Best DivX on TV solution

[Summi]

Hélas.
I want to watch DivX movies on my TV and I'm serching for the best solution. What's the best combination in your opinion? XBox, PS2, Laptop or something else? :confused:

[cjv]

Well of course no one can answer "what's best", but I can say that I recently built a Linux/PVR that I'm extremely happy with. Check out http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=36615

I'm using Debian unstable, a Celeron 500, ATI Rage 128 w/ SVIDEO out, ATI Remote Wonder, 30g hd, and an old ISA sound card. I use http://freevo.sourceforge.net for the OSD, and mplayer for the DivX/XviD/MPEG-1/MPEG-2/DVD/MP3/AC3 player. Its works great, and with a 704x304 XviD movie w/AC3 and postprocessing, the CPU barely reaches 70%.

It also acts as a Firewall/router/Samba/POP/smtp/cvs/ftp/http server without ever impacting the movie playing...Linux is very efficient. And the good thing, someone could probably build something similar for approx. $100.

cjv

[rmatei]

For video playback, I like Radeon cards. And in terms of what connection to use:

- mediocre: a video card with S-video/composite output. The problem with this is that often, the video will not synchronize well with the output framerate, leading to jittery playback, and more often than not the video doesn't fill the screen.

- good: pass VGA (regular, analog monitor connection) through to the TV. This is dramatically better than S-video, but only good HD-capable TVs will have VGA inputs.

- great: digital DVI connection to the TV. Only very good, new sets will have DVI inputs.

- perfect: digital DVI connection to the TV using Powerstrip to set a custom resolution on the PC exactly equal to your TV's native resolution and refresh rate. This bypasses all internal scaling done by the TV, and it just doesn't get any better.

[BluDChyLD]

i've been more than happy with my radeon 9000 pro hooked up with standard composite cable. The radeons are great for ease of use, there's a neat theatre mode option which automatically sends a full screen signal through the tv out when you play a video file :) So no mucking about with res options, and you can do what you like on your pc in the meantime :)

[Didée]

Matrox.

[OvERaCiD23]

I use my Dell I8K laptop, s-video, SPDIF (digital coaxial). I use BSplayer for playback with ffdshow: CTRL+. to bring the image to my TV, F for fullscreen (switches to 800x600 automatically), X to play and I'm set. This is perfect for taking to friends' houses, watching it in another room, or anything else imaginable. Not a cheap solution, as this laptop was $2000 last year, but if you have it, might as well take advantage of it (sucks for encoding though).

[Summi]

Everybody seems to use their laptops and computers to watch DivX movies on TV. I assume that an XBox or a PS2 is still too complicated to setup for DivX-playback (Modchip, Software, etc.). Or did anybody succeeded with one of the consoles?

[BluDChyLD]

Originally posted by Summi
Everybody seems to use their laptops and computers to watch DivX movies on TV. I assume that an XBox or a PS2 is still too complicated to setup for DivX-playback (Modchip, Software, etc.). Or did anybody succeeded with one of the consoles?

I know there's a divx player for the xbox that's supposed to work very well (supports all versions and features etc...) but you neeed your console modded for it to work.

[Summi]

Another question pops into my mind.. what's up with AC3 sound? Many of the newer good RIPs have AC3 included. But, not many laptops have a digital-out port.

[OvERaCiD23]

high-end laptops do have SPDIF output (digital sound output). however, w/o SPDIF, you can output the sound through the soundcard. using a 3.5mm to RCA adapter, sound is output to the A/V receiver or TV via RCA cables. this works for stereo sources fine, but if you want surround sound you're out of luck for the most part. Dolby Pro Logic (I & II) can somewhat reproduce the surround effect, but not as well as passing the AC3 directly to the A/V receiver and letting it decode the audio.

[int 21h]

It would be neat if someone made a Freevo bootdisk, it looks alot further along than MoviX

[theReal]

Dolby Pro Logic (I & II) can somewhat reproduce the surround effect, but not as well as passing the AC3 directly to the A/V receiver and letting it decode the audio.Four-channel decoding of DD5.1 (i.e. through Moonlight Odio Dekoda) is pretty neat. All you need is a soundcard capable of 4-channel surround sound. Of course it's not as good as a real 5.1 decoder/amplifier, but it still sounds way better than 2-channel mp3.


it looks alot further along than MoviXI tried MoviX2 recently and it looked quite nice - however it couldn't detect my soundcard and the display was limited to 640x480 @ 60Hz. I'm not a Linux freak, so I didn't even try to adapt it to my system...

[ookzDVD]

@Summi,

I prefer to use Multimedia PC,
with low entry GeForce 2 MX / 200 with TV/Out ($25),
I use TVTool for TV output software solution, and
the result is superb!

[cult]

@ookzDVD
have in mind that geforce has one of the worst tvouts and overlays,picture what you can get with a good tvout(radeon)

[Slogra]

Keep in mind that Geforces can have 3 different types of tv chips:
Chronotel, Philips or Conexant.

Philips supposed to be the worst (i never had one). I've had Chronotel on my geforce 2 which was ok, but not superb. I've got Conexant now... the picture is really great but tvtool doesn't work very well, so there is no way to get rid of the black bars around the image.

So in short: yes, geforce tv-out sucks :rolleyes:

[int 21h]

I think its driver issues, the Raedon just has really nice driver support.

[Slogra]

Originally posted by int 21h
I think its driver issues, the Raedon just has really nice driver support.

Yes, it is. Nvidia had good drivers for tv output without blackbars once, but these drivers are old and useless for geforce 4 cards.

I think Nvidia is just too lazy to fix the tvout thing. :mad:

[Slogra]

I FINALLY found a solution to get good tv-out on my geforce! I made a new thread for it: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=39159

Cya there ;)