DVD players that play avi files?

Factual Questions
1

O.K., first a brief background. My wife and I have really enjoyed using Kazaa and other such programs to download TV episodes and movies, most of which are .avi files. As you may know, however, watching these programs on a tiny computer monitor is a tad annoying. Our DVD player claims it can play a ‘VCD’ which I understand to be a file that is in .mpg format. That said, every attempt to use conversion programs to convert the .avi to .mpg has failed to work on our DVD player.

One solution of course, would be to figure out what the hell I am doing wrong in the conversion process, but all the conversion utilities I’ve found to date are extremely user unfriendly and take you through several menus that ask you to pick options regarding the conversion that I don’t know how to answer. Even following the directions they supply with these utilities has been useless since inevitably, my answers to some of the questions regarding kbit/s and Hz speed don’t appear as menu options.

So I give up. Rather than trying to learn all this, since we need a new DVD player anyway, does anyone know of a brand or unit that will play .avi files in their native format?

2

This is a hypothetical question, right? That said, I’m pretty sure that no DVD player currently plays .avis right out of the box. Though there was talk of mod-chipped xboxes (illegal) playing avi and windows media files.

3

Wait a few months, Yarster.

Currently, there are no DVD players that can play Divx movies, which is what most .AVIs are these days. You .avi could actually be one of a hundred or more codecs (COmpression DECompression algorithms), but most likely it’s Divx.

In April of this year, Texas Instruments announced a hardware chip that will play Divx. It should be in DVD players by the end of the year. Note that this chip will probably not allow play of Divx 3.11 content, since it is actually a hacked Microsoft MPEG4v3 codec. The later versions (4.x, 5.x) were released to remove any copyrighted material from the codec (and consequently make it buggy as hell).

Forget the X-Box player. First, you’d have to install a modchip, which requires soldering experience and an accurate, steady hand. Second, I’ve heard a lot of people saying that the X-Box Divx player is really sub-par. The latest release notes I found for the only X-Box Divx player on the web (at least that I could find) says it doesn’t even play sound.

Now, to clarify: chipping a video game system isn’t illegal in and of itself. I could solder a piece of cheese or anything else I wanted into an X-Box and there’s nothing the law can do about it. Of course, most people chipping the systems are doing it so they can play illegal “backup” games, which are highly illegal.

Now, back to the OP. If you don’t want to wait until Christmas, you should be able to convert Divx to MPEG without any problems. Maybe you’re using the wrong settings. See, a VCD is a kind of MPEG. All VCDs are MPEGs, but not all MPEGs are VCD compliant. A VCD is an MPEG with a CBR (Committed Bit Rate) of 1150 Kb/s video and a 352x240 framerate (352x288 for the Europeans with PAL) running at 29.79 frames per second (23.976 PAL). It also allows for a 224 Kb/s audio track in mp2 format.

My advice would be to use the TMPGenc encoder (shareware for SVCD, freeware for VCD) to convert your Divx shows. If you need more specifics regarding the settings of this program, check out the video format conversion guides at vcdhelp.com.

4

Whoops. I’ve really gotta start using the preview option.

Yes, I know that sounds stupid, but I didn’t mean it to come out that way.

Obviously 352x240(288) is the resolution, not the framerate. 29.97 fps is the framerate.

5

D’oh! Okay, now this is really getting bad.

NTSC (U.S. and Japan) framerate = 29.97 frames per second.
PAL (Europe, elsewhere) framerate = 25 frames per second.

The 23.976 figure came from NTSC Film, which is used on theatrical movies shot on real movie cameras. When those movies are shown on TV, a process called telecinning is invoked, in which six duplicate frames per second are added to the picture so your TV can display it. NTSC Film, when used with the pulldown flag, and properly inverse telecinned movies (or movies that never strayed from the original framerate), allows the DVD player to add these extra frames on the fly while the VCD is playing. That way you aren’t allocating any of your bitrate to duplicate frames.

6

Instead of buying a new DVD player, you could also get a TV-out card for your computer.

You can find a Radeon or GeForce video card with an S-video output for about $99. Combined with a miniplug->RCA audio connector from Radio Shack, it would let you watch movies and play games using your TV as a monitor.

7

I just want to chip in and say that playing backups of your video games is not illegal. Playing copies of your friend’s discs IS.

Jman

8

You can convert just about any format to VCD. Read this site for a few hours www.vcdhelp.com .

9

I go the tv-out route. WIth my radeon 8500le and the spdif output from my soundcard, things look and sound very, very nice, assuming it’s a decent quality avi file. It’s also MUCH less painful than burning my own dvd’s/vcd’s. :slight_smile:

10

I think what you are asking is “how can I write an AVI file of my home movies”, not “how can I illegally duplicate copywrited material”:wink:

I looked in to this the other day. Turns out at the very least you will need is a $500 DVD Writer, 50 of avi to DVD software and DVD-RW at about 7 a pop. I don’t know if the created disk will even work on a regular DVD player or just DVD drives.

Given that, and the fact you can buy most DVDs at BlockBuster or Circut City for about $20 (or less), you would need to rip about 40 “home movies” to break even. And this does not even consider that you will will have a copy of considerably less than optimal quality.

11

I’m pretty sure a properly burned DVD-RW (or +RW) will work in a regular DVD player.

Also, I wouldn’t expect the quality to be much lower than the original DVD, assuming these home movies were originally on a DVD. MPEG4/DivX is pretty good compression. However, you’d be missing all the menus, special features, alternate audio tracks, and subtitles. (If you convert it to a VCD, you will lose a lot of quality.)

But there’s no need for a DVD burner if you can directly play DivX movies on the TV. A two-hour movie compressed with DivX will fit on a single CD.

12

I never saw a dvd player that plays AVIs. Most of them play vcds, which are mpeg1 files.

I use Nero 5.5.+ which converts my AVIs to Mpegs (vcd) or svcd.

Converting AVI to mpeg1 is easy…

13

Do NOT use Nero to convert between video formats. Sure it might seem convenient, but Nero’s MPEG encoder (and MPEG2 encoder) are generally considered to be the worst ones out there, not only in terms of quality, but also for speed. IMHO, it’s an option they should have left out of an otherwise fantastic CD burning program. Encoders like that give VCD a bad reputation. Yes, you can have a VCD with a nice, smooth picture and without macroblocks everywhere.

Best quality for MPEG1 VCD = TMPGEnc (free for VCD, $40 after 30 days for SVCD)
Best quality for MPEG2 SVCD = CinemaCraft Encoder ($3800 and extremely user unfriendly)

I wouldn’t recommend forking over the big bucks for CCE. First of all, its MPEG1 encoder is terrible, so you’ll still be using TMPGEnc for that (in addition to numerous other things that TMPGEnc can do that CCE can’t, including resizing for crying out loud. Second, the MPEG2 support in TMPGEnc is getting quite good, almost to where CCE is. Unfortunately, it’s still a slower MPEG2 encoder than CCE, but when you consider the $3760 price difference and sheer buginess of CCE, the choice becomes easy.

For the best quality audio in your (S)VCDs, use the tooLAME mp2 encoder. Just set it to be your external encoder under the Environment Variables in TMPGEnc and it will launch automatically every time you encode a video.

You’re right. People are allowed one backup copy of each game for archival purposes, or at least that’s the way I’ve heard the law interpreted. My response made it sound like a single backup was illegal. Sorry.

14

Oh, and regarding the DVD +/- R compatability issues as far as standalone players go : some support both, some only support one or the other.

There is a DVD player database at VCDhelp.com that lists which players play which burned DVD formats. It also lists which ones support VCD,SVCD,XSVCD,MP3, etc, etc.

15

Oh, and a suitable DVD burner can be had for about $350 US nowadays. Cheap DVD-R(W) media is down to $1-3 a disc.

16

We here at the Straight Dope take copyright infringement seriously. We do not permit threads that seek tips on how to download or otherwise abuse copyrighted works without paying royalties. This thread is closed.

bibliophage
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