DivX players & advanced feature support

[spawntheprawn]

Hi,

I'm thinking about taking the plunge & buying a set top DivX player. Reading around at the moment, it appears the XMS-888 is the way to go. However, a few questions:

1) Firstly, the obvious: anyone care to tell me of a better option than the XMS-888?

2) From what I've read the XMS-888 does not support QPel or GMC, and a fair few of my movies were encoded with these options turned on. Does anyone know if the player will play movies encoded with these options on and simply not make use of the extra data, or will it refuse to play movies encoded with GMC & QPel?

3) Does anyone know of a player (Available in Australia) which supports these two standards (QPel & GMC)?

Cheers,
Matt

[jokiin]

Originally Posted by spawntheprawn

Hi,

I'm thinking about taking the plunge & buying a set top DivX player. Reading around at the moment, it appears the XMS-888 is the way to go. However, a few questions:

1) Firstly, the obvious: anyone care to tell me of a better option than the XMS-888?

2) From what I've read the XMS-888 does not support QPel or GMC, and a fair few of my movies were encoded with these options turned on. Does anyone know if the player will play movies encoded with these options on and simply not make use of the extra data, or will it refuse to play movies encoded with GMC & QPel?

3) Does anyone know of a player (Available in Australia) which supports these two standards (QPel & GMC)?

Cheers,
Matt

The 888 doesn't support these formats, this seems to be common to ESS based players. The Trio DX628 ($249) does, as will the other MTK chipset based players. There are some other players coming on the market very soon that will do what you want and will be cheaper too.

[spawntheprawn]

Originally Posted by jok11n

The 888 doesn't support these formats, this seems to be common to ESS based players. The Trio DX628 ($249) does, as will the other MTK chipset based players. There are some other players coming on the market very soon that will do what you want and will be cheaper too.

So the DX628 does support GMC & QPel? What are the others coming onto the market soon?

Thanks for the reply!

Cheers,
Matt

[Jack Tan]

Yeh,, im interested to know too actually. I didnt know that any players supported this right now. Is it a chipset based capability?

[andw]

Is it a chipset based capability?

I believe that the only chipset that support these are Mediatek at the moment (MTK1389).
Players that use this chipset should support it.
Trio DX628, NeuNeo, 'chuna's' Zensonic and a few others.

[captnk]

A lot of comment about QPEL and GMC encoding on which I would like some clarification
I assume that some DVD,s (originals) are encoded that way when u buy them ??


So I assume they wont play at all on non QPEL/GMC players is that correct?

When converting a DVD toDivx format is their any option to convert QPEL/GMC encoded stuff over to a format that becomes playable

or is it a case that any DVDS encoded that way are simply unplayable on a XMS format player

Is the use of QPEL/GMC format becoming widespread on newer Dvd,s ?


Captnk

[andw]

QPEL and GMC are not used in the DVD format, only Xvid / DivX.
DVD format is MPEG-2.

[spawntheprawn]

Originally Posted by captnk

A lot of comment about QPEL and GMC encoding on which I would like some clarification
I assume that some DVD,s (originals) are encoded that way when u buy them ??

So I assume they wont play at all on non QPEL/GMC players is that correct?

When converting a DVD toDivx format is their any option to convert QPEL/GMC encoded stuff over to a format that becomes playable

or is it a case that any DVDS encoded that way are simply unplayable on a XMS format player

Is the use of QPEL/GMC format becoming widespread on newer Dvd,s ?

QPel (Quarter Pixels) and GMC (Global Motion Compensation) have nothing to do with the original DVDs (which are in MPEG-2 format).

They are "advanced" parts of the MPEG-4 (Divx, XVid, etc) codec. When you encode an MPEG-4 movie you get the option to enable them (assuming the encoder you are using supports them). If they are selected during encoding, then the decoding device must support the technology as well.

So, you can choose to turn QPel & GMC off during encoding, but they provide better quality for the same movie size, so I'd rather not :-)

Cheers,
Matt

[Scaramouche]

The Trio-628 can do GMC & QPEL. It uses a different & much newer chip than the the XMS-888

[speed X]

The ESS chips don't do Qpel or GMC but I think they have more firmware releases than any of the MediaTek chips. MediaTek seems to take forever to release firmware. I dont have any experience with the 888 but it appears to be a more stable player than any based on the MediaTek chip.

I doubt there will ever be a firmware update for any of the 1389GE chips since they are not intended for Mpeg4 playback (as told to Divx Networks by MediaTek). As things are, all the 1389xx chips promise much more than they can deliver reliably.

[bwg]

just to confuse things...

I believe that the mediatek chip based players play QPel ok, but have troubles when it comes to GMC. At least, this seems to be true of the xms-989 (based on the MTK1389 chip). Don't know about the Trio or Zensonic, can anyone confirm?

[andw]

Yes, I belive that bwg is correct.

[horze]

im so confuseed
lmao

[speed X]

Originally Posted by bwg

just to confuse things...

I believe that the mediatek chip based players play QPel ok, but have troubles when it comes to GMC. At least, this seems to be true of the xms-989 (based on the MTK1389 chip). Don't know about the Trio or Zensonic, can anyone confirm?

Yes bwg, I couldn't agree more. All the MediaTek chips I've tested don't seem to handle GMC too well.