[Norm In Norman]

ahhhhh - thanks. i guess i'll try to hex edit the ms dash to enable 480p and see how that looks, hopefully it looks good enough to get me by until xbmc supports dvd a little better.

although my dvd player isn't too high end, it was pretty good for back in the day. i can definitely see a huge difference when i switch between 480p and 480i on it.

i would think that in theory the xbox could look better than a high end dvd player, if there is enough processing power of course. a dvd player is probably stuck with the decoder chip that is in it while someone could develop a decoder for the xbox that is better since it is all done in software. i hear dscaler can produce an awesome picture. could it be ported to xbox? just a thought.

[stim]

@youbecha: i've just put the vantec stealth mod in and albeit a bit noisier than before, the temp is now 59 degrees. much better than before! i'll just have to put up with it i guess. the main prob was that beforehad there was only the dvd and mvp box which basically made no noise at all. now i've got this thing with a fan in it so it's a big difference!

@stim: i play allsorts of 'premade' xvid files and they're all fine. no probs at all really, occasional *slight* stutter but not much. what are you using to encode them with? autogk?

i updated to the latest xbmc build, and the problem is solved... i do encode w/ autogk.

[Norm In Norman]

ok, i edited the original dashboard to support 480p as suggested in the above link and tried it out. it looks quite better than i thought it would. probably as good as my old panasonic progressive scan. the only problem is i can't press any buttons on the remote besides play and the menu navigation buttons or it freaks out and reboots. i tried it with 4 different movies. maybe there is an updated msdash i should be using? the unedited original dash works perfectly, except that it is in 480i and doesn't look nearly as good.

so, is there an recommended alternate dvd player out there that supports the remote and 480p?

also, any time i insert a disc xbmc pauses for at least 30 seconds (maybe longer). it is quite annoying. i even tried putting a data disc in there with pics on it and it did the same thing. is this normal? also, i have tried several discs and xbmc won't play any of them. i know menus aren't supported, but i thought at least some dvds would play.

i think i downloaded the latest version. it was from a few weeks ago.

[sylfan]

try avalaunch. it has an integrated dvd player that supports resolutions up to 1080i.
i use it for watching dvds - instead of the original dash-board - and it works really nice.

[Norm In Norman]

thanks. i'll try that tonight.

[Norm In Norman]

well, avalaunch works fairly ok. i wish it would display the time and track. maybe there is some way of doing this that i don't know about. i might be imagining things, but i think the hacked ms dashboard looked a bit better when it was actually working.

i may make avalaunch my main dashboard since it's mega easy to launch xbmc with it. i imagine there will be more dvds played on that machine than other stuff, so it will be easier for my wife to deal with. hopefully the xbmc stuff will get fixed soon. i am really surprised that there aren't more dvd players out there. i would think that would be a popular feature.

[pike]

sadly, visualbasic.ai.developer.2005 doesn't seem to have support for creating dvdplayers

[pike]

anyone ever compared xbmc to a standalone divx / dvdplayer with divx functionality ?

i compared xbmc to a few pioneer's and lg dvdplayers (granted, i doubt any of these where divx certified) and i was surprised how bad they were in comparison to xbmc!

they had:

*) very weak calibration possibilities.
*) extremely limited subtitle support
*) not support for the latest "extensions" in mpeg4, which resulted in extremely poor xvid playback

i didn't really bother diving any further in the testing after these findings aint:

[Seb.26]

*) very weak calibration possibilities.
*) extremely limited subtitle support
*) not support for the latest "extensions" in mpeg4, which resulted in extremely poor xvid playback

exact, but they also have :
> perfect smooth playback
> hight bitrate support
> great design
> native lcd support
> play movies without any sound
> lower price

but xbox have :
> samba sharing
> a ton of supported codec
> a lot of games and emulators
> hdtv support
> internet streamed radio/tv

...

imo : xbox is the winner ...
( after personal test : philips 727 / yamada 6600 ... too bad ... )

[DDay]

i was actually thinking about comparing the philips dvp720sa with xbmc.

sacd/divx/mp3/jpeg/svcd/vcd/
cd/cd-r/cd-rw/dvd+r/+rw/dvd-video, 8x video oversampling (108mhz/12bit) and 192khz/24bit audio oversampling. dolby prologic ii- dolby digital and dts-dekoder. 5 disc resume. component out with progressive scan (pal/ntsc), scart (rgb), s-video and composit out.

gonna test the jamo dvr 50 to as my brother have that rig setup next to his xbox.

will mainly test divx/xvid with srt and sub subtiles, but gonna try a svcd or two also i think

[sarnman]

i was reading this guide to lcd tv's over at tom's hardware, and they compare the visual quality of a pc dvd player to a regular stand alone dvd player. which is xbmc more like? how does xbmc handle interpolation?

[jmarshall]

pc. it interpolates in hardware (linear interpolation) and the upscaling will be better than most upscaling dvd players.

[moviebuff21]

i am planning to buy an xbox so that i can play my dvds,dvd-rips(mpeg4 format) on it .id like to know whats the video quality like on a xbox compared to standalone divx certified dvd players ? thx in advance

[tslayer]

better.

ts

[Caldor]

moviebuff running the hd cable pack for component the quality is just as good as any dvd player on the market.

if you can ripp down the dvds and stream them from a media storage area on your network or direct on your xbox, you get the benefit of gui resolution upsampling...so 1920x1080 ohh so lovely on hd displays and in progressive too!