Do any players play the x264 codec

[rakan]

Are there any dvd players that play the x264 codec? I was thinking of upgrading my DVD player and I would like to play my x264 and XviD movies on it. Any suggestions?

[GMaq]

Hi,
As far as I know there are no DVD players as of yet with chipsets that support the H.264 standard, There have been rumours that some of the chipset makers are planning H.264 support for next year. Other than iPod/iTunes it is a relatively small share of the MPEG-4 marketplace, but it won't be for long!

[rakan]

Damn, I guess I'll have to wait. I really prefer x264 over Xvid, I've recently started to encode movies using this codec and I think the quality is awesome. Thanks for the reply!

[GMaq]

rakan,
I prefer the x264 Codec as well, Instead of waiting for the DVD players to catch up I got a D-Link DSM 320 Wireless Media Player, That way I can stream stuff from my PC over my wireless home network and watch it right on my TV. With the right software (TVersity)it will play any file that Windows Media Player can. In Canada these D-Link Media Players are only $159.00, not much more than a good DVD Player, and the best part is no more burning everything to discs! with large capacity ATA 100 hard drives being so cheap these days you can put together a "Media Server" pretty cheap that will play far more formats of Audio and Video than any set top player ever will. Something to think about anyway

[jagabo]

Just to clarify a bit for the OP:

The Dlink DSM 320 does not play h.264 encoded video. Tversity converts, on the fly, the h.264 video to something the DSM 320 will play.

GMac, how much horsepower does it take for your PC to do that? Just curios...

[rakan]

rakan,
I prefer the x264 Codec as well, Instead of waiting for the DVD players to catch up I got a D-Link DSM 320 Wireless Media Player, That way I can stream stuff from my PC over my wireless home network and watch it right on my TV.

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, that seems to be a better alternative. I bet over time it would be cheaper than burning DVDs or having to purchase a new DVD player ever couple of years. I'll definitly look into it.

[GMaq]

jagabo,
My apologies if my comments were misleading to the OP, I have successfully streamed H.264 using TVersity and the on the fly conversion with my 2.0Ghz Intel Duo Laptop, The files in question were iPod compliant x264 files and they played back smoothly with no hiccups. I have yet to try them on my P4 2.4Ghz Desktop but will let you know if you are interested.

[jagabo]

My apologies if my comments were misleading to the OP

I wasn't sure he would understand how it worked so I thought I'd spell it out.

I have successfully streamed H.264 using TVersity and the on the fly conversion with my 2.0Ghz Intel Duo Laptop, The files in question were iPod compliant x264 files and they played back smoothly with no hiccups. I have yet to try them on my P4 2.4Ghz Desktop but will let you know if you are interested.

Since the computer has to decode the h.264 video, reencode it (?), and send it out over the USB port, I was curious how much CPU power it needed. What percent of the CPU does it use on your laptop or desktop?

[GMaq]

jagabo,
Just did a quick check with my desktop machine since it's the slower of the 2 (2.4GHz P4 512mb RAM 800mhz FSB Socket 478 no HT). I streamed an x264 file (352x192 700kbps Video 112kbps AAC Audio) to the DSM 320 with the performance tab open. TVersity was utilizing both FFDSHOW and Haali Media Splitter to convert the file on the fly. Curiously the CPU usage spiked at approx. 5 second intervals during the playback from 83 - 97% and in between would drop down to 3-5%, the playback on the TV was smooth, however such a small resolution file is already maxed out on my 42"HDTV and the on the fly conversion wasn't doing it any favours, but still not bad considering the extra conversion along the way. Obviously the process is taxing a machine of this speed to the max, I still had my Anti-Virus and Spysweeper etc. running in the background though. The better case scenario would be H.264 firmware support in the DSM 320 which is bound to come along sometime soon, however this workaround is acceptable for now.

[jagabo]

Just did a quick check with my desktop machine... I streamed an x264 file (352x192 700kbps Video 112kbps AAC Audio) to the DSM 320 with the performance tab open. TVersity was utilizing both FFDSHOW and Haali Media Splitter to convert the file on the fly. Curiously the CPU usage spiked at approx. 5 second intervals during the playback from 83 - 97% and in between would drop down to 3-5%

A streamer like this will read ahead several frames and decompress them before starting to stream. After a few frames have been sent out it reads and decompresses a few more. That way there is always a pool several frames that have been decompressed and are ready to stream, even if the CPU is interrupted with another task (ie unable to decompress frames) for a short time. The low CPU usage times are when only decompressed frames are being streamed. The high CPU usage times are when the CPU is decompressing a batch of new frames (of course frames continue to be streamed during this time too).

Just eyeballing it, what would estimate the overall average CPU usage was?

Thanks for all the info!

[GMaq]

jagabo,
Thanks for the explanation of the CPU usage, it makes sense that it would need a cache of data ready to go in such a time sensitive context. In observing the performance monitor again I was seeing spikes usually between 73 - 99% during the decoding, Just "eyeballing" I could only guess that the average CPU usage would probably be 70-75%, I certainly don't want to mislead anyone so hopefully I am erring on the high side. There is a setting in TVersity to configure both the amount of compression and what maximum frame resolution you recompress to, I have this set to minimum compression so that the limiting factor is how much bitrate I can stream over the network rather than leaning on the CPU to compress it to the max. This does make a visual difference in the conversion quality, and since my x264 files are small resolutions I can reduce the default frame size setting of 400x300 to help out as well. I'd be glad to provide more info if I can, you've helped me out in several threads!!