Episode 32: Sony's 3D Upgrade, A $30K Bed-Sized Plasma, Netflix's HD Secret, HTPC Build Completed, and Zombieland is Awesome [Discussion]

[serafina]

HD Plasmas the size of your bed! Your home theatre PC controller suggestions! Can you get HD Netflix streaming on your PC? And the Blu-ray releases for February 17th, 2010

Watch or download this episode here

[ghelyar]

why get a 100 disk changer if you are ripping anyway? I built a NAS specifically for this purpose - to access ISO rips from any PC in my house (and I encode to H.264+AAC MP4 for devices that cant mount ISO) and for $1500 you could get a LOT of NAS storage, even more if you go for 1TB drives instead of 2TB.

Originally Posted by heron

some will actually work over your Internet connection if both devices are on the same subnet

This makes no sense at all. I cringed.

[markhawk]

Any reason why you can't use a "Microsoft Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000" keyboard as a controller for your system? Has a nice touch pad, feels good in your hands/lap, and has a lot of shortcut keys. It's what I use for my personal computer. Just another suggestion.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Wire...35225&sr =8-1

[quagga]

Well, I can watch Netflix in HD on the Xbox360 but that doesn't give me surround sound. Maybe that's just something with my setup but I only get stereo to the receiver. If play on the HTPC Mac, that is SD only but has DPL2 surround sound. 5.1 would be better but DPL2 is at least something.

Again, it might just be my setup.

[markhawk]

Originally Posted by quagga

Well, I can watch Netflix in HD on the Xbox360 but that doesn't give me surround sound. Maybe that's just something with my setup but I only get stereo to the receiver. If play on the HTPC Mac, that is SD only but has DPL2 surround sound. 5.1 would be better but DPL2 is at least something.

Again, it might just be my setup.

I don't think 5.1 is out yet.

[quagga]

I don't have 5.1, but I do have dolby pro logic 2. It puts a surround channel in the "sides" of a stereo signal (at least that's what wikipedia says). It gives some sound from the rear speakers.

[dark_shroud]

Originally Posted by quagga

I don't have 5.1, but I do have dolby pro logic 2. It puts a surround channel in the "sides" of a stereo signal (at least that's what wikipedia says). It gives some sound from the rear speakers.

Yes well Netflix isn't streaming 5.1 yet. That's do out later this year, they said so in the video. Right now it's only Stero sound, maybe 2.1

[quagga]

On the MacMini, it is Stereo with Dolby Pro Logic 2. The receiver pops up with DPL2 when Netflix starts playing and I get a "s" on my rear speakers indicating I have a surround channel. I also get sound from behind me. It could be possible that it is upmixing the Stereo to 4.0 channels. Frankly I'm not audiofilish enough to know. This would make a good topic to discuss in an future show, *hint hint*.

I've been watching Farscape with it all week. Fire up a Season 3 episode as the intro credits are certainly in surround. Either that or I'm hearing voices in my head ... It only seems to work on the Mac outputting the video and audio. If I try it on my Xbox, then I only get stereo without the back speakers playing anything.

*Obligatory Rant about Farscape Season 1-3 being streamable, Season 4 stuck on DVD only, and the rest of you having those discs in your queue leaving me with a "long long wait"*

[hongcho]

According to a few dev blogs...

http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/b...eleration.aspx, for example,

Silverlight 3 does support GPU acceleration. However, it's an opt-in option by the application. That is, the NBC's silverlight app needs to turn it on explicitly. This could be the problem.

Then there is a question of whether the ION driver is actually supported by the Silverlight runtime...

Hong.

[hongcho]

Originally Posted by hongcho

According to a few dev blogs...

http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/b...eleration.aspx, for example,

Silverlight 3 does support GPU acceleration. However, it's an opt-in option by the application. That is, the NBC's silverlight app needs to turn it on explicitly. This could be the problem.

Then there is a question of whether the ION driver is actually supported by the Silverlight runtime...

Hong.

Correction... According to http://blogs.iis.net/benwagg/archive...for-media.aspx, Silverlight 3's GPU acceleration is not for video decoding (DXVA). It's just for bitmap manipulation. So, there you go...

Hong.