Digitalwerks » matroska http://www.digitalwerks.org Complex issues, efficient discussion. Fri, 11 Feb 2011 04:51:32 +0000 en hourly 1 MKV’s on Blu-Ray Players http://www.digitalwerks.org/2009/04/27/mkvs-on-blu-ray-players/ http://www.digitalwerks.org/2009/04/27/mkvs-on-blu-ray-players/#comments Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:56:08 +0000 kosmonaut http://www.digitalwerks.org/?p=338

The fight for dominance in the living room continues apace, with a large number of contenders and no clear cut leader at the moment.  Everybody wants their device to be the central hub for delivering content, both local and Internet-based to the masses on their couches.  The major players remain:

  • Cable Set-Top-Boxes
  • Gaming systems (PS3, Xbox 360)
  • Stand alone devices (Roku, Tivo, AppleTV, etc.)
  • Digital Media Adaptors (Popcorn Hour, DLNA devices, etc.)
  • Networked HDTV’s (DLNA, widgets, etc.)
  • Blu-Ray devices with extended functionality
  • Home theater PC’s (Windows Media Center, Mac Mini w/ Boxee, etc.)

All of the above have both positive and negative aspects, and none of them have really taken off enough to be considered a mainstream success, at least in the context of advanced content delivery. Cost and complexity are probably the biggest hurdles to wide acceptance for all of them, but we are seeing some interesting moves to increase attractiveness to consumers.  

On Saturday, Richard Lawler on EngadgetHD reported that the first JVC Blu-Ray player to hit the US will be the first such device to support the playback of Matroska (.mkv) files.  The move to support codecs and file formats beyond those required for the official player specifications developed on standard definition DVD players in 2003 and then really took off with the growth of DivX certification thereafter.  The move by JVC is interesting for a few reasons.  First, the Matroska format is not officially backed by any legitimate content creators, it is wholly used for the distribution of Blu-Ray rips among file-sharing communities.  Generally speaking Hollywood Blu-Ray rips at 1920x1080p are encoded in h.264 or VC-1 using the .mts transport stream format, with sizes ranging from 20GB to 50GB’s.  After being cracked, these discs get re-compressed using the open source x264 implementation of h.264 to either 9GB at 1920×1080 or 4.5GB for 1280×720.  The 5.1 DTS or AC3 soundtrack along with subtitles are included as well depending on the particular film.  Without knowing the specifics of the JVC player’s capabilities it’s impossible to say for sure that it could play back these files, but from a horsepower perspective it should not be difficult, though, for the bitrates of the rips is significantly lower than those of the original discs.  It would be good to know as well if the JVC player can play back .mkv’s from burned Blu-Ray discs, from DVD-R’s, from USB devices or from networked sources.  I would suspect yes to all, but until some one gives it a thorough review of the player it’s impossible to know.

Clearly JVC is trying to differentiate themselves from their Blu-Ray player competitors by appealing to a subset of consumers that are downloading Blu-Ray rips but would like to watch them on devices other than their PC’s.  Also interesting is that JVC is not working with DivX to do this, in fact they explicitly say “DivX files” are incompatible.  I wonder if they mean .avi files encoded in DivX or the specific .divx file format?  In any case, this is certainly not a good sign for the success of the DivX Plus/7 hardware certification program, as it was explicitly designed to support playback of .mkv’s on Blu-Ray devices.

From my perspective, I am not sure how successful this particular JVC device will be, or the attempt to increase the functionality of Blu-Ray devices in general (adding Netflix, YouTube, etc.).  Despite the much lauded AACS DRM scheme, Blu-ray rips have been available almost from the first release of Blu-Ray discs, so anybody interested in watching these kinds of files has probably been doing it for quite some time by now, and has their own method of doing so.  Likely that method is watching from an HTPC of some kind.  Once someone connects a PC to their main viewing device, and accepts the cost, complexity and noise issues, going back to a CE device seems like a significant step backwards, in my opinion.  No matter how well JVC (or more likely whomever their ODM is in) implement .mkv playback, or YouTube integration, it is not likely to match the user experience of an HTPC.  That is not to say HTPC’s are generally user friendly, for in fact putting one together is currently far beyond the capabilities of the mainstream, but I suspect things are likely to change in the near future.  Services like Boxee, hardware like the Atom platform from Intel, or the Ion from AMD, the hoped-for improvements from Windows 7 point towards a real opportunity for HTPCs to become far more accepted in mainstream living rooms.  As someone who has used an HTPC for many years, and is currently putting together a second one for the bedroom, I certainly know the difficulties of the process, but that said, I have absolutely no interest in switching to a Blu-Ray player, even with expanded capabilities.  There is no way that a CE device could possibly cover all the things I want to do, all the content I want to watch, all the services I would like to try, at least in comparison to a general purpose PC with a high speed Internet connection.  Maybe if the prices got really, really low ($99 or less) but certainly not at the reported MSRP of $299 for the JVC player.
]]> http://www.digitalwerks.org/2009/04/27/mkvs-on-blu-ray-players/feed/ 5 divx, h264, and (maybe) mkv on Windows 7? http://www.digitalwerks.org/2009/01/26/divx-h264-and-maybe-mkv-on-windows-7/ http://www.digitalwerks.org/2009/01/26/divx-h264-and-maybe-mkv-on-windows-7/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:34:36 +0000 kosmonaut http://www.digitalwerks.org/?p=153 mkv?

An interesting bit of news from the doom9 forums.  As anyone who is testing the Windows 7 beta has discovered, and as the above photo shows, Microsoft is breaking with their tradition and including more codec support in the upcoming Windows bundle.  Previous Windows versions did not even include MPEG-2 decoding, which proved to be quite mystifying to many users trying to watch a DVD in their computers for the first time.  And, needless to say, Microsoft stayed far away from any of the more esoteric codecs, including the key MPEG-4 ASP implementations such as DivX and Xvid.  

However, the beta of Windows 7 includes the ability to play back DivX, and Xvid, and even the next generation MPEG-4 AVC, better known as h.264.  Why is this important?  A couple things.  First, if anybody needed further proof that VC-1 is essentially dead in the water, this is another nail in its coffin (to mix macabre metaphors).  Secondly, and more importantly, it appears that Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon of broad interoperability, allowing Windows users to play back a range of video formats right out of the box, something that will surely be a boon to less sophisticated users who just want to be able to watch something without having to even know what a codec is, much less a container format, audio stream, etc.

Even more intriguing is the news that Microsoft may be working on an implementation of the matroska container, or mkv for Windows 7 (according to madshi and haali on doom9).  For the file-trading community, this is quite significant.  H.264 has a ton of “legitimate” uses today, notably in higher quality Flash videos on YouTube and elsewhere.  MKV however, is almost exclusively used currently by pirates, particularly those sharing HD video.  Blu-Ray rips and high def TV captures are generally distributed as x264 encodes with AC3 audio in mkv containers (both 720p and 1080p), and while HD video content is still a small minority of what is shared relative to standard def video, it is growing and is likely to become the dominant format before long.  Maybe Microsoft is just getting back at the movie studios that went with Blu-Ray instead of the MS-backed HD-DVD formats, but regardless, it would be good news if mkv support signaled that Microsoft was thinking about their users first, and video business strategies second.

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