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[nutballs]

I kind of asked this before but...

I would like suggestions for what target to compress bluray to.

My specific need is for the end results to be able to play on an assortment of stuff, but particularly xbox360 with 5.1 surround.
I hav gotten myself so fucking confused i feel like my parents.

apparently all the formats the xbox360 can play are here: http://4sp.in/2np

Any guidance appreciated!

[kurdt]

Xbox360 can't play shit... it's just horrible mediaplayer. According to the page it runs h.264 with 4.1 profile BUT I don't know any tool that converts blurays to h.264 because that's commercial codec AND the biggest issue is that you can use only 2 channel sound with h.264 (wtf...). Then you have WMV but if you plan to use that, I would rather just not encode it at all because WMV is such bulky, useless and not compatible format in the long run because of all the licensing issues. For example most of the A/V receivers don't encode WMA because the licensing. So if you go with WMV, be prepared that you are going to be tied to your Xbox360.

The best overall choice of codec at the moment is x264 with mkv container. Best filesize/quality and best container features. All "official warez movie scene" releases are done with x264 mkv nowadays.

If it's possible, buy Popcorn Hour C-200. That will solve ALL your problems and you don't need to feel confused as fuck because that player plays almost everything you can find on the net. And then you can use the most popular tools to convert your blurays and you don't have to mind about idiotic restrictions with "players" like Xbox360.

[nutballs]

ok cool. thanks for the info.

I will test out 264mkv and see what happens. At least it would be in a good format. I actually am probably going to get an HTPC anyway and the x360 becomes moot.

[kurdt]

I actually am probably going to get an HTPC anyway and the x360 becomes moot.

Don't do that. I have A LOT of experience with HTPCs and I can say with certainty that if your goal is to watch media, HTPC became completely obsolete after networked media tanks like Popcorn Hour and iStar came out. There just isn't a single reason why you would choose all the pains of HTPC tweaking, crashes, Windows, codec crap, unexplained problems with codecs overlapping and so on. Before NMTs HTPC was the only choice if you wanted to watch all the media you can download... but thank god that isn't the case anymore.

Take my advice and forget HTPC.

[nutballs]

True.

So of the NMTs though, I was under the impression none of them spit out 5.1 and 1080 over HDMI?

[kurdt]

True.

So of the NMTs though, I was under the impression none of them spit out 5.1 and 1080 over HDMI?

Umm, all of them do? Even my old iStar outputs bluray m2ts files with TrueHD sound just like bluray player would.

New Popcorn Hour C-200 can even play bluray from image files. And overall with NMTs I'm more interested what they CAN'T play/output because that list is short