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Playing Back Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD Movies with GeForce 6150!
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I would like to explain a method of playing back BD / HD DVD movies with the onboard video and Athlon 64 X2, say, 2.3GHz. The result is very good in particular for H.264 movies (no stuttering at all even for very high bitrate movies like 50Mbps). You may see some frame drops for VC-1 however.
What you need
First the OS can be Windows 2000 (!), XP or Vista. The display device need not to be HDCP-compliant.
You have to buy:
- BD and/or HD DVD optical drive (e.g. LG GGC-H20L combo drive, ~$300; it's still pricey!)
-
SlySoft AnyDVD HD, ~$95 (another pricey software; if you are going to rip BD/HD DVD in HDD or want to avoid the HDCP requirement, this is an indispensable tool, however)
-
CoreAVC Professional Edition, ~$15 (you can use Cyberlink H.264 decoder instead which comes free with the LG combo drive; but CoreAVC is way better for a slow processor, resulting in 20-30% lower CPU usage)
You need the following software (free):
-
Media Player Classic.
The latest verson 6.4.9.1.
Another latest version Home Cinema
-
ffdshow
-
Haali Media Splitter
- Or all three above are included in
CCCP
- MicroSoft Windows Media Player 11 (required to decode VC-1; you don't need to download it if you use Vista)
-
Sonic CinePlayer HD DVD Decoder Pack v.4.3.0
Configuring Software
I closely follow the instruction by sarah99 in AVS Forum. I will explain using CCCP (it is already optimized for H.264 decoding). After you intalled all the software, start Media Player Classic. In View menu > Options > External Filters, add the following filters by clicking the "Add Filter" button:
- Haali Media Splitter (AR) - Set Merit 00900000, then Prefer
- ffdshow audio decoder - Set Merit 00700000
- CoreAVC Video Decoder - Set Merit 00900400
- Sonic Cinemaster Audio Decoder 4.3.0 - Set Merit 00805000
- ffdshow Video Decoder - Set Merit 00800000
- Sonic Cinemaster Video Decoder - Set Merit 00700000
In View menu > Options > Player > Format, add
- .m2ts (for BD)
- .evo (for HD DVD)
In View menu > Options > Playback > Output, choose
- Overlay Mixer
(If you choose VMR7/9, you will see lots of stuttering.)
Playing Back Movies
Insert the disc. AnyDVD HD runs in the background and automatically decrypts it in realtime. Start Media Player Classic. In File > Open File > Browse, select
- D:\BDMV\STREAM\00001.m2ts (or whatever .m2ts file) for BD
- D:\HVDVD_TS\FEATURE_1.EVO (or whatever .evo file) for HD DVD
where D is the drive letter of the optical drive. Click "OK".
BTW you can integrate Media Player Classic in a front end such as MediaPortal and create a BD / HD DVD movie library if you have enough storage space. You can use AnyDVD HD (and ImgBurn) to rip a disc in a decrypted format (either folders or ISO image).
Reference
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AVS Forum - HD-DVD & Blu-Ray playback in Media Centre Classic