The HD News & Technology Thread!

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 13 Feb 2008, 03:52

It would've been broken already if the uptake was quicker than it has been. I am surprised more e-tailors don't reverse engineer the hardware so it support RA and RB, like that Scandinavian website I posted a few weeks back.

I guess they're waiting for an easier fix to come along, like a remote hack or single chip that can be soldered to the main board.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 13 Feb 2008, 04:01

bradavon wrote:I guess they're waiting for an easier fix to come along, like a remote hack or single chip that can be soldered to the main board.

Then your player gets bricked when you go to flash the latest firmware.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 13 Feb 2008, 04:23

Not for sure. Many DVD Players can be upgraded without losing MR.

A hardware hack would likely continue to work with new firmware anyway.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 13 Feb 2008, 05:00

bradavon wrote:Not for sure. Many DVD Players can be upgraded without losing MR.

Don't be so naive, they've learnt their lesson well since DVD - where region-encoding was a joke. Bluray firmware is very complex.

A hardware hack would likely continue to work with new firmware

Judging by the current generation console and handheld hardware, very unlikely.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 13 Feb 2008, 05:05

EvaUnit02 wrote:Bluray firmware is very complex.

I know. I wasn't saying it wasn't. I said DVD Players can be upgraded without losing MR, that's not the same as saying upgrading the firmware may brick it

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 13 Feb 2008, 05:10

Just because something is true of yesterday's hardware, don't expect that status quo to remain today. I'd have loved for the Xbox 360 to be homebrew that its predecessor was (Imagine the possibilities... XBMC + HD content = drool.), but the reality is rarely what you'd want it to be.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 13 Feb 2008, 05:56

I know, I know

Cannot you mod the 360 as much as you can the Classic?

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 13 Feb 2008, 06:01

No, far from it.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 13 Feb 2008, 18:18

Michael Bay on Blu-ray: "Told You So"

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/ ... ou_So/1460

saltysam · Post by **saltysam** » 13 Feb 2008, 19:31

Michael Bay-studio toad "i won't make Transformers 2" day later " i'm sorry i will" another blu-ray arsewipe who will pray at the altar of region coding :twisted:

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 13 Feb 2008, 22:40

Dick head. He's not even very talented anyway.

He's only capable of making Hollywood blockbuster bullshit.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 14 Feb 2008, 02:25

Agreed. It would've been really hard to cock up an adaptation of glorified ~22-minute 80's toy commercials, but he did just that.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 14 Feb 2008, 11:04

Got my X360 HD-DVD addon drive today. Seems to works fine with both XP and XP x64.

Nvidia Purevideo HD (GPU acceleration) in my current XP32 driver seems to be broken though (I get ~70-95% CPU utilisation). Appears to be fine under XP x64 (~35-50% CPU utilisation).

I don't even need AnyDVD HD, since I have fully HDCP compliant hardware.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 14 Feb 2008, 17:57

What's it like at playing HD-DVDs? Your monitor is FULL HD right?

That's a pity it's not working on XP 32. You use 64 most of the time though right? When you say it's 70-95% CPU usage, does it still work though?

If so it would just mean you cannot watch a movie while doing anything else, no?

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 15 Feb 2008, 02:48

bradavon wrote:What's it like at playing HD-DVDs?

Good, The Departed looks fantastic for example (as you would expect from such a recent film).

Your monitor is FULL HD right?

As it's max/native resolution is 1680*1050, no. But it does downscale beautifully.

You use 64 most of the time though right?

Yes. XP32 is just a back up OS that I use for compatibility.

When you say it's 70-95% CPU usage, does it still work though?

Yes.

If so it would just mean you cannot watch a movie while doing anything else, no?

I can, but there's some slight stuttering in the playback when I go from windowed to fullscreen, etc. Web browsing is fine, but would even dare trying something like running a virus/spyware scan or burning to optical media.

I asked about it in a techie forum and they suggested that I just try different driver versions, because it has been confirmed to work with my vid card (8800GT) and XP32.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 15 Feb 2008, 03:07

Wouldn't you play movies back full-screen and nothing intensive running in the background anyway? Presuming the stuttering fixes itself.

1680x1050 isn't too far off 1080p so yep I'd use that too.

EvaUnit02 · Post by **EvaUnit02** » 15 Feb 2008, 03:43

bradavon wrote:Wouldn't you play movies back full-screen and nothing intensive running in the background anyway?

Of course not, maybe a webbrowser and/or a P2P client/download manager at most. It's isn't like Firefox is a massive CPU hog on a rig like mine anyway.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 15 Feb 2008, 04:08

Good point. You don't want to have to stop P2P action when watching a movie.

I find Firefox fine too but do wish they'd fix the memory leak, if it's been running for a day often grows to over 100Mb. It happens on IE to not half as much. It's okay though as my PC can cope.

I noticed Firefox 2.0 struggled on the P4 (with 1.5Gb of RAM) I was given at my recent ill fated job though. I turned off loads of the extensions but it didn't help much. I do use a non-default install of Firefox which probably doesn't help *. It probably has some bloat in it now.

* i.e - I install Firefox (to get the Add/Remove type registry entries) then open it once, followed by deleting the profile folder contents and copy my profile in from home. I then delete the Firefox install folder and copy over my own copy.

This gives me an identical setup to home but probably has some bloat in it by now. I cannot be arsed to start a fresh as I've configured it a fair bit and cannot remember all the changes I've made. Like I said it's fine at home.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 15 Feb 2008, 14:05

Report: Toshiba to Drop HD DVD

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/ ... D_DVD/1468

tom2681 · Post by **tom2681** » 15 Feb 2008, 14:36

Reliable sources... Yeah, right.
I'll believe it when I see it.

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 15 Feb 2008, 18:06

If it is true (and I'll wait for something more concrete) I really hope the BD hardware makers will get on and release Profile 2.0 players bringing their problems to an end!

saltysam · Post by **saltysam** » 15 Feb 2008, 19:24

bradavon wrote:If it is true (and I'll wait for something more concrete) I really hope the BD hardware makers will get on and release Profile 2.0 players bringing their problems to an end!

if Toshiba stop making players surely Samsung won't be arsed getting their combo right?

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 15 Feb 2008, 20:35

Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to say when Universal and Paramount would still support it and there would still be a large fan base out there.

gasteropod · Post by **gasteropod** » 15 Feb 2008, 21:54

Wal-Mart to Go Blu-ray Exclusive

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/ ... usive/1469

bradavon · Post by **bradavon** » 15 Feb 2008, 22:20

The next 6 months are going to be very interesting over in the Universal, Paramount and Toshiba camps.