Playing divX with Dreambox and VLC

bremze

Hi,

I installed vlc 0.2.3 on my Dreambox 500-s. I disabled my firewall. Changed xml file. When I open VLC plugin on dreambox, I can not see my .avi files which are in C:/Video folder. There is no difference if there is 0.7.1 or 0.8.1 installed on PC.

Do you have any ideas?

Thanks!

un4gvn

Hi bremze..
There is the easy way or the hard way to watch divx files via ur DM500s..
The hard way is the way you're are doing it with VLC plugin, I could never get the darn thing to work or would work today and gone tomorrow.
Now the easy way that I've been using for the last few months.. Download a proggy called winavi converter, convert your divx or xvid or whatever to mpeg2 format on your pc ( in the setting choose whatever suits you ) which by the way on my pc 3.4 p4 1Gig ram takes about 2 minutes to convert a whole divx movies to mpeg2 without any loss of quality. Then on your Dm500s, go to file mode and you will see your movie there now, of course all of this assuming you did set up NFS on both your PC and DM500S. I found that doing it this way, I don't have to deal or mess around with any plug-ins on my Dreambox which is behaving nicely lately , I'm just getting too old I guess..
Good luck mate.

Cheers from CY

bremze

Yeah, already have tried converting to mpeg and then watching. The thing is that converting also works somehow strange on some movies. Now I am trying to convert Bladerunner to mpeg. With winavi after converting to mpeg-2 I have twice as small video which is also somehow moved to right side on dreambox. I hoped that when I play original avi file it will look like I can see it on my computer.

Looks like I will have to end up watching downloaded movies on my laptop...

un4gvn

Interesting bremze !
Never had a problem myself with the converted divx or xvid files, the mpeg2 files looked as good as the original divx humm....
Did you adjust the properties before converting with winavi ? like did you chose "highest" in constant video quality , and " by quality" in preference.
Also you can adjust the picture size as well..
If push comes to shove, you can always get a cheapo dvd-divx-Xvid for dirt cheap these days, I'm looking into one myself
Keep me posted on your progress mate...

Cheers from CY

pant

Have u try both of you instead of converting the file from avi to mpeg just to rename it?
Like porn.avi to porn.m2p without spend time on converting?

un4gvn

yup tried that but did not work in my case. I did not have vlc plug-in installed then. I should try it.... ( did it work for you Pant ?)

mhku

Another answer is to only download the dvd files and not crappy 700mb .avi files, which are only fit to watch on a PC? Or buy a DivX compatible dvd player.

I've never got vlc to work so gave up.

Have a look on videohelp.com for avi to mpg software

pant

Yes and I didnt had vlc plug-in installed.

bremze

I think that's because you had .mpeg file renamed as .avi. You renamed it back to .mpeg and it worked, of course. As far as I understand these things, if dreambox is meant to play mpeg only, there is no way it plays avi. Avi is somehow compressed, encoded and it can't be played as mpeg.

bremze

I didn't change anything in Advanced, left everything as it was there. I will try to change the settings.

What I am confused about most is that the picture was somehow moved to right. I didn't see some right part of the movie and the left side had black space. On PC everything looked OK only smaller.

I have seen this picture movement also on some sat channels like Bulgarian bTV and TTVI from 5E. And it was image independent...

bremze

So I have a progress... I took another avi file and this after converting was OK horizontally but alot smaller vertically. Looked almost ok on PC.

Then I chose SVCD as destination format and ended up with some mpeg which looks terrible on PC (format is wrong on PC but OK on TV through Dreambox). Quality seems bad.

un4gvn

Pant, I just finished trying to play a divx file renamed to mpeg , no go mate ?? blackscreen no sound with or without vlc installed. I'm gonna do it the long way, convert then play.
Mhku, I did buy one divx player for HM, I'm just waiting for it to show up at my door.
I just remembered bremze, what setting do you have under your audio/video settings in the dreambox? Try multinorm in video and let me know, maybe thats your problem mate.

bremze

I will try it. But now I have solved my problems.
Here's my setup which works just perfect. S-video and audio cable from my laptop joined together in scart and connected to my TV. I can play avi fullscreen on laptop and it looks just perfect on TV screen. Also my laptop has a remote which I haven't used yet but I will try to install it in nearest future. I am satisfied.

Thanks all for your help!