Am I in over my head with HD DVD?

[saint-francis]

I have a friend who has been giving me HDTV captures and I have been tinkering with encoding them with MeGUI. Needless to say I am astounded by the difference between HD and DVD. So I thought I'd go ahead and buy the XBOX 360 HD DVD drive and do some experimenting with HD DVD's. Even though my projector (which is connected to the PC) is HDCP compliant my monitor isn't so I can't even watch these movies I bought. I can rip them and demux them after a fashion but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to encode them to a format that would be reasonable for backing up. I don't come from a background in computer programming so maybe the learning curve is too steep for me. It seems that as of now there is no software that is idiot proof enough for someone like me to use to back up HD DVD's. I am able to backup my DVD's using MeGUI and various other methods but I am certainly pretty new to all of this. I would like some opinions about what I should do. Should I just return the HD DVD drive and the movies I bought? Or are easier methods of encoding HD DVD's right about to break into the open and I haven't been able to find info on it? Maybe by the time the software progresses to the point where I can use it blu ray will be the only format. Who knows.

[HyperHacker]

Have you considered AnyDVD HD? It should allow you to play the originals on non-compliant hardware.

[killchimera_7]

Have you considered AnyDVD HD? It should allow you to play the originals on non-compliant hardware.

Yeah but nobody's perfect. Look at Microsoft. Besides at least Sony products work and last more that two weeks.:devil:

[Guest]

@killchimera_7

Keep the focus, per forum rule 3. Thank you.

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[saint-francis]

Have you considered AnyDVD HD? It should allow you to play the originals on non-compliant hardware.

Well I tried this and I got fantastic audio playback but noting else worked. I could see the menu but I could only select play. Then there was only the audio for the movie and there are no other images in the menu except the options (no clips like I am use to with DVD's).

I think I have been able to encode the video and audio from one of my HD DVD's but it's still encoding so the jury is out. This will be my 5th attempt at encoding the same video file and every time x264.exe crashes with what appears to be a faulty error. and I think I bar-be-cued some other functionality of my PC because now MPC plays known good files with a huge terrible purple band running vertically though them. This technology is obviously still in it's infancy. We need something like DGIndex for HD DVD's. DGIndex is a fantastic program. It has made working from DVD's niec and smooth. I hope we will see a similar program in time.