Condidering building a Standalone Divx Player. Any thoughts?

[MadManMund]

I am an Electrical Engineering major and the time has come to start on my senior design project. My group was considering building a standalone Divx player for the project. Is this a good idea to attempt as a design project?

There is a requirement that the project involve a good amount of design on our part for a grade. This means that if the components have already been designed and we just integrate the components it is likely to recieve a poor grade.

What are your thoughts on this idea. Would it be a good Design Project? If so, what approach should be taken in the design? (What requirements and goals should we seek for the player?)

Thanks
MadManMund

Edit: I would also accept other design project reccomendations or ideas.

[Blight]

You can pretty much build a stand-alone divx player using XP Embedded (or standard for that matter) and Zoom Player.

But that's pretty much cheating. I can probably build such a machine in one day of work.

(irman+zoom player+girder = stand alone player).

[MadManMund]

Yea, I agree. I could do this with a PC easily. The Idea was to make it not seem like it is a PC at all. But it may not be the best design project for a two semester class.

[Blight]

There are HTPC cases which combined with a small form-factor motherboard can be built into a box that doesn't really look like a computer.

As part of your project, you can try building such a box from scratch, designing it with room for LCD and whatnot.

[ronnylov]

Maybe you can build your player around this hardware (but it seems too easy)...

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/DVD8500.htm

[JimmyBarnes]

Originally posted by MadManMund
Edit: I would also accept other design project reccomendations or ideas.

Ummm... how bout modifying an X-Box :D
Nah! Others already onto that :devil:

cheers
JB

[Beave]

(irman+zoom player+girder = stand alone player).

@Blight
What is Irman?

I'm thinking of building a machine like that myself. I almost have a spare Computer, but want to invest as little as possible to control that DivX Hardware Player only with one single remote. What would be the cheapest components?

[sillKotscha]

hi folks,

after reading this thread I have to say that there is a project called Mofut's DivX...

It's kind of a DivX-Standalone Player (I know that there are X-Box, Dreamcast, etc.).

For your look and feel of a player near your TV (like a VCR, DVD-player or what ever) you have to buy a Hifi desktop PC Case.

the rest is described in this nice article (http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Software/3691/DivxOS/) . For our german folks, read here (http://www.divxfilm.de/homecinema/divxos/).

cheers Sill

[Wizal]

This whole idea sounds really nice but you'll hit a snag at one point because as far as I know the specs for the file architecture of the upcoming mpeg4 DVDs have not been published yet (probably something like VOB/IFO), so you better put the code handling that on an easy to flash chip.

[manodivx]

i wanted to make this "divx" player but im havin sum probs picking out a decent cpu and motherboard. in the guide posted by sillKotscha it suggests a processor around 800 mhz. i was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on a good motherboard and a good cpu around 800mhz for a decent price? also if anyone also has a site for those "hifi" cases please post it.

[mikemikez]

Well, it should definately play divx 3.11 too, so that makes the sigma designs chip unsuitable.

I'd say try QNX (www.qnx.com) on some cheap hardware and make it in such a way that it is a prototype for mass production. You would probably have to do quite some software devellopment though...


Mike

[manodivx]

this qnx site has absolutly nothing...does anyone have an actual good site

[prot0vision]

Originally posted by manodivx
i wanted to make this "divx" player but im havin sum probs picking out a decent cpu and motherboard. in the guide posted by sillKotscha it suggests a processor around 800 mhz. i was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on a good motherboard and a good cpu around 800mhz for a decent price? also if anyone also has a site for those "hifi" cases please post it.

Both these questions are frequently covered at the Small Form Factor forum at:

http://forums.viahardware.com/categories.cfm?catid=33

Very Via chipset-centric, but a lot of good info. Look into info about Via's Mini-ITX standard (EPIA 800 MB+CPU), and Shuttle's SFF's (http://www.shuttleonline.com/).

One of the cases you might be interested in is the ATC-600 (http://www.coolermaster.com/products/atc/atc600.html)

Also, here's another good forum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/index.php?s=

Check out the Home Theatre Computer forum.

prot0vision

[prot0vision]

PS:

With regards to the EPIA 800, reports say it performs worse than a p3/500, due to the low power requirements, so it might not be enough power, but has been reported to play Divx 5 and DVD's pretty well, occassional stutters.

Via's newer C3 933/1000 chips seem to work better for DVD. I don't think they've made it to their EPIA line yet.

(No, I don't work for Via, just watching their line closely... CLE266, yum! :D )

prot0vision

[manolordo]

if i was going to buy one of these "flex/microatx" cases would i need a special motherboard because its a smaller case? does anyone have any good websites for cheap flex really small cases?

mano

[pomo]

I know this sounds utopic,
but what about writing an own os (operating system) just for playing divX, because this would surely lower the need of hardware-resources as all the power goes into decoding and not into all the things a windowsXP does.

(well I know it´s out of range of what a person can do as it is far to much work I guess)


(I crossed this thread when looking for information about upcoming standalone divx players from yamakawa and co. as I read about them in my University-paper)

[ronnylov]

I tried the operating system BeOS two years ago. It was optimized for audio and video but there was not many programs to use with it. Perhaps your divX player could use that?

Maybe a stripped version of Linux could do it also?
Isn't there a Linux version you can start on a single floppy disc?

If I check the CPU utilization in WindowsXP when I do nothing with the computer, I only get 0 % - 2 %. So is it really a problem? But it hogs some memory though...

[epere4]

Originally posted by ronnylov
Maybe a stripped version of Linux could do it also?
Isn't there a Linux version you can start on a single floppy disc?


There is a running project of something like that. It is a mini operating system that can run from a CD (without using any hard disk) based on linux. It is called MoviX.
It comes in two diferent versions: MoviX and MoviX2.
MoviX must be written in the same CD as the Movie. Then, you boot from that CD and the movie starts playing.
MoviX2 is stored on a different CD than the movie. You boot from that CD (it takes around 80 MB of your system memory), then you take put the movie CD and it plays.

The creator of the project is looking for developers (http://movix.sourceforge.net/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=22) at the moment. One of the things to implement could be to install that mini OS in a hard drive (http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?thread_id=756041&forum_id=223357) so you avoid booting from a CD every time (to put it in a dedicated computer).

The official website is: http://movix.sourceforge.net
The forum adress is: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=61561


Sounds very cool. I am about to test it (I have Dial-Up access to the web and I downloading the pack). I will let you know my impressions afterwards.

CU

[epere4]

I have tested MoviX^2 (that is the real name, not MoviX2, like I wrote in the previous post), and so far it worked fine.
Not amazing, but good. It still needs a lot of work. I see if I can join the project in my vacations (summer in South America).

What I like most about this software is that is less power consummer than any player I have tested in Windows (especially when you browse a movie file, here you can change form a part from the movie to another instantly, and this doesn´t happend in my old Athlon 700Mhz in Windows).

Well, I will keep you in touch of the advances this project makes.

CU

[theknife]

I've been interested in the idea of a stand-alone divX player for some time. Mofut's DivX project is worth a look(http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Software/3691/DivxOS/).

There are commercial players coming on line like the Kiss 450 DVD/DivX player now released. The problem here is that it does not support VBR mp3 or OGG, which is the audio format that I have encoded most of my single CD rips. I wrote to them asking about future devels and they say OGG and VBR may be implememnted by a firmware release, but no time frame.

The new mini itx boards from VIA, have all necessary components integrated into one small board with a single PCI option running up to 800Mhz processor with TVout etc.
(http://www.mini-itx.com/hardware.asp#hardware0015)
With one of the small form factor cases,(http://www.g-alantic.com.tw/p-starex.htm) this looks like the most promising way to get stand-alone with future proofing for format changes and additions.

I am looking into the possibility of complete control of the player via ordinary remote control set and have some success in running zoomplayer entirely from a domestic remote control with learning facility to learn key board keystrokes.These can be bought for a few pounds (http://www.maxview.ltd.uk/downloads.html)

Mofut's Divx os is an autorun on top of win95 but there is no reason why you could not use zoomplayer on top of win2k.


I'd like to hear from anyone who has made a system

[c0in]

The best thing to do is to get an HTPC, almost what you're considering doing, theknife. You could use a sigma RealMagic remote and girder software (http://www.girder.nl) to make it learn keyboard controls.

In my opinion Zoom Player is the best choice as it can handle any kind of encoded videos and it can also play DVDs, you can set it to startup with windows and configure everything to be controled from the keyboard and then from your remote.

It won't even look like a pc.

Check out the www.avsforum.com and check the HTPC section, really interesting.

c0in.

[theknife]

@cOin

I tried out girder. Probably a bit top heavy for what I need. PC remote seems to be OK for IR control.

In any event I have a working system with a Mini-itx board,800Mhz processor,128K ram, cdrom and win 2k with zoom player as primary video player. It is still mouse/keyboard dependent until I sort out the infra red control.

Attached via the s-video cable the pictures are just acceptable. Fortunately this via-epia board has s-video out port with overscan built in but even so the quality is disappointing, particularly for detail -poor areas. Up to now I have broadcast pictures through a video sender which I think are better than this s-video direct connection. I wonder if this is dependent on the quality of the video card.Has anyone else found this to be a problem?