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Blu-Ray to Apple TV

It requires AnyDVD HD. Some have reported success with Parallels and Fusion, but I couldn't get it to work with either. I use Boot Camp with Sony's SATA Blu-ray ROM drive retail package in an external USB2 enclosure. It works with about half the Blu-ray discs that I've tried.
 
mmccaskill said:
Sweet! I'll attempt to use the PS3 w/ Ubuntu to generate an ISO using dd.
Click to expand...

Let us know that that goes! I have a PS3, which I only use for Blu-ray playback.. Haven't played with Ubuntu or anything else.

How difficult of a process is it to make an ISO image on PS3 and transfer it onto a PC/Mac? Would love to save the hassle of buying a BR-ROM drive.
 
Cave Man your updated guide is much better to understand (From my point of view) than your old one with VH (Maybe I just didn't get VH:confused:)

Well what ever it was your guide is great :D
 
hitekalex said:
Let us know that that goes! I have a PS3, which I only use for Blu-ray playback.. Haven't played with Ubuntu or anything else.

How difficult of a process is it to make an ISO image on PS3 and transfer it onto a PC/Mac? Would love to save the hassle of buying a BR-ROM drive.
Click to expand...

i'm wondering the same... it sounds like making the iso image isn't too difficult, but you would have to put it on an external drive since the ps3 internal drive is fat32 formatted... then i think you'd have to hook the external drive with the blu ray iso up to your mac running windows and decrypt it using anydvd... then take the external drive with the decrypted blu ray iso back to the ps3 for playback as i don't think streaming would work very well... i could be very wrong about this
 
heyp said:
i'm wondering the same... it sounds like making the iso image isn't too difficult, but you would have to put it on an external drive since the ps3 internal drive is fat32 formatted... then i think you'd have to hook the external drive with the blu ray iso up to your mac running windows and decrypt it using anydvd... then take the external drive with the decrypted blu ray iso back to the ps3 for playback as i don't think streaming would work very well... i could be very wrong about this
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I plan on sending it directly to my Mac Pro through the gigabit network. I'm expecting some Blu-ray discs today from Netflix.
 
For the most part, the info provided here is pretty good; thanks Cave Man for posting and updating this thread. That said, I would still recommend using CQ @ 55-59% rather than ABR @ 6000. It is also important to note that setting the width to 1280 may not work for all sources (if output FPS > 24, or 25 depending on who you ask, the AppleTV will not accept the file).

I use the new AppleTV preset and lower the CQ to 55-57 for my HD encodes.
 
Cave Man said:
It requires AnyDVD HD. Some have reported success with Parallels and Fusion, but I couldn't get it to work with either. I use Boot Camp with Sony's SATA Blu-ray ROM drive retail package in an external USB2 enclosure. It works with about half the Blu-ray discs that I've tried.
Click to expand...

Why does it only work with half your Blu-ray discs? DRM? Not sure if I want to go through the trouble of buying all this stuff if it will only work with half my blu-rays.
 
rWally said:
Why does it only work with half your Blu-ray discs? DRM? Not sure if I want to go through the trouble of buying all this stuff if it will only work with half my blu-rays.
Click to expand...

Well, AnyDVD HD has not been updated to deal with the recent upgrade to BD+... this makes it incompatible with some of the new discs out there (both "X-Files" movies immediately to mind, as I have them). The company hopes to have an update out by February 2009.

EDIT: They have a list of movies that are currently imcompatible with AnyDVD HD available at: http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=21985
 
NightStorm said:
I would still recommend using CQ @ 55-59% rather than ABR @ 6000.
Click to expand...

When I tried that a few weeks ago the result was major video blocking that was unacceptable. Unless there's something else to set, that does not work for me.

It is also important to note that setting the width to 1280 may not work for all sources (if output FPS > 24, or 25 depending on who you ask, the AppleTV will not accept the file).
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that for Blu-ray it is 24 fps, thus using the default setting in HB (i.e., whatever the source is) you should get compatible files. All of mine that have been successfully transcoded by HB have sync'd and played on my Apple TV.

rWally said:
Why does it only work with half your Blu-ray discs? DRM? Not sure if I want to go through the trouble of buying all this stuff if it will only work with half my blu-rays.
Click to expand...

I suspect the problem are the DTS tracks or the way tsmuxer handles DTS extractions. The only Blu-rays that have been difficult are those with DTS or DTS-HD audio. For instance, just this morning I tried to open the m2ts of Rush Hour 3 (DTS-HD audio) and HB crashed while opening the file. Every Blu-ray with AC3 audio has transcoded without problems.
 
NightStorm said:
Well, AnyDVD HD has not been updated to deal with the recent upgrade to BD+... this makes it incompatible with some of the new discs out there (both "X-Files" movies immediately to mind, as I have them). The company hopes to have an update out by February 2009.

EDIT: They have a list of movies that are currently imcompatible with AnyDVD HD available at: http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=21985
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Doesn't sound like as big of an issue as I thought. I definitely want to move to HD rips for my AppleTV but I think I'm better off waiting a couple months to see what happens with Snow Leopard as far as blu-ray support goes, although I'm not sure it will matter much since there isn't a blu-ray ripper out there for Macs yet.

Who knows, maybe they'll upgrade the AppleTV to support 1080p video as well... ;)

Cave Man said:
When I tried that a few weeks ago the result was major video blocking that was unacceptable. Unless there's something else to set, that does not work for me.



I'm pretty sure that for Blu-ray it is 24 fps, thus using the default setting in HB (i.e., whatever the source is) you should get compatible files. All of mine that have been successfully transcoded by HB have sync'd and played on my Apple TV.



I suspect the problem are the DTS tracks or the way tsmuxer handles DTS extractions. The only Blu-rays that have been difficult are those with DTS or DTS-HD audio. For instance, just this morning I tried to open the m2ts of Rush Hour 3 (DTS-HD audio) and HB crashed while opening the file. Every Blu-ray with AC3 audio has transcoded without problems.
Click to expand...

Do blu-rays come with a traditional 5.1 dolby digital track as well as a DTS track? I seem to remember most DVD's with DTS also having the DD5.1 track as well.
 
Do blu-rays come with a traditional 5.1 dolby digital track as well as a DTS track? I seem to remember most DVD's with DTS also having the DD5.1 track as well.
Click to expand...
The Bluray spec mandates either at least one Dolby Digital, DTS, or linear PCM soundtrack; True-HD and DTS-HD are optional codecs.
 
Cave Man said:
When I tried that a few weeks ago the result was major video blocking that was unacceptable. Unless there's something else to set, that does not work for me.



I'm pretty sure that for Blu-ray it is 24 fps, thus using the default setting in HB (i.e., whatever the source is) you should get compatible files. All of mine that have been successfully transcoded by HB have sync'd and played on my Apple TV.



I suspect the problem are the DTS tracks or the way tsmuxer handles DTS extractions. The only Blu-rays that have been difficult are those with DTS or DTS-HD audio. For instance, just this morning I tried to open the m2ts of Rush Hour 3 (DTS-HD audio) and HB crashed while opening the file. Every Blu-ray with AC3 audio has transcoded without problems.
Click to expand...

So is the problem with just DTS-HD tracks or DTS as well? There's no point in using a DTS-HD track if you're just going to encode it with Handbrake, right?
 
rWally said:
So is the problem with just DTS-HD tracks or DTS as well? There's no point in using a DTS-HD track if you're just going to encode it with Handbrake, right?
Click to expand...

There's no point in having DTS-HD (or True-HD) since Mac and Apple TV optical ports don't have the bandwidth to support it.

Only AC3 or DTS (up to 7.1 compressed audio) can go through the optical port (and only a Mac can do DTS in conjunction with Plex). I always extract AC3 from True-HD and DTS from DTS-HD cores with tsmuxer. HB can then handle those with AC3 (and some, but not all, with DTS). You can thus get AC3 Dolby Digital for the Apple TV by passthrough, but if HB reads the DTS track it will only generate Dolby Pro Logic II 5-channel analog for the Apple TV. There is no passthrough of DTS with Handbrake (yet).

However, for those DTS movies where audio is important (i.e., 5.1 digital), I just leave it as an m2ts file with the DTS digital because Plex on my Mini can passthrough DTS. Unfortunately, iTunes and the Apple TV do not accept files with DTS.
 
Well I can't figure out how to get the ps3 to mount anything from the Mac Pro. I found a netatalk compile guide but I don't think netatalk is a afp client/server, just a server.

So I might have to buy that LG Blu-Ray drive. I guess I could get an enclosure for the 500GB drive I have but I can only assume that ext2fsx still works for OS X.
 
I'm getting ready to get the LG GGC-H20L which is supposed to be 6X so hopefully it won't be 60-90 mins.
 
Caveman (and everyone else), just thought i would throw in a few of my experiences of Blu-Ray to Apple TV.
I am currently encoding at 59% CQ with Handbrake and have been through many various settings to hit (what i can tell with my eyes) is the sweet spot.
I did use 6000 ABR but i found that on some movies this can exceed the ATV's max bitrate spikes, even with the movie synced. For example, in the opening song credits of Casino Royale, just as the second chorus of the song kicks in there are a load of fancy graphics on the screen which just stutter my ATV to its knees.
Using VBV Bufsize & Maxrate settings did help control that, but i then found unacceptable image artifacts on my movies. An example of this is Spider-Man 1 when Peter gets on the school bus at the beginning. As he moves down the bus his head is against a white background (bus roof) and you get this nasty orange glow around his head (just like the old oats advert for those of you in the UK and are old enough to remember!).
So, i just find ABR to difficult to control. Using CQ you get better control of bitrate spikes (should be lower by nature) and at 59% i think i get a great image with a controllable file size (on the majority of films) between 4Gb - 6Gb. There are some which are just way to big for my liking so i then drop down to 56 - 57% (Godfather 2, 15Gb - ouch)
These are just my findings and my thoughts and may not work for everyone. But hey, thats the nature of the beast
Cheers
 
Screen Caps

Would anyone be kind enough to post some screen caps of their movies in action? I'm just curious to see how the encodes look.
 
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