Anti-Piracy or just plain weird?

[wdgoldstein]

I have experienced very odd behaivor on new 2 discs from Sony. Hell Boy and Ghost Rider. It should be noted that both of these discs are near the max size of 50 gig which is why I suspect that size is the issue.

When playing either of these discs from a USB2 HDD I appear to be getting stop action viewing only a frame here and there while the audio continues on. This appears to be because the data stream can not get across the bus fast enough to maintain fluid video. It is ONLY apparrent on these two discs at present. I suspect that Sony, in an effort to make its discs as large as possable, to hinder up and down loading as well as make copying VERY EXPENSIVE, is using as little compression on them as it can. Add to the fact that these external HDD's are most likley not the fastest, though they were the cheapest I could find, and I end up with films that are properly ripped but not watchable unless I burn them to dual layered disks which would cost more than the original films, or copy them over to a local fast HDD. I have done this as a test and then the film works fine.

Sony has announced that all its future films will be dual layered and I believe that this may well be the reason. Sony marketing will no doubt assert that the less the compression the better the picture. However in real life we know that there are much better algorhythems than MPG2 that could be used today. The single layered BD' and HD's I have watched on my systems are just as sharp and clear.

Can anyone else think of why this would be? And before you ask I have a VERY fast system with lots of memory and both single layer BD and all HD films play just from any of my drives including this specific external one.

[James]

Originally Posted by wdgoldstein

I have experienced very odd behaivor on new 2 discs from Sony. Hell Boy and Ghost Rider. It should be noted that both of these discs are near the max size of 50 gig which is why I suspect that size is the issue.

When playing either of these discs from a USB2 HDD I appear to be getting stop action viewing only a frame here and there while the audio continues on. This appears to be because the data stream can not get across the bus fast enough to maintain fluid video.

If this would be the case, these titles wouldn't play on Blu-ray drives either (mine is connected via USB2).

[roog]

Originally Posted by wdgoldstein

Add to the fact that these external HDD's are most likley not the fastest, though they were the cheapest I could find.

Maybe that's why they were cheap.

And yes, HD movies are being bloated. This is the number one reason why we need CloneDVD to go HD.

[wdgoldstein]

Originally Posted by James

If this would be the case, these titles wouldn't play on Blu-ray drives either (mine is connected via USB2).

Have you actually tried watching these movies via your USB2 player or only ripping them to HDD?

I ask not to be a wise ass but because I am trying to figure out the problem. I also should note that I am runing Vista which seems to have much slower disk access than XP.

[roog]

Originally Posted by wdgoldstein

Have you actually tried watching these movies via your USB2 player or only ripping them to HDD?

I ask not to be a wise ass but because I am trying to figure out the problem. I also should note that I am runing Vista which seems to have much slower disk access than XP.

Do you have access to a XBOX 360 drive? If you do, try playing a dual-layer HD DVD movie using it and see if you have the same problem.

[Adbear]

I have both these films backed up on an external maxtor drive, and they play fine thru the usb port, I am also using Vista

[roog]

Originally Posted by wdgoldstein

Have you actually tried watching these movies via your USB2 player or only ripping them to HDD?

I ask not to be a wise ass but because I am trying to figure out the problem. I also should note that I am runing Vista which seems to have much slower disk access than XP.

I copied Ghost Rider to my homebrew USB 2.0 hard drive and I'm getting worse results than you when I try to play it.

I suspect that your drive peformance is probably the issue.

I'm running Vista 32.

[James]

Originally Posted by wdgoldstein

Have you actually tried watching these movies via your USB2 player or only ripping them to HDD?

I ask not to be a wise ass but because I am trying to figure out the problem. I also should note that I am runing Vista which seems to have much slower disk access than XP.

Of course I watch them via USB2.

[wdgoldstein]

I have no problem with the HD either single or dual layer. It is only on these large BD volumns that the problem exists. Interesting that Roog has the same issues.

[James]

Originally Posted by wdgoldstein

I have no problem with the HD either single or dual layer. It is only on these large BD volumns that the problem exists. Interesting that Roog has the same issues.

The major difference between HD DVD and BD (apart from the slightly higher max. bitrate, but this shouldn't matter at all, USB2 is certainly fast enough) is the "perforation" sometimes done to the files. BD is really weird, it allows you to have files interleaved on the disc. For example, you have two files on a disc, A and B.
With HD DVD these files are always organized like this

AAAAAAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBBBBB

With BD, the physical layout can look like this:

AABBAABBAABBAABBAABBAABBAABB

If you copy these files to harddisk, the files will be separate again:
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

I don't know if this might cause this problem, it shouldn't, as the harddisk should always be fast enough to seek between the files in case the player software needs to read the files interleaved. So this is just a guess...

Did I mention that Blu-ray sucks?