WesleyTech.com: HD DVD, Blu-ray, DVD info and more

Burn any video file to DVD
Need to burn an AVI, MPEG, WMV, MOV or another type of video file to a DVD? Well now there is an excellent, free, open source solution to meet your needs. DVD Flick is a completely free Windows application that allows you to convert and burn virtually ANY video file to a DVD Recordable disc. The resulting disc will be compatible on most standalone DVD players. LifeHacker recently posted an article on this phenomenal piece of software, which is now available for everyone to freely enjoy. I previously posted about AVI2DVD, another GUI video conversion application powered by freeware tools, but DVD Flick appears to be even easier to use and supports even more video file formats.

Burn any video to DVD encoding
The encoding process (converting the video file to a DVD compliant video format) can take a couple of hours depending on the power of your hardware, so do not expect an instant conversion result. Nonetheless, I found that the utility works very well and has a very small learning curve. DVD Flick is an ideal solution for those wishing to convert video files captured from digital cameras, video camcorders or even other video files that have been downloaded from various sources online. It is an excellent alternative for commercial software such as ConvertXtoDVD and other such applications. I have no problems recommending this excellent piece of freeware.

Blu-ray torrents are appearing online
HDTVBlogger is reporting that the first full Blu-ray Disc rip released as a torrent has just appeared on HDBits.org, a private torrent tracking website. The first Blu-ray rip “victim” to make an appearance is Ice Age 2: Meltdown, with a massive 22GB file size. With the release of the BackupBluray utility, we knew it was just a matter of time before Blu-ray rips started to appear on torrent trackers. The prediction has now come true, Blu-ray rips are now being seeded right along side HD DVD rips. I expect that more and more Blu-ray rips will soon make their way on to a variety of torrent trackers, both private and public.

hddvd for x box interview (360 box hddvd x)
HardOCP conducted an interview with Shaheen Gandhi, who is a Microsoft developer on the Xbox Console & Consumer Software team. Shaheen worked on the development of the Xbox 360 HD DVD player software and discusses the project in the interview. Here are a few of the questions and answers, taken from the interview.

Q: How long did development take?
A: We went from no hardware and no software on 360 to a full product in about 8

months. It was a super-compressed development schedule and the quality is just spectacular. There’s a longer timeframe when you consider the codecs had existed in code quite a while ago.

Q: What prevents someone from using this drive on a PC?
A: We have designed and tested the Xbox 360 HD DVD player to be a completely plug-and-play experience when used with an Xbox 360 console. We recognize that certain hard-core users have been able to enable HD DVD playback on a PC using SW and drivers from a variety of non-Microsoft sources. Consumers interested in using the HD DVD player on their PC’s should understand this is an un-tested and unsupported configuration, and we will not be providing customer support for any PC scenario around HD DVD playback.

The developer also talks about a range of topics related to the Xbox 360 HD DVD player, including the difference between DVD/HD DVD, what HDi is, the various codecs and how the HD DVD software application interacts with the core Xbox 360 system. It sounds like his development team accomplished a great amount of work in a relatively small amount of time in order to get the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive ready for prime time.

Shaheen makes it clear that the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive is not intended for use on PC’s. Nevertheless, even though Microsoft does not officially support connecting the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive to a computer, it is still the most affordable option for adding HD DVD capability to a computer system at this time. In fact, the majority of HD DVD drives purchased by consumers so far are the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive. With this external HD peripheral running at just $199, it is hard to go with anything else.

Blu-ray Disc standalone players were initially introduced at price points of $1,000 or more, which many consumers and even enthusiasts found to be cost prohibitive. Adoption rates and market penetration of standalone players for either blue laser format (Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD) appears to have been very minimal for 2006. But now it finally looks like the first generation of Blu-ray standalone player models are starting to significantly drop in price. Looking at Amazon.com Blu-ray player listings, we can see that the Samsung BD-P1000 Blu-ray standalone player has dropped to $599 US, which is 33% off the original price! The Philips BDP9000 has also dropped in price and is now also listed at $599 US. That’s a 25% price cut for the Philips model.

Now that the initial prices are falling a bit, more consumers might be willing to pick up a Blu-ray standalone player. But are these price cuts a “good deal” compared to the competition? Well what is the competition? It seems that Blu-ray standalone products have some steep competition from one of the major players in the Blu-ray Disc Association, SONY. If a Sony PS3 gaming system can now be picked up for as little as $499, why would anyone purchase “just” a standalone Blu-ray player? The answer is that

most people would not, which is why the majority of Blu-ray players in consumer homes are embedded within the Playstation 3 console. The “normal” Blu-ray standalone players can not compete with a next generation gaming system + Blu-ray movie player all wrapped in one. Especially since the PS3 has a lower price tag and offers much much more! Blu-ray standalone manufacturers are going to have to make significant, additional price cuts in order to compete with the PS3 Blu-ray all-in-wonder machine. Until then, don’t expect to see many “normal” Blu-ray standalone players in average consumer households, but you can be on the lookout for some PS3’s.

I have added a Top Posts page to WesleyTech.com. These posts and articles received the most link-backs, comments or attention from the community. If you have any suggestions for the Top Posts list, please let me know. If you are looking for some interesting optical storage technology news, check out the Top Posts page and read about some of the popular articles that you may have missed.

After BackupHDDVD was released and added as a SoureForge.net project, there have been many development efforts initiated to help improve the utility and add a Graphical User Interface (GUI) on top of the back end code. Multiple side projects are underway, including a C# and a Java based GUI project. Doom9 is hosting the discussion on their forums, where the BackupHDDVD development, testing and improvements can be discussed. Here are a couple of screenshots of the new BackupHDDVD GUI versions.

BackupHDDVD

C# GUI version

BackupHDDVD C# GUI can be found here.

BackupHDDVD

Java version

BackupHDDVD Java GUI can be found here.

muslix64, the person behind the famous BackupHDDVD utility has done it again, this time with his sights set on the Blu-ray Disc format. A new utility was recently released in a very early alpha stage, aptly dubbed “BackupBluray”. This BackupBluray tool is designed to help backup commercially produced Blu-ray (BD-ROM) movies. The first movie that has fallen victim to this backup and decryption procedure appears to have been “Lord of War” from Lions’ Gate Studios. Due to the complexity of this initial release of the BackupBluray command line tool, I decided to put together a BackupBluray guide to illustrate the entire process of backing up a Blu-ray Disc. This guide will walk you through the process of backing up a Blu-ray Disc movie. This guide is aimed at users running the Windows Operating System.

Step1) Download BackupBluray version 021.
Go to http://www.sendspace.com/file/yvylle
Click the “skip this ad” graphic and proceed to the download BackupBluray.
Note: If the sendspace link does not work, you might try searching on Google for “BackupBluRayv021.zip”. Mirror.

Step2) Extract the files from the zip package. You will then see two new directories, a “run” directory and a “src” directory.

Step3) Download and Install the Java Runtime Environment. Java runtime is needed in order for BackupBluray to function.
http://java.com/en/download/index.jsp

Step4) Find the CPS Unit Key for the Blu-ray movie that you would like to backup.
CPS Unit keys can be found at Doom9:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=120988
or at other locations around the net.
You can also find the CPS Unit Key yourself if the movie that you wish to backup does not have its’ key listed online, but I will not delve into the key discovery process at this time.

Step5) Navigate to the recently extracted “run” directory for BackupBluray.
The run directory should contain the following files: BackupBluRay.cmd, BackupBluRay.jar, CPSKey.cfg.

You will need to copy “java.exe” into the BackupBluray run directory if you have not modified the Windows PATH variable to include the original location of this executable.

Step6)Open the file CPSKey.cfg using a text editor (such as Notepad) and add the CPS Unit Key for the Blu-ray movie that you wish to backup into this file. Save the file.

Step7) Insert your Blu-ray movie disk into your PC BD-ROM or Blu-ray Burner drive and close the drive tray.

Step8) Open a Command window and navigate to the BackupBluray run directory.
To accomplish this more easily, you might want to try the “Open Command Window Here” WindowsXP PowerToy.

Step9) Run BackupBluray from the command line using the CMD file with the following parameters.
backupbluray.cmd SOURCE DESTINATION


Step10) Check the destination directory with Windows explorer to verify that the files were ripped.


Step11) Playback the M2TS files using software such as VideoLan, Nero Showtime 3 or Power DVD 6 BD.


Optional Step12) Burn your backup files to a BD-R or BD-RE disc! Create a directory on your Harddrive named “BDMV”. Copy all of the files out of the original BDMV directory on the BD-ROM Disc except for the “stream” directory. Afterwards create a new subdirectory inside of the BDMV directory on your harddrive and name it “stream”. Place your decrypted M2TS files inside of this new stream directory. Burn your entire, newly completed “BDMV” directory to a blank BD-R or BD-RE disc using the newest version of Nero or any other software capable of burning Blu-ray Recordable media. You should then be able to playback the disc using a Blu-ray Software player such as WinDVD Blu-ray edition. Reports on Doom9 also indicate that the PS3 won’t be able to playback BD-R movies with a “BDMV” structure yet. Thanks to mrazzido on Doom9 for explaining this method.

Additional information about the BackupBluray utility can be found on the Doom9 forums. BackupBluray does not support discs protected with BD+. Thanks to Doom9, CDFreaks, muslix64, Janvitos and all other contributors who have made this possible. If you have any suggestions or other input that would help improve this guide, please let me know by leaving a Reply to the article.