Hacking Looking for an extremely powerful media player

[limesherbert]

I have geexbox right now, except it won't play a 4.33gb 720p mkv video. Is this just because of the wii's limitations or is there a player that can handle it?

 

[FenrirWolf]

I'm pretty sure it's the Wii's limitations. I've launched 720p stuff in MPlayerCE for the lulz and it gets all green looking and it lags a whole lot. XD

 

[roku93]

About a 700MhZ on a widely unknown platfrom without proper documentation.. I don't think it will ever be possible. Changes are low at least.

 

[Jacobeian]

impossible, the video hardware only supports 480p max !

 

[Deleted member 64124]

It was also thought impossible to go on the moon

 

[Alexrose]

It's also thought impossible to emulate ps3 games on a gba, what's your point? I can name infinitely more examples of impossible things than you can name possible things.

 

[FAST6191]

impossible, the video hardware only supports 480p max !

Like I can upscale my video to the resolution of my monitor I can downscale it too.

Back on topic I would not expect to see it now but in theory it could be done although you would probably lose some of the nice features of H264 (I am assuming it is H264, few people use anything else in "high" res MKV).

 

[crwys]

I'm not too smart about this stuff but what you can try is splitting the file into 2 parts? Then maybe the wii can play it.

 

[pumkinut]

impossible, the video hardware only supports 480p max !

Like I can upscale my video to the resolution of my monitor I can downscale it too.

And your point is...?
QUOTE

Back on topic I would not expect to see it now but in theory it could be done although you would probably lose some of the nice features of H264 (I am assuming it is H264, few people use anything else in "high" res MKV).

There's no way in hell a Wii is going to do true 720p content. Period. Look at XBMC on the Xbox. It's a mature, well-documented platform, with a mature, stable software base, and the only way it can do 720p, marginally at that, is with a carefully coded Xvid (h.263) with a lot of the options turned off, and you still get studdering, macroblocking, and judder with scenes that cannot be compressed well. The hardware simply can't do it, the Wii wouldn't be able to either. Throw H.264 into the mix, and you're in an even worse state.

 

[Jacobeian]

you can speak as loud as you can, the wii can NOT output native 720p, this is HARDWARE limitation and no SOFTWARE application could do something about it, try to read more about how video signals are generated before speculating...

the only way to do it would be to replace the video encoder chip, like the only way to go on the moon was to build a capable spacecraft ;-)

 

[Tagg7]

The Wii could theoretically be modified to output in 720p; however it simply looks the hardware capabilities to play anything that large.

 

[Carty1970]

I'm not too smart about this stuff but what you can try is splitting the file into 2 parts? Then maybe the wii can play it.

No it won't. There is no point in trying to play 720p videos on the Wii as it doesn't support such a high resolution. There is some potential for downscaling the vids but that would be pretty pointless as it would effectively be transcoding it down to SD. Anyone that can get HD media can also get the equivalent in SD.

 

[wiiNinja]

H264 is awfully (computing) power intensive, even for decoding. How does the Wii compare to an average dual core x86 machine in the market (in terms of raw computing power), with 2-4GB RAM? It will also have to deal with DTS, AC3, subtitles.

 

[porchemasi]

I use my Ps3 to play my x264/mkvs either 720p or 1080p and they work flawlessly
with hd resolution (duh!) and 5.1 audio

)))


M2TS format check it out

 

[limesherbert]

Actually I wouldn't mind watching in SD because I don't have anything to output in HD anyway.

So if I were to downscale the video, how much of a quality reduction are we talking about?

 

[FAST6191]

impossible, the video hardware only supports 480p max !

Like I can upscale my video to the resolution of my monitor I can downscale it too.
And your point is...?


That it does not especially matter what the source resolution is, you can always scale up or down to match the video output. I agree it would be kind of pointless but it can be done.

QUOTEBack on topic I would not expect to see it now but in theory it could be done although you would probably lose some of the nice features of H264 (I am assuming it is H264, few people use anything else in "high" res MKV).

There's no way in hell a Wii is going to do true 720p content. Period. Look at XBMC on the Xbox. It's a mature, well-documented platform, with a mature, stable software base, and the only way it can do 720p, marginally at that, is with a carefully coded Xvid (h.263) with a lot of the options turned off, and you still get studdering, macroblocking, and judder with scenes that cannot be compressed well. The hardware simply can't do it, the Wii wouldn't be able to either. Throw H.264 into the mix, and you're in an even worse state.

I am not saying it would be an easy feat by any means and the OP should not hold their breath but the wii I reckon to be slightly more powerful than the original xbox in terms of the main processor) and with the other processors/hardware behind it and some of the new decoder techniques (I was looking at some of the GC video specs (which I am told the wii is not all that far from) and I reckon I could do some stuff there).
Also while xbmc is awesome (I use it to this day) and I would never deny such a thing the developers will be the first people to tell you they are not video decoder authors and xbmc is just a very nice frontend to mplayer which has never really had fast h264 (although some serious work was done for the last build from what I recall).

Finally and I agree I did not mention it in my original post but some of the USB encoder/decoder hardware is looking pretty good, with some considerable effort it could appear on the wii.

edit: got a fast moving thread here.
QUOTE(wiiNinja @ Apr 9 2009, 08:36 PM)

H264 is awfully (computing) power intensive, even for decoding. How does the Wii compare to an average dual core x86 machine in the market (in terms of raw computing power), with 2-4GB RAM? It will also have to deal with DTS, AC3, subtitles.

No argument it is intensive but you can not really compare a PC to console if for no other reason than you do not have to run everything on top of an OS. This is why consoles can get away with amounts of ram that would get you laughed at in PC realms.
Where I agree you probably could compare things is processor speed, clockspeed is not everything but it does help and I reckon I can get 720p done on a 700MHz single core, granted I would lose all nice decoding features and some of the other options and may have to go but it could be done.

Also I should mention mobile phones, these run on risc type processors these days at similar clocks to the wii and can usually handle H264 very well

DTS AC3 and subs.
Nobody should use DTS for these sorts of things, a sidenote I not only find it greatly amusing that lossless (I know DTS is not always used for lossless) audio feels the need to be included at all but some discs decide to include multiple lossless tracks in different formats.

AC3, well we have AAC on the DS which is a step up from AC3.

Subs: these could be a problem if you are looking at styled karaoke ASS/SSA subs but for basic srt/similar or possibly even vobsub it should not be a problem.

 

[Jizmo09]

Cmon guys, you can't be this stupid Ignorant ...... The Wii processor doesn't even have enough power to decode HD in real time let alone display it. We're talking 1.4 Ghz processor here. Or is it 1.2? Stick with xvid. HD video on Wii is a pipe dream.

 

[limesherbert]

Everyone, especially FAST6191, I must thank you for all that information you provided. But can someone answer, around how much should I compress/downscale my video so that it can play on my wii?

 

[Screemer]

impossible, the video hardware only supports 480p max !
rumors say that the flipper gpu in the ngc already supported 1920x1080 as max output resolution. the question is rather is the wii powerful enough to encode data in 720p in decent framerates. could be possible if we had a hardware accelerated mediaplayer which makes use of the complete hardware performance.

QUOTE(pumkinut @ Apr 9 2009, 09:47 PM) There's no way in hell a Wii is going to do true 720p content. Period. Look at XBMC on the Xbox. It's a mature, well-documented platform, with a mature, stable software base, and the only way it can do 720p, marginally at that, is with a carefully coded Xvid (h.263) with a lot of the options turned off, and you still get studdering, macroblocking, and judder with scenes that cannot be compressed well. The hardware simply can't do it, the Wii wouldn't be able to either. Throw H.264 into the mix, and you're in an even worse state.

sadly the hollywood doesn't offer unified shader architecture like the 360 has. with that it wouldn't be that hard to port a hardware accelerated decoder to the wii.

 

[Screemer]

- double post -