OT: Play regular MPEG on a DVD Player?

[krw]

Cuts? Huh?

I understand that you're the "rich" and will get a "fair" tax
increase, but I'm looking forward to Jan. 21 (I'll give Osama bin
Biden inauguration day to goof off) for my "middle class tax cut".
They promised the rest of us $3000 of your money. After all, it's
only "fair".

 

[krw]

No, not really. That money is coming the old fashioned way, through
VCs and other investors.

Which is where it should come from.

What money the government has is being
thrown at the big three (hence, this bailout!) hoping that they will
go against their own interests and build one.

The "bailout" has nothing to do with cars. It's all about bailing
out the UAW.

The real reason we don't have an electric car today, besides the fact
that the battery technology isn't there for what everyone assumes
is the 'base' vehicle, is all the crazy regulations there are for
putting out a new automobile. All the different (and
contradictory!) safety, environmental and construction
requirements, millions of dollars in testing REQUIRED on a new
vehicle, and the paperwork make it impossible to just put
together a car and sell it.

Hmm, you think an electric car is viable when "battery technology
isn't there"?

The big three have all the infrastructure to do this BS in house,
while a start up will either have to build it themselves, or pay big
bucks to lease it from the big three.

The rest of BS is obviously possible since there have been "new"
auto companies in the past few decades.

As for the battery issue, that is because, for some crazy reason,
people assume that an electric vehicle HAS to have 300 miles of range
to be viable. It probably isn't true, but it has sure helped the big
three to have a good excuse for not doing anything for ten years...

Yes, and 300mi isn't enough. I'd want a daily range of more like
1k Miles before even thinking about an electric.

Any more conspiracies you'd like to float?

 

[JosephKK]

But then it would output PAL standard and our TV won't take it. I guess.
No idea how HDMI plays into that.

Actually HDMI is so different from either PAL NTSC or SECAM that those
differences disappear. It is damn near as different as SMPTE SD-SDI.

Whoops. But I assume that "lapse" will be papered over ...



Well, I don't even want to do that. Other than some really old movies we
don't watch much. Just want to be able to see stuff like a relative's
birthday video, weddings and such.

If you are really interested i have a co-worker that does conversions
and DVD mastering on the side.

 

[JosephKK]

Yep, looks like it. And their "error messages" are typically useless,
containing at the most the information "I don't like this disk".

The software industry and the shareware guys have done a far better job.
For example, media players such as VLC take in just about anything that
smells like MPEG and render it correctly. Regardless of where it came
from. They simply work. DVD player technology is far behind.

I am quite surprised that the industry fails to recognize that there is
a huge market for an all-in-one media box. IOW a PC for the media
cabinet in the living room. Right now it's all nerdware, you pretty much
have to be able to fly a spacecraft to piece one together yourself. Plus
it's huge, loud (fans) and has a paltry WAF unless it can be hidden
behind some paneling or doors.

True, but the media owners have been so bamboozled by the anti-piracy
vendors that they believe the "you must control" your media "property"
lock stock and barrel. Piracy has never really been that real of a
problem, just outrageous prices for media with fallible, patented
protection mechanisms. The SBA pretends to be the "little guys
friend", but really caters to paranoid bean counting fools in
megamedia.

 

[Joerg]

Actually HDMI is so different from either PAL NTSC or SECAM that those
differences disappear. It is damn near as different as SMPTE SD-SDI.

Hmm, so maybe I should write stuff in CD-RW (which the player supposedly
takes for short video clips) and try until something sticks.

If you are really interested i have a co-worker that does conversions
and DVD mastering on the side.

Thanks, Joseph, but I am actually thinking about just using a laptop.
The TV has a VGA input. Of course, standard VGA has two no-connect pins
instead of putting the audio on there <shaking head>.

So it'll be the usual cable mess. Oh well, done that before. Just curl
it all up into a ball behind the TV when not in use.

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:41:48 -0800, Joerg

Yes, I read that a while ago and did enjoy it. One of the few natural
cost sensitive designers. Sad that he felt he didn't have the
biz-skills. If he really doesn't he could hire that. Interestingly I
also built a pong game as a kid. But the instant it worked I lost
interest and gave it away. So I must be different, I thoroughly enjoy
the business aspects of engineering but can absolutely not draw any joy
from a video game or any other game that I play alone. Bores me to no
end. Card games, yes, but not any electronic game.

Do you play bridge? Assuming you are in the US

http://www.acbl.org/

 

[Joerg]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:41:48 -0800, Joerg



Do you play bridge? Assuming you are in the US

http://www.acbl.org/

No, we haven't moved up into that league yet. Mostly rummy or whatever
people around here are familiar with. Also rummycub (the tile game),
Mexican train, yahtzee, just the more simple kinds of games.

Sometimes it's good to just leave the TV off, tune into a good country
or bluegrass station and play a game. Lately pretty much every good
movie on TV fell apart because the DTV signal croaked. Not much fun
there. I believe the industry could shoot themselves into the foot
because many kids around here watch video only on the Internet.

 

[JosephKK]

Well, Dorothy, it seems you're just to stupid to avoid killfiles.


Boring too, Dimbulb.

What part of "it is a joint venture from capitol hill" don't you get?
Both repugnicreeps and democreeps are principle actors in the mortgage
meltdown. It is hideously well documented.

 

[JosephKK]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:16:55 -0800, "Joel Koltner"

[snip]

Sure, but the number of sole propreitors or even two-person partnerships in
this country is probably... <1% of all workers? Getting that up to, say, 10%
in the next decade strikes me as very difficult with our current culture.

---Joel

I can't argue the numbers, because I don't know, but why is it the
politicians keep saying that "small businesses" provide most of the
jobs?

...Jim Thompson

A list...

http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/11/best-small-companies-biz-07200best-cz_jg_cs_1011bestsmall_land.html

...Jim Thompson

What part of small don't you understand? 750 million annual business
is not small. You as an independent is a small business. Hello.
Wall street pays exaggerated attention to multibillion dollar
business, because that is where they think they can extract the most
money.

 

[JosephKK]

My take on it is that there is already $Bs on the table for the
first such car. My tax money doesn't impress physics or chemistry.


Then the union bosses would have your buildings burned, spouses
raped, and beer spilled on the ground. No one can win as long as
long as unions have (and are) thugs.

The union thugs were a response to the company thugs, it is just that
the unions never quit with the thugs, then again they were / are
partly owned by organized crime bosses.

 

[Martin Brown]

But then it would output PAL standard and our TV won't take it. I guess.
  No idea how HDMI plays into that.


Whoops. But I assume that "lapse" will be papered over ...


Well, I don't even want to do that. Other than some really old movies we
don't watch much. Just want to be able to see stuff like a relative's
birthday video, weddings and such.

In that case it should not be the region code lockout but something
not quite right with the MPEG stream from the viewpoint of a domestic
US only (ROW does not exist) DVD player. In Europe we like our DVD
player hardware to be as promiscuous as possible (manufacturers lock
down the region but plenty of guys exist to unlock it).

Your best bet is German DVD and MPEG manipulation software which is
among the best at examining transport streams and determining their
detailed characterisitcs. Some of the tools include transcoders that
will convert transport stream to programme stream and vice-versa
(relative timing vs absolute timing). It could be something like this
that is causing your DVD player to baulk at playing European encoded
material. Do no harm to ask for advice on the video groups they will
know the best way to make it work with least effort.

I am told ProjectX written in Java is quite good at this sort of thing
(try it at your own risk). It should at least give you enough
diagnostics to see what is different between things that will play and
those that won't.

http://www.videohelp.com/tools/ProjectX

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[krw]

The union thugs were a response to the company thugs, it is just that
the unions never quit with the thugs, then again they were / are
partly owned by organized crime bosses.

You *are* nuts.

 

[krw]

What part of "it is a joint venture from capitol hill" don't you get?
Both repugnicreeps and democreeps are principle actors in the mortgage
meltdown. It is hideously well documented.

What part of "you're nuts" don't you get?

 

[Martin Brown]

On Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:16:55 -0800, "Joel Koltner"


[snip]

Sure, but the number of sole propreitors or even two-person partnershipsin
this country is probably... <1% of all workers?  Getting that up to, say, 10%
in the next decade strikes me as very difficult with our current culture..

---Joel

I can't argue the numbers, because I don't know, but why is it the
politicians keep saying that "small businesses" provide most of the
jobs?

Because it is true.

Although you might be more than a bit surprised how big a "small"
enterprise can be.

One I worked for a long time ago in the UK managed to grow by spinning
off new companies as logical franchises to each stay inside the legal
parameters of a "small" company so as to qualify for maximum tax
benefit and grants. I think the numbers then were something like under
100 people and £10M turnover but those old limits have changed.
Various national SME business definitions are summarised online at:
http://www.lib.strath.ac.uk/busweb/guides/smedefine.htm

The US definition of a small business is particularly opaque and
worthy of Brussels bureaucrats. Every US industry code has its own
definition of "small" and they vary considerably!
http://www.sba.gov/services/contractingopportunities/sizestandardstopics/tableofsize/index.html

The US Small Business Administration bureaucracy looks particularly
Kafkaesque to me. YMMV

The EEC also defines a micro-enterprise with <10 people employed and
turnover < €2 million.
Many of these either grow into something bigger or go bust at least in
the hitech business.

Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[Charlie E.]

Ok, maybe there is no such thing as an international MPEG standard. The
situation:

Whenever we try to play a DVD from Europe it does not work. Nothing
illegal here, just old movies that were never available here and never
will be because they are in foreign languages and, well, too "boring"
for youngsters. Then wedding recordings and such.

On the PC all this plays just fine. The DVD spits it back out either
with a wrong region message or it tries and tries (letting off some
weird chirping noises from the drive) and spits it out with some other
error message. Aren't those things to play regular MPEG just like PCs?
At least that's what it says in the manual. I've also tried PAL-NTSC
conversions and that didn't fly.

The setup here: Magnavox BDP170 upconverting player via HDMI cable into
the TV. So it should be able to play stuff that isn't NTSC. I've tried
lots of formats from VLC Player such as mp2v and whatnot (if someone
knows which one works let me know). Nothing worked here so far. Is the
only option really to convert to NTSC or to schlepp the PC into the
living room? Wasn't DVD supposed to do away with all this?

Ok, just as general request - does anyone make MP3 Encoder chips? I
can find lots of decoders, but haven't found encoder chips yet...

Charlie

 

[Joerg]

Ok, just as general request - does anyone make MP3 Encoder chips? I
can find lots of decoders, but haven't found encoder chips yet...

Not enough market, it's usually done on PC architectures or DSP. Maybe
this helps:

http://www.futurlec.com/News/Analog/MP3.html

We just bought a Marantz PMD580 recorder for church and I bet it
contains a DSP for encoding. It was freaking expensive at around $1000
but I guess that is also because of the tiny market for this stuff.
Works like a champ but it causes some EMI that I've got to get to the
ground of.

 

[Charlie E.]

Which is where it should come from.


The "bailout" has nothing to do with cars. It's all about bailing
out the UAW.


Hmm, you think an electric car is viable when "battery technology
isn't there"?


The rest of BS is obviously possible since there have been "new"
auto companies in the past few decades.


Yes, and 300mi isn't enough. I'd want a daily range of more like
1k Miles before even thinking about an electric.

Any more conspiracies you'd like to float?

Boy, I don't know where to start to answer that snide set of comments!

Ok, yes the EC is viable, as I explained below. The PTB have set
unrealistic standards for such a vehicle, such as 300+ range,
requiring a fillup (recharge) time of five minutes, and other similiar
requirements to make sure that they will have a difficult time of it.

Ok, what 'new' american car company have you seen in the last decade?
I can't think of one that wasn't actually an entity of the big three?

As for conspiracies, they are many. The five minute fill up
requirement, the re-classification of three wheeled electric
motorcycles as no longer eligible to be a high occupancy vehicle, etc.

Charlie

 

[krw]

Boy, I don't know where to start to answer that snide set of comments!

What better answer is there when you post dreams in a non-fiction
group.

Ok, yes the EC is viable, as I explained below. The PTB have set
unrealistic standards for such a vehicle, such as 300+ range,
requiring a fillup (recharge) time of five minutes, and other similiar
requirements to make sure that they will have a difficult time of it.

No, it's not viable because your assumed technology doesn't exist.
Not even close.

Ok, what 'new' american car company have you seen in the last decade?

Why does a "new" car company have to be "American"? What is an
"American" company? One that needs money from the treasury to be
"viable"?

I can't think of one that wasn't actually an entity of the big three?

Can you artificiality limit counter-arguments in any more ways?
How about "new", "American", "car", "companies", that "make only
blue cars"?

As for conspiracies, they are many. The five minute fill up
requirement, the re-classification of three wheeled electric
motorcycles as no longer eligible to be a high occupancy vehicle, etc.

I thought you *might* want to talk about something remotely
relevent to the original discussion.

 

[Joerg]

Hmm.... I'd like >=100 mile range and <=15 minute recharge time. Viable?

The "recharge stations" should actually be happy if fillup time is 15
minutes... they can run the standard "quickie-mart" model like the current gas
stations do, and they're almost guaranteed that people will come-on-in and buy
a snack or something while waiting.

Hey, Starbucks could use that to compensate for all the shops they had
to close. Just add a WLAN hotspot and it might work. Of course, then
you'd have all those caffeine-wired drivers back on the road.

I wonder what percentage of, say, U.S. interstates don't have a gas station at
least every 100 miles? I know I've seen the occasional sign in eastern Oregon
advising that the next one was >50 miles off, but not 100.

Try Nevada. I remember one trip where the needle was finally under 1/4
and then the town on the map turned out to be abandoned decades ago.
Yeah, there was a Chevron sign next to the dirt road. But totally rusted
out and squeaking in the wind. That's when I began to worry ...

 

[Charlie E.]

Not enough market, it's usually done on PC architectures or DSP. Maybe
this helps:

http://www.futurlec.com/News/Analog/MP3.html

We just bought a Marantz PMD580 recorder for church and I bet it
contains a DSP for encoding. It was freaking expensive at around $1000
but I guess that is also because of the tiny market for this stuff.
Works like a champ but it causes some EMI that I've got to get to the
ground of.

Yeah, like I said, we got the Tascam CDSSR-1, but then the old product
idea went thinking....

The only hits I did see were for TI DSP software, so I guess that no
one is doing this in chip form, then.

Back to the drawing board...

Charlie