stream from your PC and do other stuff on that PC. I haven't noticed it putting a huge load on my PC, but, then again, I am normally watching the TV at the time. The server software runs in the background - you only know it's running by the icon by the clock in the system tray. It will also scan your drives on a schedule (if you want) or manually whenever you want it to.

The one thing that doesn't work properly for me is Genres for Music. It only sporadically shows music by genres even though it is classified in the database - I can verify this from the server software.

Browsing photos works very well - it is probably the feature that my wife likes best.

BY the way, all of the file info is kept in an unlocked MS Access database. You can browse through it at your will,

RxMan

01-13-2004, 06:49 PM

OK. I ordered one.

I guess I'll start extracting and organizing some shows. :)

Hi8

01-14-2004, 12:39 PM

not sure of the date...

I'll have to check when I get home, but it's what is available for download NOW... ver 2.1 I believe.

when I say it effected the FF/RW that's what it did. It is now different. Better/Worse ?? humm.. if it's not working correctly I can't say. I can say it's different!

I will say that the rest of the changes are MUCH better. You can now define more clearly what is scanned. and You have much better control of the media content.

an observation , I didn't get a chance to check dates, but did some more testing with FF/RW.

I watched two shows (w/commericals) and the FF/RW worked perfectly! Never got stuck, very smooth. The unknown at this point is, I don't know if it will be the same with dTiVo extracted files. The files I tested it with were captured using my SageTV/VideOH! combination. I believe they create a MUCH more standard mpeg. When I have more time, I will get more stats on this, combaring bitrate, resolution, and source of capture.

Hi8

01-15-2004, 08:58 AM

an observation , I didn't get a chance to check dates, but did some more testing with FF/RW.

I watched two shows (w/commericals) and the FF/RW worked perfectly! Never got stuck, very smooth. The unknown at this point is, I don't know if it will be the same with dTiVo extracted files. The files I tested it with were captured using my SageTV/VideOH! combination. I believe they create a MUCH more standard mpeg. When I have more time, I will get more stats on this, combaring bitrate, resolution, and source of capture.

OK .... good and bad news ... It does in fact work flawlessly on the files I tested with extracted/captured from my VideOH! / SageTV setup. The bad news is that it chokes on mpegs created/extracted with TyTool. Same thing as before... A few minutes in the FF no longer has an effect after a certain point. It's NOT the same from file to file, one file it was 14:30 the next 16:10 and another was something else. Not sure what I can try next, perhaps I can extract with TyTool to elemenatry streams, then MUX with MPEG2VCR or somesuch tool. I still have a gut feeling it's in the timecode.

I suppose the good news is, I can at least extract my commercial free stuff and watch that with my new Gateway; keeping my TiVo for the 30secskipping. I must admit it's going to take allot to beat that interface for skipping commericals! Even if the Gateway FF/RW perfectly, you have to do it blind for the most part, looking at the time location and just guess where to stop.

lsigmon

01-16-2004, 08:39 AM

I have the wireless version but I want to connect it wired. I bought a DLink NIC card an it does not recognize it. On the website support it says the only supported wired NIC card is the Linksys PCM100.

Has any successfully gotten another wired NIC card to work?

(I got a deal on the wireless but I want wired so I won't have any bandwidth problems)

Thanks.

Hi8

01-17-2004, 11:41 PM

All the files I tried today FF/RW prefectly -- the only difference in my extraction method is that I patched audio holes during extraction to mpeg - using tytool.

(These are from my S1 SAT T60.

RxMan

02-08-2004, 03:43 PM

I just now had to time to get my Gateway DVD player hooked up. It plays .ty files that have been converted to mpge just fine and also some home movie type stuff.

Want I want to do next is rip a DVD to my hard drive and play it on the DVD player. I have increased the max bit rate, but, the player cannot keep up. I get lots of pixelation, etc. Would the only way to accomplish what I want be to transcode the video to a lower bitrate? This would be a major pain. My connected Xbox can play the DVD rips just fine.

bdonalds

02-24-2004, 03:10 PM

All the files I tried today FF/RW prefectly -- the only difference in my extraction method is that I patched audio holes during extraction to mpeg - using tytool.

(These are from my S1 SAT T60.

Cound you give me a very quick overview of your process? I still have the ff/rw problem. I can fix it by going through TGMPEnc, but that's a step I would like to avoid.

Also, it seems when perform the "fix" with TGMPEnc, I get more pixelization and drop outs.

Here's my process, for the record:

HDVR2 w Sleeper ISO 1.02
Extract with TyTools 9r5 (TyStream Mode)
Make Key, Edit Key
Mux--with Patch audio holes selected, audio at 224Kbps (I think....the highest 'non-Dolby'...or Dubly)

I have the same problem as everyone else...only 6-20 minutes on the timebar, and if I ff through the boundary, it goes to the next file.

jdiner has mentioned in the TyTools thread that this is because the TyTool muxed mpeg isn't standard, since the source isn't standard. I have got to believe that there is a solution....

By the way, if you haven't followed the TyTool development, the new version has frame accurate editing. Very Cool.

Bryan

cullen_simpson

03-01-2004, 10:14 PM

As of TyTool 9r6 I am still having the FF problem as well.
I tried "Patch audio holes" - nogo.
I tried mux to VOB and then rename to mpg, that was not good at all.

I have tried tmpgenc, but I get real sync issues there.

I will try tytool 9r8, but I do not expect any changes for this.

bdonalds

03-02-2004, 11:46 AM

Okay. I'll keep playing around as well. If I find a solution, I'll post it in this thread. Hopefully you will do the same :) !!

Also- WinDVD 4 handles the mpegs perfectly, but WMP has the same problems as the Gateway as far as handling the screwy time codes....

thanks!

Bryan

cullen_simpson

03-07-2004, 08:45 PM

Okay. I'll keep playing around as well. If I find a solution, I'll post it in this thread. Hopefully you will do the same :) !!

I found a solution for the Gateway FF problem although it is a pain:

1) download in ty format
2) make keyfile and perform cuts
3) use tytool to make mpg (patch audio holes)
4) split the files to elemental streams (however you want)
5) use restream to fix the GOP timecode
6) use TMPGenc to combine the streams back into mpg.

Works, but it is alot of extra steps.

stryugy

03-15-2004, 06:32 PM

Hey Everyone..

There's a few things you guys should know about the gateway connected DVD.

The cfg file that everyone is talking about editing to allow more bandwidth to the DVD player. That's not at ALL what that file does. That file merely allows the software to index files that are that bitrate or lower.

You see when you select a file for the D5 server to index it quickly scans the file and decides many things.

1) Within the first 30 seconds of the file it decides what bitrate the video is. So if your mpeg is variable bit rate it may believe that it's a much higher Bitrate video than it averages out to be.

2) It decides on the length of the video and any chunking or any flaw in the video will be considered it's stop point.

3) It tosses the video name in the Access database in Program Files/software

------------------

Now if you suffer the FF problem all you need to do is open that Access Database and change how long the system believes the video is. Say I record the wiggles for my kid and I know the video is 30 minutes from my Ty extraction. It almost always thinks it about 20 seconds long. Just go in and make the change to 30 minutes and you're good with FF. So don't bother re-encoding it and all that crap. Just edit the database by hand.

You'll sometimes index a mpeg and it won't show up in your list of playable videos.. In the database this can be changed as well. Just find the video and you'll see it has a valid value of 1. Change that to 0 and it will appear playable even if it isn't. This is important for several reasons. You can download any codec onto your system and the D5 software will stream it to your Gateway player. The problem is the D5 software is too stupid to know that.

When is this important? Divx 3 .

No not Divx 5. Divx 5 apparently doesn't work very well on the Gateway. I can take a DVD and turn it into Divx 5 at a very low bitrate and my 1.9ghz P4 won't be able to decode and stream it fast enough thus I'll get blockiness, etc. But encode it to Divx 3 and you have a masterpiece.

So download that episode of the Wiggles and encode it to a 90meg Divx 3 file that looks almost as good as the original Mpeg. Whalla, now that's a video server.

----------------------------------------------------

wkozun

03-15-2004, 07:49 PM

You'll sometimes index a mpeg and it won't show up in your list of playable videos.. In the database this can be changed as well. Just find the video and you'll see it has a valid value of 1. Change that to 0 and it will appear playable even if it isn't. This is important for several reasons. You can download any codec onto your system and the D5 software will stream it to your Gateway player. The problem is the D5 software is too stupid to know that.

Will this allow you to play ty files on the Gateway if you have TyShow installed? (Background info - tyshow is a set of filters/codecs that allow ty files to be played by Windows Media Player and other similar players. With this software installed there is not need to convert to mpg if you just want to play the ty files on your PC)

I will give this a try when I get a chance. If it works then this would be awesome!

On the FF/REW problem. Others talk about a bar that shows how long the program is. I don't have this on my Gateway - when I am FFing I only see the current time stamp that I am at. There is no way of seeing how long the show is while you are playing it Is there a later firmware that some people have?

bdonalds

03-15-2004, 09:00 PM

Doh! I can't believe I didn't think of trying that! I have hacked around that database, but I never even thought about manually fixing that crap up!

Thanks!!!

stryugy

03-16-2004, 01:21 AM

Will this allow you to play ty files on the Gateway if you have TyShow installed? (Background info - tyshow is a set of filters/codecs that allow ty files to be played by Windows Media Player and other similar players. With this software installed there is not need to convert to mpg if you just want to play the ty files on your PC)

I'm somewhat new to the world of Tivo video extraction and didn't even know Tyshow existed. I believe it will work though if it's supported in Windows Media Player. From my experience anything that can be played in WM player can be transcoded. I've encoded videos using XviD and other unsupported codecs.. The only challenge is getting the video into the database.

I find the best way to do this is to rename the file .mpg
Force an indexing and have the D5 software reject it
Rename it back to whatever extension you need
Manually edit the database for that file

wkozun

03-16-2004, 02:59 PM

I'm somewhat new to the world of Tivo video extraction and didn't even know Tyshow existed. I believe it will work though if it's supported in Windows Media Player. From my experience anything that can be played in WM player can be transcoded. I've encoded videos using XviD and other unsupported codecs.. The only challenge is getting the video into the database.

Actually I don't know the XviD is unsupported - I believe the documentation says that it supports avi files - it doesn't specify what type of avi files (DivX, XviD, others)

I find the best way to do this is to rename the file .mpg
Force an indexing and have the D5 software reject it
Rename it back to whatever extension you need
Manually edit the database for that file

I will try this out as soon as I get a chance to see if it works. This would be very nice. The only other thing that would be great to have is if you could stream from a TiVo to this device.

wkozun

03-16-2004, 09:59 PM

You'll sometimes index a mpeg and it won't show up in your list of playable videos.. In the database this can be changed as well. Just find the video and you'll see it has a valid value of 1. Change that to 0 and it will appear playable even if it isn't. This is important for several reasons. You can download any codec onto your system and the D5 software will stream it to your Gateway player. The problem is the D5 software is too stupid to know that.

I presume the table that you should edit is the Media table in the database C:\Program Files\Digital 5 Streaming Media\D5StreamingServerDB.mdb (or a similar folder)

Entries that scanned OK have a valid field of -1 and invalid entries are 0. However the only invalid files that seem to appear are MPEG files that have too high a bitrate. This may also occur to MP3 or WMA files with too low a bitrate but I don't have any of those. (Note that for me this table has over 10,000 entries as each MP3 song and jpeg file shows up as a separate record in the table.)

Files rejected for other reasons do not show up here.

Progress report on trying to scan in .ty files
First I tried changing the extension to .mpg. The file failed to scan giving "Parse Error". I thought I would then try changing it to an AVI but this time I got "File is truncated (incomplete download). Index chunk specified but missing."

Anyone have any other ideas? It's not the end of the world if I have to convert files to mpg before scanning but it would have been nice to play ty files directly.

bdonalds

03-25-2004, 04:30 PM

I haven't tried anything with .ty files...tytool is so fast as far as editing out commercials and muxing, that I never really consider watching a raw ty.

Back to the database deal, I edited the DB to reflect the actual length of the recording. Sweeeet. FF and RW work fine now.

I am still getting some pixelization/macroblocking from time to time. I have switched to wired 100Mbps, and am watching a DirecTivo ty, GOPed and muxed with tytool9r8. Every 5-10 minutes, it drops out really bad. At first I thought it coincided with a lot of action in the scene, but I don't think so.

When it happened, the yellow lightning bolt appeared on the progress bar, and the movie paused. After a second, I was able to hit "Play" to resume. The first few seconds afer resuming were crappy-pixel-dropout, but then was fine until the next incident.

I need to check a few things...this could be something happening on the server side. I did notice CPU spikes during the dropouts, but I was unable to determine if D5 was spiking, of if some other process was spiking, stealing precious cycles from the D5 service.

I will not that D5 doesn't seem to use much CPU/Memory while streaming. I just can't figure out why my Gateway player is losing connection from time to time.

I'll check the server, and maybe I'll have to put a sniffer on the link...

Bryan

wkozun

03-25-2004, 04:36 PM

When it happened, the yellow lightning bolt appeared on the progress bar, and the movie paused. After a second, I was able to hit "Play" to resume. The first few seconds afer resuming were crappy-pixel-dropout, but then was fine until the next incident.

I would think that these types of problems would be more prevalent with Divx files then with MPEG files. The MPEG files are decoded by the player rather than the PC aren't they? After all the player has to have an MPEG-2 decoder built in to play DVDs which are MPEG-2 files. Maybe the PC was too busy with other things and couldn't send the bitstream, but it shouldn't be too hard for the PC to stream a file from its hard drive to the LAN at < 10Mbps. When you do PC to PC file transfers you can sustain a lot more than that.

With Divx files the decoding is done by the PC so it puts more of a strain on CPU resources. I was trying to watch a Divx movie last week while my PC was encoding a file from MPEG to WMV. I had to stop the encoder as the movie kept pixelaing.