[MEncoder-users] Progressive Scan DVD player?

[James Hastings-Trew]

Andy Civil wrote:
> If I can't actually play a full frame (720) at 60fps, then I'm not going to get 
> any better quality than a regular DVD.
>   
Bingo. I've never encountered Divx capable DVD player than plays back 
Divx movies at a higher resolution than a DVD. Generally, the Divx 
support in these devices are pretty poor, and you have to disable qpel, 
bi-directional b-frames, etc if you expect the movie file to play at 
all. I tried to find some specs on your specific player, but as usual, 
they are pretty silent on what *kind* of divx movie they are talking about.

> Without expecting anyone to know my specific player, has anyone discovered the 
> best kind of stream to use with MEncoder for DivX capable players in general?
>   
Yes, I have found the following command line to produce the most 
"compatible" divx stream (since I have no idea what format/aspect 
ratio/framerate your source is, this is for a typical wide-screen movie 
24fps. Note that if you use different scale or cropping than this 
example, make sure your dimensions are divisible by 16):

mencoder INPUT.avi -of avi -noodml -ffourcc DIVX -vf 
scale=720:400,dsize=720:400,harddup -ovc lavc -lavcopts 
vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=2:trell=yes:vbitrate=2500:vrc_maxrate=5000:vrc_buf_size=1835 
-oac mp3lame -lameopts mode=0:cbr:br=160 -ofps 24000/1001 -o OUTPUT.avi
> Also, has anyone experimented with better-quality players that are not 
> necessarily HD-DVD or BLU-RAY but can accept superior streams written to DVDs 
> (maybe without the ~10,000kb/s data rate restriction)?
>   
I've never seen one. I will, however, suggest an alternative to a DVD 
player that will do whatever you want - a Mac Mini. It's not that cheap, 
but it is small, silent, versatile, will play just about any format you 
want to throw at it through the excellent Front Row application, can 
send and receive files wirelessly to/from your network, and connects to 
the VGA port most hi-def TVs have to provide an exceptionally sharp 
pixel for pixel image. I think this would be an even better choice in 
the near future when Apple starts selling these with Blu-ray optical 
drives in them as standard equipment (currently they only have DVD 
drives in them). Biggest downside is audio support - it's your basic 
stereo hookup, but audio has never been that important to me. I hooked a 
Mini to my TV some time ago, and I've not used my DVD player since - the 
image quality out of the Mini blows the DVD player/HDMI image completely 
out of the water.

If you hate Apple (and I understand that there are people that do), then 
I am sure there are reasonable, and possibly cheaper, alternatives in 
the Windows or Linux worlds that you can buy or build yourself.