DVDGuy’s Blog @ Digital Digest

Following on from my previous blog entry on Xbox 360 H.264 playback, I’ve finally had the chance to test it out when the Spring Update was released yesterday.

So far, it’s a mixed bag, mainly due to niggly issues related to MP4 media sharing (or the lack of) in Windows Media Player.

What I have found so far:

• Use the Zune software for media sharing, since it supports MP4
• Use Baseline or Main Profile, since Zune only seem to support these
• If you are using the Sharktooth’s x264 profile in MeGUI, you have to set the max bitrate to 10000 (from 25000), enable the Level restrictions to 4.1 (you will have to turn off “P4x4”)
• Use AAC LC encoding, not HC. I used the Nero Digital encoder, LC 96 Kbps profile
• When using the “AutoEncoder” function in MeGUI, try to make sure the “average bitrate” (even if you are using a set file size) doesn’t go too close to the 10 Mbps limit for the Xbox 360. From what I can understand, frames over 10 Mbps will still play, but artifacts and paused playback may result
• Edit (11th May, 2007): With 1080p clips, use Baseline only
• 720p, 1080p works well, as long as you stick to the restrictions above

No doubt I will know more tomorrow after more testing of 1080p, and I will have a guide written before the week’s end.

The playback quality is quite good, as expected with H.264, and I would really like to see some more TV episode downloads being released in this format ready, encoded to be compatible with the Xbox 360.

Edit (11th May, 2007): I have finished writing the Xbox 360 H.264 Conversion Guide.

And I’ve finally churned away from iiNet to Internode as my ADSL provider (reasons listed in this blog entry). I’m now downloading at more than 600 KB/s and uploading at around 40 KB/s, much better than my previous 155 KB/s and 26 KB/s. When I first connected, I was only doing 250 KB/s, until I used Unblocka to tweak my connection.

I’ve just finished writing a guide for DVD Flick. DVD Flick is a really easy to use tool, especially for making DVDs from your DivX/XviD files (TV episode downloads anyone?). Best of all, it’s free.

It won’t create DVDs with beautiful menus and other fancy features, but things like multiple audio tracks and subtitles are not too difficult to add in. The output quality is quite good as well, although this largely depends on the quality of the source file. Give it a try and I think you’ll be impressed.

The other guide I wrote is about AVI to WMV conversion, trying to make these files playable on the Xbox 360. I used the free Windows Media Encoder 9 software, which unlike DVD Flick, is not as straight forward or well designed. It will work well when the input file is “Microsoft approved” (ie. WMV files), but for anything else (like DivX/XviD), it can cause a lot of problems. The software itself is quite powerful, with support for a lot of different types of encodings, including streaming and VC-1, but you can just feel that it wasn’t really designed for use by your average/newbie user (which is no surprise then that the URL for the software on Microsoft’s website has changed to add “forpros” in the URL), unlike DVD Flick.

My DVD collection is currently about 400 DVDs strong (628 actual discs). The biggest problem, apart from choosing what to watch, is organising and storing these DVDs.

I like to organise them alphabetically, which means shuffling everything around whenever I buy some new DVDs. But the biggest problem is storage, or rather, finding places to store them.

As you can see from the picture above, I’ve had to maximize all the storage spaces, stacking the DVDs in different ways whenever possible. I can probably still store about 200 DVDs in this way, but after that, who knows what I’ll do.

This is the biggest problem with having a physical medium. If everything was digital, then it would take roughly 5024 GB (each disc being 8 GB, which is quite a high estimate), or ten 500 GB hard-drives (until 1 TB drives are more available). To be safe, I should have a RAID-5 setup to ensure I don’t lose data, so I would an extra disk. These hard-drives would still occupy less space than a stack of 20 DVDs, and assuming I’ve done the hard work to categorize and tag these digital entries, searching and playback become so much easier and quicker.

Maybe one day…

Unleashed (region 4) – Not for deaf people

English is not my first language, so while watching DVD movies, I prefer to have the English subtitles on. Obviously, subtitles are essential for people with hearing difficulties.

This week’s pet peeve is DVDs that don’t have subtitles. Back in the old days, when buying a DVD player would mean a week’s wage, many region 1 DVDs would not have subtitles, and only closed captioning support. CC support is completely useless to people outside of region 1, as we don’t have CC decoders in our TVs. But this is perhaps understandable, since these DVDs were never intended for sale outside of the US and Canada.

However, I’ve noticed that even today, several high profile releases do not have subtitles. The most recent one I’ve encountered is the region 4 copy of Unleashed (released by Universal Pictures in region 4). This DVD has a DTS track, extra features, but no subtitles. The region 2 version has English subtitles for the hearing impaired, while the region 1 version has at least closed captioning support. While I would be able to live with having no subtitles once in a while, but what about people with hearing impairment? Are they not entitled to watch this movie?

That’s right. My current ISP, iiNet, has just launched some new broadband plans (the “broadband1” plans). The new offerings now include a 8 Mbit/s plan, but strangely, only offers 3 GB of downloads during peak usage hours (12pm to 2am), with a further 3 GB during off-peak hours. The 8 Mbit/s is a theoretical maximum, so most likely I’ll get between 4 Mbit/s and 6 Mbit/s – even at 4 Mbit/s, this means that if I download at the maximum speed continously, I’ll use up the 3 GB limit in less than 2 hours! After the limit is reached, the speed is capped to 64 kbit/s, or a nice and speedy 8 KB/s. Not only that, this is actually the most expensive plan available for home users – there is no option to get more bandwidth! Even for a somewhat broadband-backwards country as Australia, these plans are ridiculous (the phased out set iiNet plans used to include a 30 GB plan, albeit at a higher cost).

iiNet’s ADSL2 (“broadband2”) plans are a little more generous, 10 GB peak/10 GB offpeak, but the problem is that ADSL2 is only available in very select areas (as determined by where iiNet install their own hardware DSLAMs), and certainly not available in my area. I know it is in iiNet’s interests to promote their ADSL2 plans, and if I had ADSL2 in my area, I would sign up immediately. But the case is that I’m stuck on “broadband1”, and I get punished by these crappy plans because iiNet haven’t bothered to install the proper hardware in my area.

There are business plans available which gives more bandwidth, but I would have to spend $20 more to get roughly the same plan I am on now (but with an upgrade to 8 Mbit/s), bringing my yearly ADSL bill to $AUD 1908 ($US 1575). I would have to bundle their VOIP service, which I don’t need, and pay extra (included in the $1908) for a static IP address, which I do need.

Of course, the situations is more complicated than it seems, with Telstra’s (our major telecommunication provider) wholesale ADSL policies being the source of the pricing problems. But the rival broadband provider, Internode, is able to provide the same 8 Mbit/s connection, with 40 GB of bandwidth that can be used anytime (no peak usage times), a faster 128 Kbit/s cap, and all of this at $20 $10 cheaper (edited 5/5/07: me bad at maths) than my current iiNet (phased out) plan (or a massive $40 per month savings on iiNet’s closest comparable plan) – so if your competitors can do it, why can’t you iiNet?

Churn baby, churn.