Az box questions
- Thread starter Dannymcenrow
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Re CD, as mentioned above, no internal CD. I'm not sure which menu radar is referring to, but the one's I've noticed might refer to reading off CDs that are on your computer. Ie if you put a CD or DVD in your computer and SHARE it, it will be accessible by the Azbox. I can play video and audio this way.
Re working with an external USB CD drive, I would suspect that this would work too, but I haven't tried that. If not, I'd think it would be a software issue, not something that would require waiting for new models with different hardware.
Re the C vs Ku. This was answered above also, but I just wanted to add, that as far as any FTA receiver is concerned, there is really no difference between C and Ku, since the receiver never sees either C or Ku. The receiver sees the 950-1450 ( or a bit wider for universal lnbfs) band, not the actual C or Ku frequency.
Did anyone actually try to play via AZBox a CD or DVD from a physical or virtual DVD drive mounted on your PC? Using what method, and how it went?
As I mentioned above, I have played from CD/DVD mounted on my PC, however it was not commercial DVDs, I was playing .mpg files that I burned onto the CD/DVD.
Out of curiosity, I just looked at a commercial DVD. The Azbox sees the DVD, but when I try to play other than the initial .VOB file, I get an "unsupported format" error. When I try to play the initial .VOB file, it gives me a copy protection error, ie saying something about "this player is incompatable with the region marking of this disk". I'm not sure if that message is coming from the Azbox, or if it's the actual content of file on the CD. I tried playing the individual files via VLC, and they wouldn't play that way (on the computer) either, but it WOULD play if I accepted the VLC play CD function that popped up when I inserted the DVD. I'm pretty sure that I have played the individual .VOB files on a DVD via VLC before, so maybe this is just a DVD that has copy protection, I'm not sure.
Anyway, all this seems like a software issue, since the Azbox has no trouble seeing the files on the DVD, and has no problems playing .mpg files from a home made CD.
B.J.,
That's about the size of it and all that I know thus far. In the FILE MANAGER, FTP, PHOTO, VIDEO and MUSIC menus, there are options for the source and one displays CDROM or a disc ICON. I cannot get to this option in most menus as it is either "grayed out" or just won't allow me to nav to it.
I haven't figured out what to do with this option yet or even if it is supported at all. I just see that it is there. Sounds like you have had more luck and experience with it, though.
RADAR
I put an external DVD rom on the USB port and tried playing a movie. If it was a real movie, in VOB format, the cdrom icon would be active and not greyed out. However, nothing I could do would play it. "Not supported" is the error message that I was given. I tried an AVI file movie in the drive, but the CDrom icon remained greyed out, so it wasn't recognized as anything useful. File manager gave the same results.
I shared an audio CD on my computer. Wouldn't play, unsupported format. There may be some plugins available that play VOB and audio CDs. But stock out of the box, the Az is a 'file' player. I read on some other sites that ISO images with VOB work, but I haven't had time to look into it today.
I believe that is what he said he was doing. I haven't had any problems streaming using UDP from VLC to the Azbox. I was trying to see if the movie player would indeed play movies from a DVD drive ( either local or shared).
I was using the file manager function (and another function like movie or something), using the network option. The way I understand it, this isn't really streaming, but is using the network drive as an SMB type share. It's similar to streaming, but not quite the same.
Using the file manager / network option, you just get a file listing, choose the file, be it mp3, mpg, etc, etc, click on it, and it plays.
I've really been having a hard time remembering how I once was able to play the .vob files on my computer using VLC. I'm 99% sure that I did this, because I remember fooling around with play lists to make it go to the next numbered file when one file ended, but I can't seem to get it to work at all with a couple DVDs I've tried. It's possible, however that I remembered wrong and I wasn't doing this from the actual DVD, but perhaps I extracted the files to the computer first, and the program I used might have changed the files to some extent.
But in any event, it seems that playing a DVD is different than playing individual files on a DVD or CD. There is no problem playing .mpg, mp3, or other formats that the Azbox will play. Playing a DVD in the same way that a DVD player does, is apparently a different capability. I'm sure that the Azbox can be capable of it if they can deal with the region copy protection issues, but I don't see that as a high priority right now, because this isn't really an important use of this box. I'd much rather see them fix the 20,000 bitrate issue, and give us some degree of a blind scan capability (even if it takes all night for one sat). I'm perfectly happy with being able to play audio video files that I've created, and play commercial DVDs from a real DVD player.
Using the file manager / network option, you just get a file listing, choose the file, be it mp3, mpg, etc, etc, click on it, and it plays.
I've really been having a hard time remembering how I once was able to play the .vob files on my computer using VLC. I'm 99% sure that I did this, because I remember fooling around with play lists to make it go to the next numbered file when one file ended, but I can't seem to get it to work at all with a couple DVDs I've tried. It's possible, however that I remembered wrong and I wasn't doing this from the actual DVD, but perhaps I extracted the files to the computer first, and the program I used might have changed the files to some extent.
But in any event, it seems that playing a DVD is different than playing individual files on a DVD or CD. There is no problem playing .mpg, mp3, or other formats that the Azbox will play. Playing a DVD in the same way that a DVD player does, is apparently a different capability. I'm sure that the Azbox can be capable of it if they can deal with the region copy protection issues, but I don't see that as a high priority right now, because this isn't really an important use of this box. I'd much rather see them fix the 20,000 bitrate issue, and give us some degree of a blind scan capability (even if it takes all night for one sat). I'm perfectly happy with being able to play audio video files that I've created, and play commercial DVDs from a real DVD player.
AZBox proc - Sigma Designs SMP 8634 - makes it very attractive to direct any video content processing through it for watching on HDTV, since it has advanced multi-format decoding, video scaling and color correction capabilities that many DVD Players' and older HDTVs' procs simply don't.
However, this Sigma Designs Support's citation may explain lack of the Dual DVB-S/S2 Tuner offer for AZBox:
"Q - Does SMP8634 supports two H264 HD contents decoding?
A - We do not support two HD decoding of H264 (two of the files are using 1080) because it will run out of memory bandwidth. If you use one sd 720p and one 1080i, it will be ok."
Attached HDTV STB Development Kit from Sigma Designs may explain where these dummy AZBox menus came from. They're still waiting to be supported by extra code from the devs team.
However, this Sigma Designs Support's citation may explain lack of the Dual DVB-S/S2 Tuner offer for AZBox:
"Q - Does SMP8634 supports two H264 HD contents decoding?
A - We do not support two HD decoding of H264 (two of the files are using 1080) because it will run out of memory bandwidth. If you use one sd 720p and one 1080i, it will be ok."
Attached HDTV STB Development Kit from Sigma Designs may explain where these dummy AZBox menus came from. They're still waiting to be supported by extra code from the devs team.
Attachments
Using VLC, I just set up streaming of a DVD movie ( Star Wars, in fact) , from my pc DVD player to the azbox.
In VLC I had to open up the DVD folder and select all the VOB files, then select my steaming parameters, using mpeg-ts as the encapsulation. Selected the VideoLan udp channel on the azbox, and all is well. Mighty pixelated picture, though.
In VLC I had to open up the DVD folder and select all the VOB files, then select my steaming parameters, using mpeg-ts as the encapsulation. Selected the VideoLan udp channel on the azbox, and all is well. Mighty pixelated picture, though.
Using VLC, I just set up streaming of a DVD movie ( Star Wars, in fact) , from my pc DVD player to the azbox.
In VLC I had to open up the DVD folder and select all the VOB files, then select my steaming parameters, using mpeg-ts as the encapsulation. Selected the VideoLan udp channel on the azbox, and all is well. Mighty pixelated picture, though.
Thinking that what you describe above involves VLC doing a real time conversion, which is probably responsible for the pixelation, I tried doing something similar. I chose the DISK input, told it to stream to the Azbox, however I didn't select mpeg-ts, or any other parameters, I just left the encapsulation section blank. Then I started the Azbox receiving the UDP channel I had created last week, then told VLC to stream.
The first time I did this, nothing happened. Then I told it to start at Title #1, Chapter #1, and did the same as above.
Playback was PERFECT through the Azbox. HOWEVER, it only played one chapter, then stopped. ??????? I'm using a new (to me) version of VLC, and I don't get any options to select which VOBs to use when in the DISK input, and I don't see any options to continue to the next file after the first chapter is finished. I'm sure that VLC has these capabilities, it's just that I'm not familiar with this specific version of VLC, since I upgraded recently. It does the exact same thing whether I stream to the Azbox or play on the computer.
But anyway, this shows that the Azbox is capable of playing the output of the disk without doing any conversion, and that it's just a situation of learning how to do it. I always play DVDs through my DVD player, so I've never bothered to learn how to do this sort of thing with VLC.
It may help to try VideoLan Streaming HowTo instructions to setup continuous DVD streaming (loop?). They look a bit outdated though, but any recent changes may be related to VLC Streaming UI choices rather then command line streaming parameters. VLC forum can help clear remaining issues.
There is also useful info in VLC FAQ regarding DVD Regional restrictions:
"Does VLC support DVDs from all regions?
This mostly depends on your DVD drive. Testing it is usually the quickest way to find out. The problem is that a lot of newer drives are RPC2 drives these days. Some of these drives don't allow raw access to the drive untill the drive firmware has done a regioncheck. VLC uses libdvdcss and it needs raw access to the DVD drive to crack the encryption key. So with those drives it is impossible to circumvent the region protection. (This goes for all software. You will need to flash your drives firmware, but sometimes there is no alternate firmware available for your drive). On other RPC2 drives that do allow raw access, it might take VLC a long time to crack the key. So just pop the disc in your drive and try it out, while you get a coffee. RPC1 drives should 'always' work regardless of the regioncode."
The FAQ also discusses in detail VLC Streaming Solution, a device (i.e. AZBox) initiated VOD streaming versus VLC initiated, and advantages of using VLS versus VLC for streaming. It also links very useful VLC Streaming features list.
There is also useful info in VLC FAQ regarding DVD Regional restrictions:
"Does VLC support DVDs from all regions?
This mostly depends on your DVD drive. Testing it is usually the quickest way to find out. The problem is that a lot of newer drives are RPC2 drives these days. Some of these drives don't allow raw access to the drive untill the drive firmware has done a regioncheck. VLC uses libdvdcss and it needs raw access to the DVD drive to crack the encryption key. So with those drives it is impossible to circumvent the region protection. (This goes for all software. You will need to flash your drives firmware, but sometimes there is no alternate firmware available for your drive). On other RPC2 drives that do allow raw access, it might take VLC a long time to crack the key. So just pop the disc in your drive and try it out, while you get a coffee. RPC1 drives should 'always' work regardless of the regioncode."
The FAQ also discusses in detail VLC Streaming Solution, a device (i.e. AZBox) initiated VOD streaming versus VLC initiated, and advantages of using VLS versus VLC for streaming. It also links very useful VLC Streaming features list.
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