I can't refrain now that I see this blank area...

FIRST!

Wow. That makes me feel much better. I have an old Alienware PC from 2002 that can't really play much HD. The fact that you had a hard time with a much newer system shows that I wouldn't have done better to wait just a little longer. (btw that PC cost $4700 when I got it - I know, total waste of money)

I know it wont compare to hardware decoding, but I *am* curious to see how much better VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/) plays your usual movie rips. I don't have Windows at my fingertips, but from a linux perspective I find VLC to behave much better than the other typical movie players.

Unfortunately, as per a recent slashdot article, the Blu Ray crew have fought back, and upped the protection on newer titles, such that AnyDVD HD can no longer rip them (for now).

They'll surely catch up eventually, but I'm afraid it's going to be a cat and mouse game for a long time (unless they actually find a weakness in the encryption itself).

Dear Jeff,

Please stop.

Sincerely,
Netflix

That is such an awesome post.

I am about to embark on my first HTPC adventure after the various off the shelf boxes that I have had have died slow and miserable deaths.

One of my reservations was video codec hell. This solves it. Fantastic.

"It's easier to deal with a collection of digital files than it is to deal with a bunch of shiny, easily scratched plastic discs. Nor do I keep the movies around after I watch them."

So you're telling that in order to protect the netflix disk you rip them to your HD (how does this protect them... it's one use either way). Then you explain how to do it. Open the apps, choose a path rip the disk then rename and copy the giant file.

Then you say I do keep them. I just do this because it's easier than just watching it on the disk.

Yeah righ!

Of course, if you get 3 movies, rip them all, then send the discs back and don't watch them all before the next batch arrives, you're still "ripping off" NetFlix. NetFlix pays the royalties each time a movie goes out and counts on the fact that there are only so many movies a person can watch in a day to make a profit. I bet you'll be throttled if you did it too much.

I'm not saying you actually do that, and I'm not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of said hypothetical actions, or NetFlix TOS, or RIAA, or IP, or movies, or [insert favorite boogey man here].

Oh yeah, T3 wasn't all bad.

"Ever since creating my first home theater PC, I've archived my Netflix rental DVDs to files on the hard drive. I don't do this because I want to rip off the movie industry; I do it for convenience. It's easier to deal with a collection of digital files than it is to deal with a bunch of shiny, easily scratched plastic discs."

How on earth does this make any sense? Taking the time to subvert the built in DVD protection, rip the disc then store the gigantic file is easier than putting the disc in a $40 player (yes good upscaling DVD players are now around $40)? That's, for lack of a better word, is utter crap.

You're pirating the movies. You don't own them, nor do you have the right to copy them and keep them on your hard drive for a millisecond longer than you have the physical DVD. If you plan to break the law that's your choice, but don't act like you're above the law because you already "already own more movies than I could possibly ever watch in one lifetime."

>>the new version I just installed includes 128 megabytes of dedicated DDR3 video memory, too

Can you briefly elaborate? I followed your previous HTPC specs precisely, but was never able to successfully play 1080p content. I bought the Gigabyte "MA78GM-S2H" mobo about 8 months ago; I don't have the newer "MA78GPM-DS2H" that you just linked to in this post...

am I screwed?

I bought the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive from Newegg last week and was watching the Blu-Ray version of Lost Season 4 using PowerDVD 8.

CPU Utilization while playing the movie was less than 5%.

C2D 2.4ghz@3.2ghz
Radeon 4780
PowerDVD 8

I'd love to stop using this POS that is PowerDVD though. Spent an hour trying to get the movies to work until I downloaded the latest version of PowerDVD, old version of PowerDVD the screen would freeze after the FBI screen came up....leading me to believe it was a video driver issue or a Windows 2008 OS issue until I upgraded PowerDVD.

Hopefully your high CPU utlization is due to the craptastic card your using and if I use Media Player Classic HC I'll get the same low CPU utilization as with PowerDVD.

Did you really just admit to a felony?

it is not illegal to backup a dvd for backup purposes. it may go against Netflix usage policy though.

Hey Now Jeff,
Easy & streamlined.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto

The hardware is decent, but you'd get more mileage performance wise by installing Linux and XBMC:

http://xbmc.org/download/

My box is an Intel 5200 / Nvidia 8500GT / 2GB RAM and it runs extremely well as an matx box running XBMC and using the venerable Microsoft IR remote, and as it is Linux it can also do all manner of other things like run an iTunes server and serve dynamic dhcp/dns for the local network. =)

@walter

"it is not illegal to backup a dvd for backup purposes."

Whether or not that statement is true for a DVD you own, it is certainly illegal to "backup" a DVD you do not own.

However, it may or may not be illegal to "time shift" a DVD you rent (ie through NetFlix) by copying it and then deleting after you watch it. Don't know. Don't care that much either. It certainly interferes with the renter's business model/profit.

I don't think the law has the ability to comprehend the right or wrongness of renting movies and ripping them, it simply does not understand the nature of information well enough.

If you have a fully digital media system, you want your movies on the hard drive, even those you rent temporarily. When stored on the hard drive you can watch the movie in wich room you want, tv-room, bed-room, kitchen. You can switch between movies fast just pressing "next"-button on remote control, not needing to switch physical DVDs in the player.

If you rent 3 movies and have them a month or even week, then you dont want to deal with physical DVDs. For many reasons, like them above and the fact that my kids EATS DVDs to breakfirst if they find any laying around.

Jeff,
Thanks for keeping up the good work. I rarely comment (actually, this is my first), though I always enjoy your writing. Now then...

@JeffG - please, if one more person in a forum posts some form of " You'd be better off with [insert Linux distro here] I'll scream. I use Windows because a) I work on computers all day and want one that just works when I get home and b) I don't think people should just give me the software they write.

We get it, in your world, Linux is the God of all OSes, but seriously, enough.

Thanks Jeff!

It absolutely is against the Netflix terms of service:

http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse#limitations

The DVDs Netflix buys from studios and sends to customers are fixed assets. The business model is built on the fact that consuming that asset (watching the movie) takes time and during that time the asset is monopolized by that customer. Because it takes time for each consumer to watch the movie Netflix is required to purchase a certain amount of discs to meet demand.

Now imagine if that amount of time a customer keeps the disc is artificially shortened, by say, doing exactly what Jeff here is doing - get the DVD, rip it, send it back and watch it at his own leisure. It may seem like there's no harm no foul since hey, he's just going to watch it once and delete it anyway right? Wrong. Because he can now watch it whenever he wants the model falls apart and the value of the disc is diluted. Studios lose money, grow more paranoid about protecting their content and continue to shove more crippling DRM down our throats. Who can blame them when people like Jeff so glibly rip them off?

Dear Jeff, when you're in the federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison and you drop a bar of soap, don't bend down to pick it up - it's a trap.

> I followed your previous HTPC specs precisely, but was never able to successfully play 1080p content

Oh, you definitely will be able to if you use the MPC-HT filters. It's all about the video acceleration taking the load off the CPU.

The version of this mobo with the 128 MB of dedicated DDR3 video memory does offer about 15% more video performance -- my graphics scores went from 3.6 to 4.0 in the built-in Vista Experience benchmark. It's just a nice perk; I only "upgraded" because I botched installing an aftermarket heatsink on the mobo northbridge and eventually burned it up.. :P

> Of course, if you get 3 movies, rip them all, then send the discs back and don't watch them all before the next batch arrives, you're still "ripping off" NetFlix.

It varies, but I don't artificially rent and return. I've kept some Netflix discs for literally months. Some of the titles I've rented I never even got around to watching, ever.

Like I said in the post, it's about convenience.

> Did you really just admit to a felony?

I guess, but I fail to see the harm when it's for my own personal use, and I paid for the rental fair and square. It's not like I'm seeding torrents here, or building some massive multi-terabyte digital video library.

I wonder how all this compares to ATIs own codec offering.

http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx?p=xp/radeonxavivo-xp

My guess would be that as long as Jeff erases the copy before returning the disc, nothing changes in the business model.

During the time for which Jeff is paying due to the rental, he should be allowed to watch the movie by the means he finds more comfortable. Doesn't this seem reasonable?

Now, if he keeps the file after returning the movie, he is wrong. That would mean keeping the right to watch the movie for more than the contracted time.

When you build your custom home theatre PC, I assume you are looking for one of the following
1. You don't want to spend money on buying a hardware player
2. You have a machine lying around which is sufficient to do video
3. And more importantly, you want customizability and ability to play any random video formats that a hardware player wouldn't be able to do without a firmware upgrade.

If you were looking for 1 and 2, why spend money on buying software? You can do most of the video with Linux + mplayer (optionally VLC). Even if you were looking for 3, Linux should suffice. How do you get any advantage after paying for (even cheapest $260) Windows Vista with Mediacenter?

Tyronomo that's an encoder, which although definitely interesting (hardware assisted encoding), is a different topic altogether:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=647&type=expert&pid=3

> after paying for (even cheapest $260) Windows Vista with Mediacenter?

Windows Vista Home Premium OEM is only about $100-$120 last time I checked.

And it is dead easy to set up. That's worth a hundred bucks to me. YMMV of course.

Thank you so much Jeff. My own HTPC was inspired by your previous articles and our hardware is very similar. Great recommendation on the moBo; I LOVE it. I usually get fantastic results watching HD TV content (over-the-air 1080i) but if I can offload more to the video card I would love to try. Do you think the above would help WMC recorded HD content?

I also followed the record & watch process w/ Netflix. My media center at the time was an XBox w/ XBMC (the only piece of software that made the XBox worth anything) and the DVD drive would hardly read anything. Rip to a network drive and now I can watch in the living room, bedroom, copy to the laptop and watch on a trip, etc. I likewise didn't keep the movies. If I liked it enough to want to keep it around I always spoke with my wallet.

Now I am making the rounds on online video rental. I think I have tried them all that have a WMC presence. The now-defunct Vongo was the only service with a descent user-experience from the couch. I would love to hear about your experiences with this method of delivery should you decide to give it a whirl. My cable's on-demand experience is, sadly, superior to anything I can get out of the Rich Media experience in my WMC HTPC with a great internet connection.

And that makes me sad.

DXVA decoding is nice, but it's got a few flakes around the edges you should be careful of:
1. It requires you use the EVR renderer on Vista, which sometimes screws up luma levels in MPC-HC. If this happens to you try telling MPC-HC to use the 'EVR Custom' renderer which generally is closer to what the video should look like.
2. It doesn't play every stream you will find online. Any stream ripped off a high def disc will work though.

There's more info here: http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html

@department_g33k

You'd be better off with Kubuntu. ;-)

In all seriousness, though, media software isn't crippled on Linux. Once you get everything working, it truly is better. Although there are enough negatives (it takes more ka-jiggering, for example) to balance that out. Overall, I'm glad I switched.

/I'd also like to offer you some software I wrote. As a gift.

@Jeff

IANAL, but "failing to see the harm" in committing a felony is not usually considered a reasonable defense. I think you should just delete this post before Netflix cancels your account.

(Just my $.02)

What Jeff is doing is not much different from taping TV shows with a VCR, which was deemed legal back in 1984: <a href="http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id408.htm">http://eightiesclub.tripod.com/id408.htm</a>

>How do you get any advantage after paying for (even cheapest $260) Windows Vista with Mediacenter?

By being able to access that machine from 2 Xbox 360s in other areas of the house and get the same Media Centre experience, live TV, Recorded TV, music, videos etc.

@Netflix (10:01 PM)

It's very different. To whit:

1. He's violating Netflix's TOS.

Content shall not be reproduced or used without express written permission from Netflix, Inc., or its suppliers.... Netflix reserves the right to terminate your membership hereunder if Netflix, in its sole and absolute discretion, believes that you are in violation of this paragraph, such violations including the copying of DVDs rented to you by us...

(http://www.netflix.com/TermsOfUse?lnktrk=PUD_TOU#intelproperty)

2. He's probably violating the DCMA. DVD's are encrypted, so unless he rips his DVDs using a DVD-approved (by court order) $10,000 Kaleidescope system, he's violating the DCMA every time he does it. (In a nutshell, he needs to decrypt the disc without a license from the DVD-CCA. Decrypting without a license is a DCMA violation.)

@myself & Netflix

To be pedantic, there may be other software that can legally rip DVDs. Kaleidescope is the only one that I know has been proven legal until the appeals play out.

@JPLemme: no matter what Netflix's terms of service say, it is legal to record TV shows for personal use. It's the "fair use" exception to the copyright. If Netflix's terms do not allow that, it makes no difference. The fact that Netflix puts something in its terms of service does not automatically make it legal.

http://ati.amd.com/technology/avivovideoconverter/index.html

This is probably a better link, and yes I did confuse encoding with decoding :(
Although I would think it safe to assume that if you using ATIs Avivo to hardware encode, there should be some benefit when you decode. Unfortunately the marketing page I linked does not clearly state us such.

Clearly no-one here has read the Pirates Dillema (http://thepiratesdilemma.com/), or considered that as consumers, we should have at least some say in how we chose to watch movies and listen to music. It's not just more convenient...it's basically a new kind of more convenient, and right now, there's no competition.

All I'm saying really however, is at least Jeff's still, like I am, trying to support the industry in some way by spending something on legitimate licenses, even though they're making out lives as hard as possible, for the sake of share-holder profits. (And yes, it is still harder just knowing how much simpler the technology can be, without those little plastic discs, and pointless copy-protection schemes.)

One final post before bed, because I got curious.

Slysoft seems to be in that gray zone of software that allows you to do something that should be legal, but may not be. They're not licensed by the DVD-CCA, so they don't have the right to decrypt CSS-encrypted DVDs. And their license says:

# SlySoft Ltd. discourages any attempt to copy rented DVDs. It is illegal to make a copy of a DVD for most purposes other than your own personal use. SlySoft Ltd. respects the rights of artists and film companies, and asks that You do the same.
# Using the SOFTWARE will create backup copies of DVDs. The copy will be an archival backup copy of a DVD, created solely for the private and personal use of the owner of the DVD from which it was made. Federal copyright laws prohibit the unauthorized reproduction, distribution, or exhibition of copyrighted materials, if any, contained in the archival backup copy. The resale, reproduction, distribution, or commercial exploitation of the archival backup copy is strictly forbidden. We ask you to respect the rights of copyright holders.

(i.e. the archival backup is meant so that you can burn a new disc if the old one gets damaged. Actually playing it off the file would be wrong. Wink, wink.)

The whole rotten system sucks, but regardless this is not a good thing to be blogging about on a popular blog.

@netflix

1. It is legal to record BROADCAST TV shows. Not to make copies of physical media.

2. And to make sure it stays illegal, your friendly MPAA and RIAA pushed through the DCMA so that even IF the coping itself is legal, breaking the CSS to make the copy is not.

3. Netflix's TOS can absolutely, positively restrict you in whatever way they feel like it. It's a contract that you can choose not to sign, so they can include any reasonable terms that they like. By your logic, a non-disclosure agreement would be unenforceable because it violates your first amendment right to free speech.

@netflix

I'm referring to the SCOTUS case regarding making copies of TV shows. Of course it's legal to make copies of physical media in a general sense.

@JPLemme: there was no DVD rentals in 1984, so the ruling obviously did not consider that possibility. In any case, it's pointless to argue about law here. Until a court rules about this specific case, we can only guess. Your guess is as good as mine. And Jeff should be presumed innocent until proven guilty :-)

Just let me point out that the first amendment protects your right to free speech only from the government. It does not apply to the private parties (such as an NDA, or to a million other situations when you can NOT say anything you want.)

I wish there were a Hardware assisted "Encoding". I encode a lot of movies for my PMP (cowon D2) and it is painfully slow.
I guess NVIDIA CUDA will hopefully change this.
If someone has any more information, please let us know.

And gr8 post Jeff.
But all this is so complicated its only meant for geeks, wonder how the average joe will cope up with all those codecs and players. It becomes too damn complicated.

Dude you made my day, I bought a new LCD tv and I was seeing the very same Planet Earth videos you mention over a pretty high end laptop and utterly disgusted each time the output got chopy. Thanks for this info, heading off to download the codecs

In response to your digression: T3 got such a bad rap, _because_ "it's not a landmark film like T1 or T2." It really doesn't matter if it actually was "a solid entry in the franchise," because everyone would first compare it to T1 and T2.

I haven't bothered to read all the comments, but I'd like to wholeheartedly recommend Media Portal. It's does everything MCE does *and* you can configure it to your liking. Oh, and it's open source too!

Check it out at http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

"It's not like I'm seeding torrents here, or building some massive multi-terabyte digital video library".

Na.. that's so last year!

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000815.html

"but I'd like to wholeheartedly recommend Media Portal. It's does everything MCE does *and* you can configure it to your liking. Oh, and it's open source too!"

And it looks sh*t, and it's 10 times harder to setup/use than Vista MCE! Great!!

Great post. I used to use MPC but dropped it in favour of VLC. That was before they used internal codecs, shall give it another spin now.

"a weird little standalone app"

come on, give open source some love. media player classic is a great program which does what it is supposed to do perfectly, as your example also illustrates. its small size is a POSITIVE thing, and doesn't make it weird.

@rmf:
"imagine if that amount of time a customer keeps the disc is artificially shortened... the model falls apart and the value of the disc is diluted"

So, if Netflix can rent out the same disk more often... their business model falls apart? Funny, I'd think they'd enjoy the extra profit.

I got HD video working on quite an old system doing the same steps, if you have a decent video card it's well worth the time to offload video processing to it. Can't wait until general computing can be more easily passed off to the GPU.

Here is my DVD playing process:

When I get a DVD, I press the eject button on my DVD player to open the little drawer. This simultaneously opens the drawer to allow disc insertion and switches the TV to the correct channel (I like this part, it's very clever the way it does that). I then press the play button, which has the benefit of both closing the drawer (now with the disc inside it) and starting the playback.

Sometimes the TV gets the wrong widescreen mode, and I need to press a third button, and perhaps turn the volume up a bit too (Button press number 4) but in principle I reckon I have my process down to two simple steps.

Clearly, I'm doing it wrong.

Jeff:

I've followed your blog for some time now because you often have had good things things to say, things worth thinking about and learning from.

What seems to be your conscious decision to ignore the Netflix Terms of Service, however, leaves me surprised and disappointed. From your postings, you've always seemed like someone who understands technical issues and tries to do the right things: in this case, apparently not.

One may not like copyright law, but it is the law -- and you don't seem to be doing this as an act of civil disobedience.

If I hired you to do some programming for me, would you treat our contract and NDA terms the same way?

I hope to see a future post from you clarifying your position.

@anon :

And it looks sh*t, and it's 10 times harder to setup/use than Vista MCE! Great!!

I've just switched to MediaPortal after 6 months on VMC. VMC might look good and be easy to set up, but :
- It's artficially tied to the operating systemn which utterly sucks. Want to try the next release ? install Windows 7. Ewww
- The TvPack is a fucking disaster. Not only you are supposed to buy a new machine to get it, but if you go ahead and install the unnoficial patch you still get 10x more bugs, and *still* can't have HDTV on DVB-T. And there's no ETA to correct that.
And when you realise that the tv pack suck too much and you've got to uninstall it, well, you can't, you're supposed to reinstall windows, and get every patch in the right order to get things mostly working again.
- But without the tvpack, you can't reliably use more than 2 tuners
- Then there is the totally braindead video view where you're supposed to find the movie you're looking for by searching through 500 thumbnails
- The V2 extenders disconnects way too often, and it you've got to reconfigure them each time you really switch them off (which will create a new user on the VMC machine, to whom you'll have to give the good rights on the good folders once again). Additionally it seems that the manufacturers are trying to empty their stocks as fast as they can, which is kinda suspicious. You can bet that if you want extenders with the new MCE version, you'll have to buy them *again*
- As you can see on thegreenbutton, it's very clear that MS considers current VMC users as early adopters, with a very good technical background. They know they can put up with way more crap that the typical user would, and they don't give a fuck about those users, they represent 0.1% of their final target market. They're just very forgiving lab rats to them.

Alternativly, you can put a little time into MediaPortal, and have everything working in a few days. The configuration difficulty is mostly due to a braindead design in some parts. Some things which are configured on the client really should be on the server for example, and the documentation can be a bit painful to find. However it's in no way worse than the afformentionned crap you have to put up with to get VMC to work reliably. And at least I know i can modify things I don't like if I really want to, and don't feel like throwing my HTPC through the window at the end of the day...

Dear Jr. Law Enforcement Deputys,

Get a grip, he isn't shooting kittens.

Love,
Echostorm

PS. Cool writeup Jeff.

A couple interesting quotes from the Netflix TOS:

"The use of the Netflix service, including DVDs rented to you by us is solely for your personal and non-commercial use."
No problem there. I think everyone agrees Jeff's usage in this case is personal and non-commercial.

"Netflix does not promote, foster or condone the copying of DVDs or any other infringing activity. If you believe your work has been copied in a way that constitutes copyright infringement..."
Doesn't that imply there's a way to copy it in a way that *doesn't* constitute copyright infringement?

Also, with the new Xbox 360 update, there's an option to copy games to the hard drive. I've been doing that with most of my rented games because they're often a bit scratched and crash when playing from the disc, but play fine from the HD. Is that copyright infringement?

"You're pirating the movies. You don't own them, nor do you have the right to copy them and keep them on your hard drive for a millisecond longer than you have the physical DVD. If you plan to break the law that's your choice, but don't act like you're above the law because you already "already own more movies than I could possibly ever watch in one lifetime."

Dear "rmf" - don't act like you're above the entire world and the laws of your country apply everywhere. Actually, there are countries, where you actually HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE A COPY OF ANY COPYRIGHTED WORK (EXCEPT SOME EXCEPTIONS LIKE SOFTWARE OR DBs) AND USE IT FOR PERSONAL, NON-COMMERCIAL PURPOSE. Taken as such - yes, you can download whatever movie on the internet (given that it was already made public, no pre-premier movies and so) you wish and store it on your hard drive and it is perfectly legal, since you paid a compulsory fee from every CD/DVD media you bought, every hard drive, every computer, copier, memory card, toner, recorder, everything.

If you live in country where downloading movie is more severe crime than murder, it is your choice, but don't act like you rule the world and your stupid laws apply everywhere in the world.

@WattTheF

By 'business model' I mean the model between Netflix and the movie studios. Sure its no skin of Netflix's back if people copy and return, but the Studio who sold the DVD will absolutely care. The price of the DVD is set assuming exclusive viewing for whomever currently possesses it. Once people copy the contents and return/sell the disc this is no longer the case. So what should studios charge for a DVD if it no longer guarantees single ownership of the content? Perhaps they should just stop selling DVDs altogether and only offer digital copies with stifling DRM that punishes the majority of law abiding consumers.

If Jeff was indeed deleting the copy at the exact moment he returns the movie then I could see this as a reasonable use despite whatever the Netflix ToS and DVD content laws are. I'm guessing he isn't though simply because, despite what he says, there's simply no advantage to copying a DVD other than for later viewing.

please upload Planet Earth rips! thanks jeff!

@law

The difference here is that customers don't own the discs Netflix sends them in the mail. They're renting them and in fact pay much less than the price of the disc. For this model to work for Studios the single exclusive viewing model has to hold up.

Is it legal to buy media, copy it for you own use, then sell it again? Whatever country you're in you can see why this shouldn't be legal.

You seem shocked that hardware acceleration could be faster than software. Come on! When you absolutely need a brand-new technology to run fast, of course you do it in specialized hardware. Later on you start doing things in on a general-purpose processor when they catch up. Examples: Firewalls, video games, and now video decoding. Plus hundreds more.

Spending too much time programming makes you forget how really fast hardware can be.

Eyal (measuring time in gate delays, not clock cycles)

@izb

You forget the part where you have to stand up, walk to the DVD cabinet, find the DVD, open it's box and take it out carefull ;)

Just kidding ofcourse. Though I do have my giant collection of live concert dvd's ripped to my HTPC HDD. Convenient to select the right DVD with just a few remote buttons.

@Jeff

Thanks for this post. Will give this a try when i get back from work. On my work laptop, my mkv sample stops playing after 15 secs. Maybe it has to do with the fact the videosystem is not up to the task. With ffdshow it kept running though.

Maybe you should add that a media splitter should also be installed. Haali will do, but the MPC-HC MatroskaSplitter will do fine too.

For all the linux geeks out there, have you found a linux equivalent to what Jeff posted above? I suffer the same problem of 99% CPU usage when attempting to play HD content on a decent machine. So far I haven't seen any codecs that will offload the decoding to the GPU, but if there is one...especially one for Nvidia, please post!

Scott, it looks like people are working on it, but I don't see anything solidifying yet.

<a href="http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decoding">http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decoding</a>
<a href="http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/11/1210224">http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/11/1210224</a>

And to all you people who are SO ANAL about DRM, DCMA, copyright and all that...get a life, get a grip. If you were this passionate about something constructive, the world would be a better place.

Crap...didn't notice that little "no HTML" marker. Here's those links again, in a less confusing format. ;)

http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decoding
http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/11/1210224

Jeff,

I'm not sure why you're so surprised that offloading CPU work to your graphics card (which is another CPU) lowers your system CPU usage. Um, duh? The important fact is whether or not your GPU, assisted by your CPU can seamlessly playback the videos (which apparently it can). That's the only thing that matters.

For most people, the decision to privately use Netflix this way is probably not going to do him any harm in a legal sense. However, the publicity of this forum and the readership Jeff enjoys makes him a target for litigation.

Here's a guy who quit his day job and is a pro blogger. All these people want to hear what he says about computers, technology, and software development.

It's more cost effective to make an example of someone recognizable than go after a bunch of nobodies. The other strategy is to try to go after the guy running a multi-terabyte torrent, which if I were Netflix, I might think Jeff is.

OMG, he's a felon! He's paying neflix to watch movies and then he's doing that. Quick, cancel his account before he can give them more money to watch movies!

I've done the same thing, and I'm sure I was one of the "lightest" renters (aka, Netflix's favorite). In fact, I was on the 3 at a month plan, and I would say that I averaged renting 3 movies/month TOTAL. I'm sure Netflix really hated my money (sarcasm).

Ok, by the law, it might not be legal, and that's a fair argument. That doesn't mean that you can argue that he's some kind of immoral person, and a drain on society.

Yes, you may want to just edit this post. Who knows when the wrong person might come along in 2 years and go after you.

Jeff, I'm sure you got the idea from most of the commenters. Time-shifting rented material is really not cool. It doesn't fall under fair use because you don't own it. It doesn't fall under broadcast rules (VCR recording) because Netflix didn't pay for a public broadcast license and I doubt the studios would have granted one even if they wanted it. And whether or not you read the TOS you did agree to abide to the terms by paying the monthly charge.

As for the morality of it, this is pretty low even for you. The $15/month or whatever the charge is barely covers the cost of postage with heavy rotation. Their business model is lot like the ISPs, they can absorb the cost of mailing DVDs because most customers are not watching and mailing them constantly, but the heavy users make it expensive for everyone.

Jeff, I know you're a Windows dude, but any idea what the equivalent setup is under Linux?

@JPLemme, You've missed (and proven) my point wonderfully. First of all, it seems like all the Linux fanboys can't read through a whole page of blog comments about Windows without having to throw in a "look at me, look at me!" comment bait about how Linux is somehow superior to Windows. My point was that I don't care if Linux is "better", I'll stick to Windows. I like getting updates pushed and not having to help troubleshoot the product as I use it.

@Echostorm, thank you! I'm relatively certain that no LE is trolling this blog looking for people to arrest. Even so, RIAA and MPAA seem more interested in suing broke college students and teenagers, Jeff is practically bulletproof! (Btw, copying movies to a HDD isn't a felony, it's a civil issue.)

Try mplayer for windows(!). I use it on a daily basis.

People should chill out...

If you rent a movie from Netflix, copy it, and keep it on your local machine until you put the Netflix disk back in the mail and immediately delete the local file - you've hurt nobody at all.

Heck, even if you rent a movie from Netflix, copy it, and only watch it while you have the physical disk and then, once every month or two you delete all of the local files, without viewing them - you've hurt nobody at all.

People are 'assuming' that Jeff is getting a movie, burning it, and sending it back faster than he would have done if he didn't burn it. There is NOTHING in his post to suggest that he is doing that.

Also, there are Netflix subscriptions that include a cap to the # of rentals you can have per month. In that case, if Jeff is paying to rent two movies each month and he uses his burning to 'speed up' the time it takes for him to send back the movies - whether he has the disk for two hours or two weeks before mailing it back, there is zero impact on Netflix's business model or bottom line.

And also, why someone would mind renting the movies to just make a collection of movies on hd when it seems to be as illegally as torrenting those and costing a bit more...

As a life-long Terminator fan, I can't help but agree with you about T3. I saw it in the theatres the day it opened, and the scene that just destructed the street literally left rugburn on my chin. That is one of the most intense (and likely expensive) scenes of all time, in my opinion.

Overall the film was not as good as the first two, but it's still a great flick. I will be watching the fourth, for sure.

This reminds me of when we first got DVD playback on PCs. You had to install a special MPEG decoder card to get it to work since our CPUs weren't powerfuly enough to do full software decoding.

No doubt we're seeing the same with high-def/Blu-ray playback now. Need to rely on specialized (er... video card) for hardware decoding, only to be replaced in the future with software decoding once CPUs get faster.

What a waste of electricity, copy, play, delete, copy, play, delete. You may want to look at your energy consumption during this process. not Eco friendly.

Many people here probably use 64bit Vista in which case they have to use 64bit codecs in Vista Media Center. I did a blog post about how to get this working, especially if there are conflicts between x64 and x86 codecs. See http://jvance.com/blog/2008/12/15/DirectShowFiltersForWindowsVistaX64And64bitCodecs.xhtml

There's a larger issue here than 1 person ripping a DVD/BD they don't own and watching later. Jeff authors a blog with readership in the thousands (10s of thousands?). Moreover, he has historically been a vocal proponent of consumer rights (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001044.html) and against consumer unfriendly DRM schemes (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001113.html). For him now to flippantly dismiss any legal (or moral) issues with copying Netflix media, then go on to detail, step by step, how to build a machine to do just that is hypocritical and, frankly, irresponsible.

Look, when you don't like harsh or unfair content protection schemes you can do 2 things:

1) Put your money behind other, better solutions and voice your disagreement through productive, legal channels.

or 2) Disregard the protection mechanism altogether, subvert it and add to the problem.

Netflix is a service that provides a real value to customers and it's not unreasonable to follow the simple rules. If you think it is then don't subscribe, but breaking the rules puts the service at risk for all of us that happily follow the rules.

@Rob

As far as I know there is no cap on the number of movies you can receive a month (a quick look at the Netflix rules seems to reinforce this). You're limited simply by how fast you can watch, return and receive another movie. If Jeff (or anyone) is immediately ripping the movies, then sending them back he is certainly able to receive many more movies than if he were watching them from the discs. One could conceivable rent, rip and return dozens of movies in a single month, which breaks the model Netflix (and the studios who sell to Netflix) operate on.

Does Jeff explicitly say he's doing this? No, but his vague rationalization gives me no reason to believe he isn't. Again, what is the advantage to ripping the disc if it isn't so he can watch it when he doesn't have the disc? It simply doesn't make sense. It's not his prerogative to interpret the Netflix ToS as he seems fit.

Beyond what Jeff is or isn't doing, it's at least his responsibility to mention the legal and moral implication of ripping a rented disc. As a member of some clout in the HTPC community he is looked to by many for direction.

If I may offer to other HTPCers out there, GBPVR!
http://www.gbpvr.com/pmwiki/

This is a freeware Media Center software package that runs on WinXP/Vista/Media Center with it's own menu system and architecture. It's built with .Net 2.0, and is open for plugin development.

The community is active, and they have worked with Hauppauge (http://www.hauppauge.com/site/products/data_mediamvp.html) and Popcorn Hour (http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/) to work with their Media Extenders, allowing some really nice features.

One thing I love it for that I haven't (yet) seen in other packages is a plugin that allows easy access to multiple emulators, for a super gaming experience. I can play Atari thru Playstation from one simple menu.

moral issues with media ripping? Really? Morality? LOL . Ethics ... Not morality, I doubt any major religion has anything to say about media rights.

Commandment 34: copy not thy neighbor's intelectual property

OK, good point brian... 'moral' is the incorrect term. This is clearly an ethical issue. Semantics aside the point is still stands.

On CoreAVC, i've got a media center pc, core2duo processor, integrated graphics.

Using hardware acceleration is simply not an option, without coreavc's codecs HD content was unplayable. So, for all those people who cant do hardware acceleration, coreavc's codecs really do rock!

Once again I think its worth mentioning its not a criminal offence, its civil!

Secondly don't you think this should be legal? Seriously if I want to watch a movie I've rented from my uber 5.1 and big TV setup on my HTPC and also have it available for watching across the network to any TV in my house (which doesn't have a blue ray player) or more to the point watch it from a blue raw drive in a Linux machine that should be OK.

Just because the large media companies have forced the law doesn't mean its morally wrong to be behaving in that way. No one is hurt, no one is loosing profit it is all part of the modern digital world. The law and morals are rarely in sync. What Jeff is doing here is totally normal, 10's of thousands of people do this every day. The very fact that there are laws against it is the actual problem.

As for caching the NetFlix rentals, I just use the Watch Instantly option. I wish they had a larger selection of these movies. It's not my place to judge, but I'll have to agree with others Jeff that it's probably not wise to discuss your NetFlix practices in such detail. You are strapping a target on you back by doing so.

T3 sucked because they rewrote the John Connor character. T2 introduced a brassy, independent kid who was not afraid of anything. Exactly the kind of boy that could grow up to be the John Connor of the future. T3 neutered the character into a sniveling, shallow and self-centered excuse of a human that would have been the first to fall after the rise of the machines. At this rate, T4 will have Sara Connor playing Mahjong at the social center.

@rmf

I had to go back to the Netflix's site and verify, but it turns out there is a plan (the cheapest plan) that gives you 1 DVD at a time out, limit two per month for the low, low price of $4.99 a month.

In that situation, provided you will hit your cap of two rentals per month, keeping them for two hours or two weeks will not affect how many movies you get to see, how much postage Netflix has to pay, or how much Netflix will have to pay in royalties.

But yeah, the assumption here is that Jeff is doing this to be able to rent more movies each month that he could watch if he were not to copy them. I don't see why people want to make that assumption and then accuse Jeff of 'stealing'.

I could assume that EVERYONE who has Netflix is illegally copying movies because, otherwise, Netflix doesn't seem worth it to me...but that seems extreme.

It also seems extreme to assume that everyone who copies a movie from Netflix is doing so to 'cheat' the system in some way, because without some type of cheat, it doesn't seem worth it to me to take the time to copy them.

There seems to be a general opinion of "who cares he paid to rent the movie" in the comments and even Jeff's own admission he "sees no harm" in doing this. At the risk of being pedantic I'll re-state the problem:

When you "rent" a movie from Netflix you are paying for the right to watch the movie _while you have the disc in your possession_. Ripping it to watch later (after you send the disc back) may seem innocent enough, but it is breaking the rules and the reason why is important. The price the studio sets on the disc is based on the idea of exclusive ownership: 1 person can only ever watch the movie at a time. As soon as you rip the movie and watch it beyond your possession of the disc you are breaking that model. Studios have separate fee structures for on-demand/streaming media, but the media on the disc is intended to be used solely by the person who possessed it.

No, I can't assume Jeff is exploiting this to an extreme degree, but I can assume, but his own comments, that he doesn't understand why it's bad for Netflix and, in the end, consumers. You can't be critical of DRM and studios attempting to protect their content then turn around and blatantly disregard laws of legal ownership.

>I don't think people should just give me the software they write.

@department_g33k

Most free software is written by people who were paid to write it. And when they work for the next client or employer, they can still use the stuff they wrote earlier. Unlike microserfs, who must forget everything they know before going to work for someone else.

So far as movies and TV go, I just say no. I won't watch them until the copyright crap and the captive audience ads are gone.

Regarding T3:

In T1, Arnold was a terrifying enemy.
In T2, he was a father figure.
In T3, he was John's goofy uncle.

Having said that, the last 10 minutes of the movie make up for an otherwise average action flick.

You know what? This sounds so cool, I'm going to dump cable and get a NetFlix subscription just to do exactly this same thing.

+ 1 to Jeff

@rmf I agree with your argument, however I do have a question: is your main issue with the practice of "backing up" rented DVDs the fact that it's from Netflix that he's doing it, or the principle itself?
I understand that Netflix's business model is derived from the fact that the value of each DVD is based directly on the length of time you keep the disc, but how does the issue of copying rented DVDs come up in situations where the value of the DVD is constant?
Aside, of course, from the illegality of going around the copy protection.

For example, does renting a DVD from a video store and copying it for your own use really damage the profits of the store or anyone else?
Or for that matter, what about renting a DVD from a free source, such as a library?

Should I be worried about my morals if I or someone I know does this?

@Jake

No, my issue here is not specifically tied to Netflix that just happens to be what Jeff wrote about. Renting/borrowing a video from anywhere (video store, library, Netflix, etc), copying/'archiving' it then returning it all create the same problem. In every case its not the lender who is losing profit - it's the movie studio. They set the price of a disc with the intention that 1 person will be able to use it at a time. Once 2, 3, 100 people have digital copies of the same disc the studio has now made profit from a price charged for 1 disc while potentially dozens are watching it.

I don't bring this up to defend the poor movie studios - they're no angels themselves. But to have intelligent discourse on digital ownership and DRM issues one must understand the problems content creators are wrangling with. In this case it's crystal clear to me - copying rented discs is illegal and wrong. If you do it that is your choice, but don't complain about restrictive DRM content providers shove down our throats to prevent this exact sort of behavior.

While this article is interesting from the techinical point of view, explaining what's on a blue-ray disk.

On the other hand, it sure seems like a lot of trouble to go to just watch a movie, when you could just play the disk in your player and get on with your life.

If for some crazy reason you want to watch T3 next month, why not just put it back on your Netflix list?

And I really wonder about people who consume so many Netflix DVDs that they get throttled. If you're watching that much TV, then you have no life and should be sent to some kind of re-education camp that would help you discover some purpose for your life.

The crime is that Arnold not only made some so-so movies, he's helped ruin the economy of my home State, cut school programs, blah blah.

If you only watch the movie while you have it checked out from Netflix, I doubt if you are breaking the spirit of the law.

The real question: "is Arnold worth the disk space?"

@Jason

"Ok, by the law, it might not be legal"

makes me :)

Even if Jeff isn't breaking the law by "seeding torrents" ..."or building some massive multi-terabyte digital video library". He did just explain to the masses how to do just that. ;)

You've discovered the difference between a general microprocessor (CPU) and a special purpose microprocessor (GPU). :P

How can people have trouble playing back video on modern PCs?
My 6 year old Radeon9800 + amd3200+ has no problem with 1080p videos.

Using mplayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu) on vista with dwm disabled and ffdshow as codecs.

Can VLC make use of coreAVC?
I have an ancient 6 year old computer (Athlon 1800+) which is unable to play even 720 HD content. But when I use coreAVC with MPC, it is smooth and watchable. The same clip in VLC is choppy and unwatchable.

So I guess the Geforce 4 doesn't support video acceleration? No 1080 HD for me then...

@ed
I'm not sure what you were getting at. I think you missed my point also. All I'm saying is that it's getting pretty old seeing posts in every Windows-related forum from some geekier-than-thou Linux user. Let's just keep on topic, m-kay? This post is about HD decoding performance in Windows, not whether Windows or Linux is better at it.

@Samrat Patil

CUDA has changed the video encoding process:

http://badaboomit.com/

The renting debate reminds me of the ISP marketing model. The issues comes down to the usage of the term "unlimited".

<rant>

At some point, it became OK for businesses to redefine that word to fit whatever meaning the would like. I don't fault Netflix here as much as other companies, but the reality is that the companies don't really *mean* unlimited. What they want is the 'idea' of unlimited without having to actually provide it. I wish someone court/government would just tell these businesses that the details of their TOS don't mean sh*t if the consumer was sold a product with conflicting marketing speak.

</rant>

"My ripping is purely about simplicity and ease of use"

Huh?

Here we go:
-Rip using AnyDVD HD
-Install Media Player Classic Home Cinema - after a Great Deal of Research (your words, not mine)
-Offload Video Decoding Duties to the video card

Done!

No, wait... You want to use Windows Vista Media Center. So, using an obscure forum post (again, your words), you needed to
-download standalone filters
-extract the codec, copy to c:\windows\system32
-register the codec using regsvr32

Done!

No, wait, forgot about the H264 Blu-Ray encoding format:
-Get yourself a copy of Radlight Filter Manager
-Navigate to DirectShow filters part of the tree, look for MPC - Video decoder, go to Properties
-Check the H.264/AVC box, and finally...

Done!

THIS is simplicity and ease of use?

How about this:
-Buy Blu-ray player
-Attach to TV using HDMI cable
-Watch movie

Done!
CPU usage: 0%

@department_g33k

You need to lighten up, man. You're taking this way too seriously.

//And have you tried Linux? I really like it and I think you would, too.

Fantastic article! Great research and information! I am totally inspired to create my own HTPC in this manner. That MPC codec replacement hack is brilliant!

As for the legality issue, given how absurdly draconian, anti-consumer, and anti technology the DMCA and media industry trade groups are, it really scares me that some of your readers (presumably programmers/tech people) are so complacent with it and adamant about being "DIGITALLY CORRECT".

Clearly, a heavy dose of civil disobedience is in order.

@rmf, Joe Chin:

I read the whole thing and didn't once see "I rip the movie and immediately send it back for another one, and then watch it later when I have time."

If you want to add assumptions, fine. But make sure you mention that it's your assumption.

I personally am a Netflix member as well; I've been holding on to "Shaun of the Dead" for about 2 months since my wedding. (Things have, understandably, been busy.) During the time I hold on to the movie, if it's easier for me to rip it to my PC and watch it there, am I hurting Netflix in any way? No.

Am I violating their TOS? Not according to Krenn's post (I haven't looked for myself).

If I delete it after I watch it (as Jeff *did* specifically say he did), then what's the problem?

Try to remove your assumptions and then reread the post, and see if you can find a way down off that high horse of yours.

Dear Jeff, as a younger computer scientist I was wondering how you were able to get around the drm that is embedded in vista so that you could watch a ripped movie in HD and not a degraded image.

@Frank

> HIS is simplicity and ease of use?

> How about this:
> -Buy Blu-ray player
> -Attach to TV using HDMI cable
> -Watch movie

> Done!
> CPU usage: 0%

Well,.. yeah.. but it wouldn't make a very interesting blog post. Remember, Jeff is the guy that almost get arrested for hacking telephone line in his teenage year, and brought 2kgs book on hacking for lightweight reading during flights.

I wonder how many of you would still see no problem with this if you owned Netflixs, or at least your paycheck came from them...

I'm sure a quick e-mail to customer service could resolve this rather than using assumptions. I guess, more or less, ignorance of the law isn't protection from the law... be careful...

Why is no-one asking the question about NetFilx's business model that is obviously flawed from the start?

To instigate a business that is so easily 'ripped off' that you can do it accidently (just look at the debate about the legality of what Jeff is doing. Obviously, people are NOT absolutely sure of the legality or otherwise) and then to initiate all sorts of DRM and legal action to force people to comply with their defective business model is screwy.

In the art world, if I bought a Matisse painting, I would own it. It does not belong to Matisse, his estate or any other corporate.

This whole mess about copyright is being pushed by middle men who did not create the works and have no legal right to claim they have sole right to copy.

Pirates are people who, from a vessel on the sea, steal from the land or other vessels, usually with violence. Copying data is simply that, not piracy.

Perhaps some RIAA executives should be violently robbed by pirates to make clear to them the difference in definitions between Pirates and those who copy data.

Once long ago, copyright protected the creators of a work form someone else claiming to be author, or from illegal broadcast (distribution) of that work. It had NOTHING to do with copying data. We need to put the law back into perspective and prosecute the distributors of works who do not have permission of the true authors to distribute the work. The RIAA affiliated companies are guilty of this themselves and should be prosecuted.

@department_g33k I'm responding to "I think you missed my point," and to your earlier statement "I use Windows because ... b) I don't think people should just give me the software they write."

Many people use Linux because they can fix bugs themselves, develop job skills, display their code publicly, contribute to the common good, and especially because no one preaches to them "it's not ethical to take code you wrote on one job to your next job (because your employer owns everything you write)."

The point is _not_ that Linux is superior (frequently it isn't, especially regarding secret hardware like nVidia) or more geeky. It is that proprietary software is written by people forced to give away their right to re-use their own work. The salary might pay for their time, but it doesn't pay for the loss of the right to re-use and publish. The people who work to write free sotware are also paid for their time, and they don't have to give away those rights. When you use Windows, you contribute to the power of Microsoft, nVidia, etc., to force this bargain onto their employees.

Copyright (under law in most countries) falls mechanically (legalese for automatically) to the creator of a work. Mechanical copyright remains with the author for their lifetime (and with their estate usually for 100 years after their death).

Although permission to copy and distribute may be granted to third parties, mechanical copyright REMAINS with the true author. Mechanical copyright cannot be sold and become the property of another.

*** Only the true author of a work has copyright!

to ed,

It can be argued that closed source companies that claim ownership of code written by someone else are transgressing the law.

The true creator of the code has mecanical copyright over their creation.

Cripes, stay on topic.
Jeff posts about how (hardware/software) he plays hi-def video.
Most comments are about whether he's being fair to Neftlix.
Many more comments about linux alternatives.
Geesh.

If you're a Vista user and you're having choppy playback, try this before spending any money on hardware or software:
- uninstall VLC
- install CCCP
- enjoy.

Glad to see you found MPC-HC. It has been my favourite movie player for years because the interface is based off of the old (classic, hence the name) Windows Media Player from Win95. Simple, elegant, and useful - I can't stand VLC because none of the keyboard shortcuts make sense to me :)

Interesting side note: MPC-HC is actually a fork of the original MPC, which came about after development ceased in March 2006. Yay open source!
original project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

To all the Linux fanboys:

Getting MythTV working on Linux on my media centre was hardly a positive experience. Bug this, quirk that, crash there.

Hell, after 3 months of fiddling my HTPC still has issues: e.g. sound will go all garbled randomly while playing, or the video will mysteriously pause sometimes, as if it were a buffer underrun. And all the keys on my remote don't work properly.

Like it or not, Windows "just works": and that's what most people are looking for. If it wasn't for the fact that I don't want to walk away from the emotional investment I've now made, I'd probably just install Vista.

to Peter,

When you say that "Windows just works", are you aware that the article was explaining how and why the "Microsoft solution" DOES NOT just work and the solution required software, hardware & configuration changes away from the "out of the box" ones.

>> THIS is simplicity and ease of use?

+1 to Frank...

The mess of codecs, players, and other whatnot make playing video on PCs a nightmare.

Thanks for the info!

@rmf: "As soon as you rip the movie and watch it beyond your possession of the disc you are breaking that model"

When you tape a TV show with VCR, you are breaking the model by which the free TV stations operate: you get the ability to watch the show while fast-forwarding through the commercials. Yet, taping TV shows is legal. I bring this up just to illustrate that if some activity breaks someone's business model it does not necessarily mean that such activity is illegal.

Going back to the copyright and "fair use", there should be a balance between the rights of the producers and the rights of the consumers. Neither side should tip the balance to its advantage too much. It's been ruled that time-shifting TV shows with the help of a VCR is legal and "fair use", even if it hurts the business model of the TV stations. Time-shifting rental DVDs seems to be just as "fair".

Yeah, Windows "just works". Except when it doesn't.

What a myth.

I think Jeff has a valid point with ripping Netflix DVD's to his harddrive so that he can view them later. Sounds good to me.

In fact, when I finish upgrading my computer I'll borrow my friend's copy of Vista and install it on the computer so that I can use Vista Media Center just like Jeff recommends. No need to buy a copy, I'm just 'time-shifting' the Vista DVD onto my computer!

Note: the above is obviously sarcasm (and not well done, at that). It does, however, amaze me that people who complain about people ripping off the software they wrote the go and justify their ripping off other people (and usually with the same arguments). Also note that the complainers are just as likely to be complaining about people ripping off their GPL'd software as it is shrink-wrapped software.

If you depend on copyrights/licenses/etc for your product, it's hypocritical to turnaround and say that it doesn't matter or it does no harm when you ignore those on other people's work

Thanks a lot Greg...

I built my HTPC based on Jeff's spec (added blu-ray drive, more RAM, bigger hard drive) and found out the hard way that HD content is a pain to play - even with PowerDVD HD. So I went and installed all the scary codec packs and got it all working. Recently though, PowerDVD keeps crashing and locking me out of the system when I try to load a movie (even from disc).

I want to switch down to the single uber-codec though so how do I un-register the old codec packs? Is uninstalling from the control panel sufficient?

WOW!

Thank you again for doing all this research and providing us with the cliff notes...

I followed the post and confirmed the exact same performance metrics with my media center pc (same specs as yours except tuner), the only other difference was that I used The Polar Express Blue Ray as the baseline.

Funny thing, I have what I consider a beefy workstation at home in my office, a windows experience of 5.8, 8 GB of RAM, RAID 0 OS (10K RPM) RAID 5 Data, Radeon X1950, that just chews up code code when I compile it, BUT the playback of the ripped file was choppy and I had colored squares randomly, oh and plus massive cpu usage to boot. It is a mazing how much the hardware helping out with decoding can make a difference.

>> after paying for (even cheapest $260) Windows Vista with Mediacenter?

>Windows Vista Home Premium OEM is only about $100-$120 last time I checked.

>And it is dead easy to set up. That's worth a hundred bucks to me. YMMV of course.

Define "set up". You have an entire blog post about getting it play HD without "video stuttering and sound breakup". Looks like there was quite a bit of time spent on tinkering, installing various codecs, copying files into magic locations. Doesn't seem like $100 well spent to me ;)

>> Dear Jeff, as a younger computer scientist

Neither Jeff, nor you are computer scientists. As a matter of fact, I sometimes suspect that Jeff isn't that good of a programmer even.

Jeff, you might be interested in NVIDIA's new ION platform:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3478

Hardware-accelerated video decoding on a netbook, that's the ticket.

That seems like a lot of time/effort to watch a video once. I just hdmi out to my tv. Disc only goes in to the drive once, except I don't need to burn it all to a temporary drive.

>>Neither Jeff, nor you are computer scientists. As a matter of fact, I sometimes suspect that Jeff isn't that good of a programmer even.

wut

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

Hi, are you Jeff Atwood?

Click - click go the handcuffs...

Have you failed to catch the FBI warnings at the start of every disk you ever ripped?

** You're fcuked! **

This post is one big hunk of horshit after another.

First you essentially advocate ripping off netflix (no pun intended) let's be real here the more often you return movies in a given month the less money netflix makes period. Moreover if you're ripping them to your hard drive you'll never rent them again denying netflix more revenue.
And let's cut the crap ripping a movie is only worth your time if you don't intend to ever delete the file.

Now let's talk codecs.
Dxva live it, learn it, love it, it obviates your entire post.

On to linux,
Linux obviously has lower hardware overhead. Htpcs are still generaly speaking in their infancy so whether you choose windows or linux hardly makes much difference you'll still waste much of your life attempting to fix shit.
In fact I would say if you really wanted a functional htpc you'd forego media center altogether and go with meedios, yes it would require some learning but that's life, stop whining about the tech learning curve on a tech blog and if its too hard don't write about it at all, the world doesn't need another half informed nimrod parroting his numbnuts opinions.

P.S
I rip netflix movies all the time, but I don't lie about it I'm an unrepentant media whore.

I know fuckall about linux, except that like any tool it can be useful and to simply dismiss it is ignorance.

Dxva has a number of tools out there to determine if its turned on and whether your apps are using it. I'm on a blackberry so be a man and google it.

Jeff you say: "Be sure you don't have any other video codecs registered, as the MPC-HC filter can handle everything"

Is there any easy way to ensure the only video codec you have registered is the MPC-HC filter?

Thanks!

Just wanted to point out...
http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/prodbrief/dg45fc_prodbrief.pdf
Supports integrated HDMI and a fixed function blu-ray decoder.
Also supports core2duo chips.

Letting fixed function hardware decode these discs is key- but it doesn't mean you need a whole graphics card...

I love your site! every problem i encountered you have talked about -- HTPC setup, 1080p TV as monitor, desk chair comparison, even this --- the article about how 1080p video is taxing the cpu too much and the solution for it. big thumb up.

@DMB

Have you heard of StackOverflow.com? Just wondering? It's kinda like this whole big website thingy that Jeff just kinda hacked out in his spare time.

Maybe you have something that we can use to compare how "good" you are compared to Jeff? Hmm?

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for the post. Does the MPC-HC filters allow WMP and WMC to play H.264 films or do you still have to have ffdshow pack installed?

Thanks,
Calum

All of you amateur, holier than thou blood sucking lawyers really need to get a life. Or stop reading technical blogs.

Now where is that button that filters all this garbage out from the real information in the comments? I think it was called "hide bullshit"?

Jeff, thanks for the article. But do be careful that some of the posters arent hiding in your closet to see what other child molesting habits you have -

@Frank

Obviously, you understood nothing about geeks... A programmer is somebody able to spend 10 minutes on a script to do automatically a job that would have took 5 minutes to do manually. Except that writing the script is much funnier, and once the job is done, it might be re-used.

I have children, and totally understand the need to do backups of DVDs. Once my children have "manipulated" the real DVDs a few times, they are hardly readable anymore...
I can't afford a multimedia hard disk now, but I would certainly use one if I could.

Beside, in France, we have the right to make private copies... :-P

"The ripping part has been straightforward; what I haven't been able to understand is why playback of 1920 x 1080 high definition files is so spotty on my current home theater PC"

I've been messing around with HD playback on a HTPC since the LG BluRay/HDDVD hit the shelves last year. In my experience, the biggest culprit in spotty playback is the ATI drivers themselves. If you spend some time reading on AVS forums you'll see that most people have the best luck with the 8.4 drivers. Anything newer than that is hit or miss depending on what you are trying to play. This general rule of thumb does vary depending on which ATI card you have however. The second biggest culprits are the media player applications themselves. I've had to keep both PowerDVD 7 and Arcsoft Total Media Theater installed because sometimes one app will have problems with a particular disc.

@Calum

Be sure you don't have any other video codecs registered, as the MPC-HC filter can handle everything. Once you register this magical codec, Windows Media Player (and thus, Windows Media Center) will use hardware accelerated high definition video playback. It's amazing. How amazing? Those Planet Earth rips, which used to take 80-100% of a mainstream dual core CPU, barely take 40% when using the hardware accelerated MPC-HC filters.

All you need is that one codec installed.

I'm tring it now on my HTPC to see if it works (I cna play 720p fine but 1080p jumps around)

Calum get rid of FFD sow it just trips thing sup, all you need is the link he provided us with, works great.

Dear Netflix,

You abandoned your HD DVD subscribers, so please feel free to shut up.

Love, / a former fan

it's good to see someone getting everything in one place for people who don't understand. it's very sad to see people who obviously can't read, or just want to fight/stir up trouble.

it was so nice back in the day when everyone on the internet had to have at least passing technical knowledge to get them there... smart people usually have manners.

rmf - "breaking the rules puts the service at risk for all of us that happily follow the rules."

Just because YOU CHOOSE to be a sheep and a schmuck who follows all the rules, don't expect the rest of us to. America was founded by rule breakers who questioned authority! Your morals are NOT absolute...

Stay in your nice straight line, don't make waves, and make sure you come to a complete stop at the sign - boy!

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG

Thanks for this article. Until now the only thing that I could play 1080p files with was CoreAVC. Both VLC Media Player and Mplayer's AVC codecs SUCK big time. With VLC it's not multithreaded, so as soon as CPU usage hits 50%, the video freezes sometimes for 5 seconds. And MPlayers codec (which I was using SMPlayer in this case, a nice GUI for it) would use a max of 30% but would only have a framerate of no more than 15.

Now I have another option besides paying for a codec that forces me to use windows media player (and when I use WMP I cannot crop video, volume normalize, etc).

I can tell you now that:
- MC on a fresh install of MCE 2005 will not play M2TS files.
- WMP will not play M2TS files that are about 7gb in size.
- MP (Media Portal) will play M2TS with only the MPC-HC filter installed but not accelerated, without the codec it wouldn't play. Radlight confirms it is enabled.
- MPC will play M2TS files accelerated but with breakage in the last line of blocks. However you can move the screen down 8 pixels and the breakage is off the screen.

I used the blu-ray version of Planet Earth, and the output was 1280x768 (I have a 1336x768 Philips TV, but haven't been able to get the corresponding output res). My rig is similar to Jeff's.

I've got a 32gb SSD ordered (my current main drive is an ancient 10gb drive) and downloading Windows7 to see how that fares.

@TenOfZero

Thanks for that mate got it working. Completely forgot I commented sive head :)

Hi great post,

Does this work with .mkv files? it doesn't seem to get recognised by MCE or windows even.

I followed the steps and installed the MPC-HC filters.

anybody having this problem?

A comment, couple of suggestions and a couple of questions:

COMMENT:
I rip down the Blu-Ray movies to a single file for no other reason than I have a video front end (XLobby) that allows me to view my collected movie titles, select one and launch TheaterTek with custom intros and trailer previews pulling the actual movie from a NAS array. The ability to watch my purchased Blu-Rays in this manner without having to go to the media closet, load a disk wade through menus, just to watch my movies is why I rip my disks.

SUGGESTION:
The original author is making the ripping process more difficult than it needs to be. If you have SlySoft's - AnyDVD HD software installed (and he must) then once the BD is recognized you can use BDInfo (v.0.5.2) to scan the BD. It will analyze the .mpls files in the PLAYLIST directory and sort the file with the proper playlist to the top of the list. Additionally, it will let you see the details of each playlist.

Once you have noted the .mpls file which contains the proper playlist for the movie you can start up TsRemuxer 1.8.4(b). Using this tool you can click the 'Add' button and navigate your way on the BD to the PLAYLIST directory and select the .mpls file that contained the playlist for the movie in question. This will populate the details of the movie allowing you to delete unwanted audio streams (other languages, director comments, etc.) along with any 'presentation graphics' for menus, etc. For DTS-HD and True-HD a convenient option is provided to down convert them to their AC3 and DTS counterparts. Chapters can be preserved by selecting the Blu-Ray tab and selecting the 'Custom' radio button as the chapters have been defined by the .mpls file you loaded into TSMuxer. Select the .m2ts container option and designate a destination and name for the resultant movie file. Depending on the speed of your BD-ROM drive you will have a complete single .m2ts file with whatever audio stream(s) you selected on your HD in a matter of minutes. This eliminates the problems you noted regarding Blu-Ray movies that have split the video files, etc. You will also save some extra space by having eliminated all but what you wanted in the output file. Since this is a bitstream copy there is no re-encoding or loss of the video stream and depending on your ability to decode True-HD, etc. on your HTPC no loss in audio either.

QUESTIONS:
I have tried diligently to follow the instructions you have provided, but have not had any success in actually getting this to work. If I use the standalone MPlayer it works as advertised. However, using just the MPCVideoDec.ax registered properly within the codec stack consistently yields a 'Rendering Failed DirectShow' 0x80040265. After research the code appears to indicate the no valid rendering filter could be found to render the file. Going back to previously installed version of the Community Codec Pack allows successful rendering.

When I look at the codec stack for Directshow it does not appear that the 4CC for MPEG-2 TransportStream is set for the MPCVideoDec.ax filter (I could not find anyway to change this). Also, of note is that when I opened my MPC - Video decoder Properties window I had two additional entries with check boxes next to them. The first was 'H264/AVC (ffmpeg)' and the second was 'VC1 ffmpeg. I unchecked these options and received the same results.

For clarity, your article suggested that we should download download the standalone MPC-HC filters. But then you only mention registering the one. Just to be clear it was not your intention to install and register the other MPC-HC filters, correct?

I have ensured that the 'Merit' is maxed out for the MPCVideoDec.ax filter. Using GSpot it appears (although it is hard to tell for sure) that DirectShow doesn't even recognize that MPCVideoDec.ax is a filter for MPEG-2 Transport Stream. It shows up in the codec stack aligned to the 4CC of 'FLV1'.

Can you please, provide a complete list of your DirectShow Codec stack?

Also, can you provide what 'format' MPCVideoDec.ax is indicated within the codec stack? (this is available many ways, but if you have GSpot you can see it under the 'Codec' listing window)

Your time and answers would be greatly appreciated, as this is the final piece missing from my HTPC configuration!

I love your site! every problem i encountered you have talked about -- HTPC setup, 1080p TV as monitor, desk chair comparison, even this --- the article about how 1080p video is taxing the cpu too much and the solution for it. big thumb up.
http://zalpstroy.ru/

3.Open a command prompt, navigate to c:windowssystem32, and run regsvr32 MPCVideoDec.ax

Okay now how do you exactly do this

Hi, Jeff, you make nice site and blog, thanks.
<hr />
<a href=http://xrumer-palladium.blogspot.com/>Xrumer</a>

Sorry, Jeff, I did not notice that the HTML tags are disabled

:-[

http://xrumer-palladium.blogspot.com/

well,

you'd probably laugh,
but i play mkv files on old athlon xp oc'ed to 2.08GHz,
and with funny old Ati 9250 card, connected to 32" lcd-tv via dvi-to-hdmi cable :)

it plays 720p regulary, no glitches.
of course, depending on movie, cpu goes from 50% to 100% usage.

i even tried 1080p stuff, but only .ts (mpeg2 ?) files worked,
enough good to be watchable.

BSPlayer + k-lite mega codec pack (ffd show audio and video)

b.r.

Thanks for this article. Until now the only thing that I could play 1080p files with was CoreAVC. Both VLC Media Player and Mplayer's AVC codecs SUCK big time. With VLC it's not multithreaded, so as soon as CPU usage hits 50%, the video freezes sometimes for 5 seconds. And MPlayers codec (which I was using SMPlayer in this case, a nice GUI for it) would use a max of 30% but would only have a framerate of no more than 15.
http://meliortour.ru