I am not dead!

I swear it.  I know I am most likely the only one who reads this blog..but, just in case anyone else does,
rest assured, I am not dead!

I have been grinding aways to get my thesis done, but that does not mean I have not had time
for tech distractions.  Upcoming in the next few weeks, expect to see reviews on:
The Logitech Revue
The Logitech DiNovo Mini
My attempts to restore vintage audio gear
Which is really better: XBMC, Boxee, or, MythTV
My $19 HDMI capible video card for my HTPC
DTS-MA and DOLBY TrueHD work over HDMI with Linux!!

If anyone on the Internet has actually seen this blog, write me!
Let me know which article interests you the most.

Why Must I be so Impulsive?! Firmware update breaks mkv playback!

Whether it is a new BIOS update or a firmware update for a printer that only fixes the time codes for the CIS states, I feel compelled to install it.  The new fixes may be of no relevance to me, but my digital toy must be up-to-date, it MUST!  Watching an install bar grow as my firmware is installed makes me feel all warm inside.

Now, almost all firmware releases are covered with a caveot, "If your system is working correctly and this update does not address an issue you are having, do not install this firmware."

Pa-shaw...who do they think they are dealing with here?  Sure, I live nowhere near Azerbaijan, but maybe someday I will schedule a last minute trip there, and take my printer along.  Then where would I be if the time codes where not updated?!  No, no, I must be ready for anything.  I will flash - no matter what you say! 

As reported earlier, a new beta has been release for the Oppo BDP-83.  Surprisingly, I did not install it the day of its release.  This is because I was burned once before.  Oppo's current official firmware release breaks the streaming of LPCM audio from a DLNA server.  Since I upgraded to the SE version of the Oppo, this feature is an absolute requirement.  Shocked that a firmware release actually broke something, I rolled back to an older beta, then upgraded, via the network, to the previous beta release.

So, while Oppo releases excellent firmware updates, often fixing more problems than listed on their release notes, I was still hesitant to update.  I mean, everything was working perfectly.  All the issues in the release notes did not effect me.  But, the compulsion... pulling me... maybe, just maybe, there is some amazing fix for something I did not even know was broken.  Maybe scaling and deinterlacing will work even better.  Maybe streaming 24-bit LPCM will actually work!

So, I did it.
Feeling all warm inside, the first thing I checked was to see if LPCM streaming still worked.
Check!

Next I fired up an movie from my DLNA server.
Uh-oh.

It was as though all my perfectly encoded mkvs had now become non-anamorphically enhance DVDs.  Which means on a 16:9 TV I have the black bars on the right and left (to preseve the 4:3 aspect ratio) then the video is letterboxed within that frame.  So, black bars on the top and bottom.
Super.

My feeling is this is related to the fix for Patton. I have sent an e-mail to Oppo discribing the problem.  Let's hope there is some new setting now, or something that I can just re-enable, and I will be back up and running.

I have reverted to the older beta firmware I have (two betas ago) so at least I can watch my films again using all the real estate of the screen.

I will update as I hear more from Oppo.

UPDATE


As always, Oppo replied to my e-mail quickly:

This is a known bug with the new Beta Firmware. The only solution is set the Primary Output to COMPONENT. This will force the decoder to do all aspect ratio control (which will be correct) rather than the ABT (which will be incorrect).

You will want to change the Primary Output to HDMI whenever playing DVDs, however, as the decoder will not do as good of a job de-interlacing and scaling as the ABT solution.

Best Regards,

Customer Service

No word yet if they will send me the previous beta.   Let's hope they fix it in the future release.  There is no way I am bypassing the ABT scaler!  That thing rocks.

AVI, DTS, and Sync

So, as we all know, there are about a million ways to do the same thing in Linux (well, maybe one or two).

I have long been encoding my DVDs for my HTPC with the x264 codec.  I have been using mencoder as the front end.  Recently, I have seriously started to get to work encoding the bulk of my  DVD library so I can put it in storage.

So here has been my problem, DVDs with a DTS track do not encode in sync.  It starts to drift almost immediately and by the end of the film, it can be off by almost 5 mins, as was the case for "Master and Commander".

The solution:

So this is less than ideal, but what I do is I have a "dts" flag for my script, if it is set, mencoder will encode the film with the default audio track (usually AC3), then run mplayer to dump the DTS audio stream. Then when I run mkvmerge, I merge the video track from the avi file from mencoder, leaving out the default audio, and mux in the DTS track.

No sync problems!  It seems a little round-about, but it works and can be implemented into a script just fine. The only "time waste" is the extra time to rip the DTS track, about 10 mins on my system.

So, if you are having problems syncing a DTS track in the avi output of mencoder, this should fix you up!

Need a keyboard for your HTPC? You might be sitting on it!

So, the HTPC has been running in all its glory for about 3-4 years, but the frontend almost never get used.
Why?
Well, the Wife Approval Factor (WAF) is pretty low.  I do have a wireless keyboard and mouse hooked up to it, the Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop 1000 (PC & Mac).  The problem is, the wireless range on this thing sucks, it is like, no joke, less than 10 feet.  So to use it, I have to drag out the wireless receiver, then pull out the clunky keyboard and mouse (I have 4 kids, one of which is a one year old, so cannot leave these things hanging around!)  Not a lot of fun to drive.

I have been eying the Logitech diNovo Mini forever as a replacement.  But $129 bucks for a keyboard!?  I am way too much of a tightwad for that! Plus the wife says we have to buy more important things like diapers and food (whatever)

Then one day I wondered, "Could I port VNC over to the Android operating system?"  Well, lucky for me, someone has already done this!  I installed realVNC to my G1 phone, connected to my server via my wireless lan, and voilla I am controlling my computer from the couch on my pocket sized device!

Now, it is not a replacement for a keyboard and mouse if you are doing heavy web browsing or actually using your computer as, well, a computer.  But to control MythTV or Boxee, it is perfect.

I have breathed new life into my HTPC frontend...now if I can just get the kids to stop playing the Wii so I can use the TV!

New mkvtoolnix breaks mkv playback on Oppo and other players -- Oppo is aware

I use Arch Linux for both my home system and laptop. This means I always have bleeding
edge installs of software. Usually this is not a problem, that is, until mkvtoolnix was
updated.

All of a sudden, my new rips for playback on my BDP-83 would either blank the screen or
actually crash the player! WTF?!

After a little digging, I found this nugget from the developers of mkvtoolnix website:

The Matroska specifications know a feature called "header removal compression". This allows a muxer to keep a certain number of bytes that are identical for each frame in the track headers removing them from the individual frames. This reduces the size of the tracks significantly without altering the content as a demuxer can add the bytes found in the track headers to each frame during demuxing.

Starting with v4.1.0 mkvmerge uses header removal compression for a couple of track types by default. These include AC3, DTS and MP3 audio tracks as well as Dirac and MPEG-4 part 2 (aka. XviD/DivX) video tracks. The user muxing a file may disable it by explicitely selecting 'none' as the compression scheme for such a track.

So, the Oppo barfs when it encounters a file with this compression enabled.  After a few days going back-and-forth with the  techs at Oppo, they finally confirmed this as a bug in the Oppo. Expect a firmware update "in the future."    In the mean time you have two options:
Install older version of mkvtoolnix
or
use the "--compression <TID>:none" flag when running mkvmerge from the command line.  So you need this for each track in the source file.  So for me, I most often use mkvmerge from AVIs outputted from mencoder.  So for me it is

mkvmerge -o something.mkv --compression 0:none --compression 1:none somthing.avi


New Survey..

Just posted a survey for this week for people to vote on their favorite DLNA compliant server.

I am interested what people run, and please, leave feed back on why you run it!

I use MiniDLNA for serving videos and pictures to the Oppo BDP-83SE. I like it due to its
very small footprint on the server and the ability keep my folder structure for browsing.

I am thinking of trying out the MythTV UPnP server again. I have mostly abandoned MythTV since the Oppo has such superior video playback, I can used the awesome DACs in the Oppo, and I have a remote for the Oppo!

For audio I am currently using the AssetUPnP server. It is not at all idea, but it is simple to setup for transcoding of flac to lpcm so the Oppo can receive the stream. It currently downmixes 24bit audio to 16bit for the Oppo to play it.  Will try out the new Oppo firmware to see if this is fixed.

Oppo Digital Releases new beta firmware for the BDP-83

Well, looks like Oppo has finally release a new firmware for their flagship player, the BDP-83.  I must say, the improvements are a little underwhelming. I am curious to see if they have fixed the issues with streaming 24bit audio from the Asset UPnP server. I will most likely
install this weekend and let you all know about the results.

Here is the release from their site:

OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray Disc Player Public Beta Firmware Update

Release Information:

Release date: August 24, 2010.
Category: Public Beta Version

Main Version: BDP83-52-0816B
Loader Version: BE2731 or BT0431
Sub Version: MCU83-27-0326

Note: This release is still a beta test version, not an official release. Use it only if you would like to experiment with the new features and improvements. There is a small chance of the new features and improvements not working properly. If that happens, please update your player back to the official firmware release.

Release Notes:

This public beta version works for both the standard BDP-83 and the BDP-83 Special Edition. This version is designed for both the standard BDP-83 and the BDP-83 Special Edition. Comparing to the previous official release version BDP83-50-0424, the major changes included in this version are:

1. A small number of Blu-ray discs with Dolby TrueHD audio exhibit a momentary audio drop-out issue if the player is connected to an A/V receiver via HDMI and bitstream is selected as the HDMI Audio format. This version fixes the issue.
2. Certain SACD discs with many short tracks or with a long track following several short tracks can cause the player to freeze during playback. This version fixes the issue.
3. The previous firmware version displays the time counter slightly too fast when playing SACD. This version fixes the issue.
4. Support for LPCM audio streaming over home network is restored. The previous firmware did not carry this feature over from older versions. Please note that home network streaming is an experimental feature. You will need a computer running UPnP or DLNA streaming server software that can support transcoding to LPCM in order to use this feature.
5. Fix for the issue of incorrect video size when playing some Blu-ray discs, such as “Patton”.
6. Other general disc and media file compatibility improvement based on recent and upcoming Blu-ray releases as well as user-submitted samples.

All features and improvements of the previous firmware are also included in this version.

Welcome to the AV Chimp!

Well, it is time for me to start dumping my years of experience with my home theater obsession onto the blogosphere. I am totally new to this, but I look forward to linking up with other AV nuts out there.
My interests are in home theater, hi-fi sound systems, vinyl playback, hi-res audio, and incorporating computing into this as much as possible!  I plan to post articles on my impressions of home theater gear, audio gear, and software.  I look forward to posting tutorials on ripping your own DVDs and BluRays for incorporation into your home theater PC along with my home-grown bash scripts.

One last thing, I run Linux exclusively for all my computing tasks (window is for gaming only)  I am NOT a Windows or Mac hater, I just work with what I am most familiar...so don't be mad if all my solutions are command line-centric! :)

PLEASE post on what you would like to see discussed here!