Raspberry Pi Bandwagon

[poofyhairguy]

It's always been odd to me the amount of conflicting information I get over blu-ray rips. Half of people say they play fine, half don't. The real question for me is whether it can play H.264, VC1, and MPEG2 (assuming you've paid for the licenses) at blu-ray bit-rates, i.e., ripped directly from the blu-ray, 100% smoothly over a network. I remember way back people were saying it played them back 100% smoothly as long as you bistreamed the audio. Still some people even now say they doesn't play back smoothly. Very confusing. I've been really tempted to just order one and find out for myself.

The bitstreaming stuff makes sense. Otherwise the Pi's hardware has to decode the HD track and downgrade it to stereo or whatever using its limited resources.

 

[tential]

Because people have varying qualities of Video.

Everyone has a different idea of what a BluRay Rip is.
To some people, it's the 2 GB 1080p torrent they downloaded off the internet (We all know what I'm talking about I hope). To others, it's the 15 GB Rip they encode themselves.
To others still it's the 40 GB or so raw rip.

All of which have HUGE differences in whether the RaspPi can handle them well. It'd have been better if someone simply did a review of the RaspPi based on what bitrates it can handle but... we can only wish.

 

[smitbret]

OK, then, to be clear:

1) I have the Blu-Ray for the feature film Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe
2) I ripped JUST the main movie from the Blu-Ray to my Server using AnyDVDHD and TsMuxer as an .m2ts file. Downconverted the original HD Audio track to its DTS Core
3) Using MkvToolnix I remuxed the .m2ts file into an .mkv file
4) Playback of the Blu-Ray rip has been flawless through several viewings from my Raspberry Pi Model B that is running XBMC/OpenELEC
5) At no point was the video stream touched, tampered or adjusted.

I don't have an A/V Receiver, so I am newb when it comes to the RaspPi's playback capability of the different audio tracks.

FF/Rew are a little slow/spotty for the higher bitrate movies like this, though and isn't really quick since the RaspPi doesn't seem to buffer enough to make this a smooth process.

It's good enough that I am in discussions with the wife about replacing the WDTV Live Hub in the living room with another RaspPi