[MPlayer-users] (no subject)

[Ivan Kowalenko]

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On Apr 24, 2006, at 07.36, Mate Szabolcs wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Nowadays, I plan to buy a desktop DivX player. In my hometown, I can
> buy some more valued one for 25-30k HUF (~$110-140) with DTS. The
> others got some disadvantages no DTS decoder, no QPEL support,
> some subtitle support is missing and so on

Yeah, that seems to be the biggest complaint for set-top MPEG-4  
players. That and when a new version of the codec comes out, or when  
MPEG-4 becomes obsolete (it's on its way already, with h.264 on the  
rise), you're not in a good place.

> ...so I made the decision, I
> would build a HTPC (Home Theatre PC) based on linux and mplayer of
> course. The price will bigger, but I plan to upgrade my PC also, so
> the "old" HW parts should go to the HTPC.

Careful there. I'm a MythTV user, and the kind of work done by a Myth  
system often is rather harsh to recycled parts. Be careful what parts  
you're recycling. Things like a 20 GB hard disk wouldn't be very  
useful, except for storing the OS, and you'll want a lot of RAM.

However, if you're willing to spread the load, you can pull this off  
quite well. I have a Celeron 600 with 256 MB of RAM as my MythTV back- 
end (recording programs, managing the database) and an XBox that's  
hacked running MythTV's front-end, and a program called XBMC. I use  
MythTV for TV, and XBMC for everything else. XBMC is another project  
built around MPlayer, and is a truely amazing app. It made hacking my  
XBox totally worth while, and I'd consider buying and hacking an XBox  
JUST for that.

>
> Do you have some experiences/idea/hint according this issue with
> mplayer? Is mplayer support DTS decoding (my sound card is 5.1 ready,
> and I have got a 5.1 sound system with amplifier, without DTS decoder)
> Is mplayer support DVD menus? How could I check it?

MPlayer does NOT support DVD menus. People are working on it (or so I  
hear), but so far we have seen little. MPlayer just doesn't seem to  
be built for that kind of a function. Ogle and Xine (both OSS apps  
for Linux) do support menus, however.

>
> I have checked the MythTV and Freevo projects, but unfortunately, I
> didn't found any information about DVD menus and DTS.

MythTV supports DVD menus, kinda. MythTV is built around MPlayer, but  
offers an additional layer of flexibility. You can select what  
application you want to play back DVDs and external videos (that is,  
videos not recorded by Myth). MPlayer and Xine have a lot of support  
in Myth, so you could probably use those for AVIs/OGMs/MPGs/MKVs and  
DVDs, respectively.

DTS is supported, so long as your hardware supports it.

However, if you're going to use MythTV or FreeVo just for watching  
videos as you would with MPlayer, it's not worth your time. It's a  
lot of overkill, and MythTV's strength lies in manipulating  
television. If you just want a set-top box for watching MPEG-4 videos  
and the such, that's running open-source programming, buy an XBox,  
hack it, and run XBMC. It supports everything MPlayer supports (h.264  
support isn't quite at the same level you'd get on your PC, yet),  
*AND* DVD menus. I'm not 100% on DTS for that, but I do know AC/3  
pass-through is supported (the XBox does 5.1). The only catch is that  
the XBox doesn't have the processing power to handle High-Def, and it  
likely never will. If HD isn't a consideration for you, you should  
look into it.

>
> Thanks for your answers!
> Br,
> Fixer
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