Video: First working Blu-ray Managed Copy demo
Just because Pioneer isn't in the plasma business anymore doesn't mean the company is dead, and one of the new points of focus over there is on media aggregation. So part of the new do-it-all Entertainment Tap concept Pioneer was displaying today included a demo of storing Managed Copies of Blu-ray Discs on a hard drive. The copy itself was done in about 4x real time (dependent on the drive's speed) and looked great thanks to some hardware transcoding. We also appreciated the Pioneer interface that made copying the disc easy. Of course at this point this is just a demo, with no word on availability or price, but it is a start to what will one day hopefully be a better way to enjoy HD movies.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Cap BD @ Sep 10th 2009 7:49PM
Nice to see Managed Copy becoming a reality. Can't say that I can forsee myself using it, but it will be great for those who want a legal Movie Jukebox.
EM1 @ Sep 10th 2009 8:40PM
Legal movie library on my computer. That'd be awesome! Not that Handbrake and VLC make it that difficult to backup DVDs but blu-ray backup for PC doesn't seem worth it. Not even possible for Mac.
T-bone @ Sep 10th 2009 8:57PM
I don't like the word transcoding...implies loss of quality :(
Peter @ Sep 10th 2009 9:38PM
Not necessarily. It depends on the bitrate of the source material and the bitrate of the transcoded file.
I often take uncompressed QuickTime files and transcode them to MPEG-2 or WMV and they look great, because the source material was of very high quality.
Similarly, if you take a 25 Mb/sec BD file and use a good encoder to transcode it to a 15 Mb/sec file, you're going to see quality loss, but that will be from dropping the bit rate more than transcoding artifacts.
Where you run into real quality problems with transcoding is when you transcode to a higher bitrate and the encoder needs to interpolate the extra material. The other case where it is a problem is when you transcode between 2 codecs and just alter the bitrate a little bit. That causes a lot of artifacting.
Overall, a good encoder that can run multiple passes can do a very good job on most material and produce files that are acceptable for all but the most demanding uses.
GBot @ Sep 10th 2009 10:29PM
Nice, but AnyDVD, XBMC for Linux (with an Nvidia GPU and VDPAU hardware decoding enabled), Aeon skinning (www.aeonproject.com), and a few Terabyte HDDs make this unnecessary to those of us who can roll our own.
And yes, XBMC can play uncompressed .m2ts beautifully. If you want to transcode to x264 in a Matroska container, it handles that with ease too.
Mark @ Sep 11th 2009 9:55AM
It is true that people with the knowledge can roll their own, but realistically what percentage of people is that? I bet if you were take the whole blu ray population and consider those who own AnyDVD and who also have the knowledge, time and equipment to transcode into some other format, that we are talking a miniscule percentage of users. Even with modern tools it is still a painful and lengthy process even for those who know how to do it. I still consider it fair use to be able to rip my content though and do not see any reason that I should have to pay anybody extra money for the privilege.
Mr. E @ Sep 10th 2009 10:22PM
AnyDVD + PS3 Media Server FTW.
Rob @ Sep 11th 2009 3:33AM
Mr. E & GBot -
That all sounds well and good, but how are you handling the audio?
I've just been ripping full 1:1 .iso files for Blu-rays and mounting the ISO on a virtual drive for playback. I get to keep full HD Audio quality and any BD-Live features that way, which, for me, is what I want.
I'm doing this all on one computer for the moment, but I would love to expand my system so that I could feed 3 or 4 displays. For what I want, I've been under the impression that I need a central media server and a HTPC for each display. Is there something I'm missing? Or are you all just wanting the main movie only with regular DD/DTS audio?
Wryker @ Sep 11th 2009 10:39AM
I love my PCH A-110 + AnyDVD + 5TB's of drives equals loss-less audio and video back-ups of all my BD's and HDDVDs.
GBot @ Sep 14th 2009 11:08AM
As far as XBMC goes, the way I have been doing it is copy and paste the .m2ts files from the Blu-Rays to my HDD. The .m2ts file is actually a container which has all the audio streams wrapped up inside it (HD audio too, AFAIK, although I use DTS at best).
XBMC doesn't handle the .iso of the Blu-Ray (more specifically it doesn't handle the menus, and features such as BD-Live), so if this is a requirement for you, then your current solution is the only way I know of. Check out xbmc.org/forums though for more detail.
As for output to multiple displays, a central server is definitely a viable option. You'd have to have an "extender" at each of your displays. Check out the new motherboards with an Atom CPU and Nvidia Ion GPU. Supposedly people are getting great HD playback with those boards running XBMC Live (a stripped-down version of Linux so that it boots like an XBMC set top box).
Ruprecht @ Sep 11th 2009 4:39AM
Wow. Annoying person asking questions rudely FTW.
Shut up and let the demonstration demonstrate.
daaper @ Sep 11th 2009 11:44AM
This is what happens when that spaz you knew in school grows up and gets a job...
rwgunther @ Sep 12th 2009 12:54PM
Too cumbersome. Microsoft had a much better model with HD-DVD in Media Center. Just load and choose to play or copy, then it's integrated with your DVD Library. The only way this will take off is if it's quick, easy, and seamless.
Anth @ Sep 12th 2009 6:50PM
Ugh, pay for managed copy? That seems like a good way to kill the feature...
Jason @ Nov 11th 2009 8:38AM
Pretty cool technology for the type of people that would use something like that. Before I watched the video I thought this was going to be something like the old Divx was from Circuit City where you are "renting" the movie for a set period of time.
I guess this is more like the "Digital Copy" that you get with some of the disc's so you can load it on your iPod, etc..
I'll keep my way before I spend $$ on this. But like I said earlier, for the people that "don't know" and "don't feel like it" this is good stuff!
Did he say it loads disc's 8X faster than a PS3? I popped "Heat" in this morning (kick ass movie BTW that was just released on Blu-Ray) and it loaded in just a few seconds.