New CPU or video card?

[signals]

My buddy maineman is on a LONG road trip, I'm sure you will hear from him soon.

[mike_tee_vee]

Thanks for all the great info! How well does the Argosy do at seeking through movies (i.e. FF, Rew)? Does the chapter skip function work well?

Also, do subtitles work?

[maineman]

I hear the newer Argosy HV6xxx is the bomb but haven't actually tried one out yet but I've been good this year so Santa just might....

Yeah, based on my experience, I'd go for the Argosy HV677 like W&B recommended.
Argosy HV677

Yes, the usb support for my Argosy is great.
Soon, I'll be connecting a JBOD with 4 additional 2 TB hdds via usb to my Argosy.
This will give me 10 TB all controlled by my Argosy remote without my ever moving from my comfy chair...

I've not heard great things about WD MPs and my good friend GregiBoy who runs a business in OZ selling and modifying MPs...
has nothing good to say about Western Digital MPs.

You can do search for for some feedback by him.
Good chance he'll see this and comment anyway.
Whatever advice he gives, you can take to the bank.

[W&B]

As yet, Fab does not support BD menu function, but I believe it is on the to-do list. No word on when...at least not to my ears.

I have an Argosy HV335T...picked it up at Amazon last March for $89.
The player itself has limited functionality/controls, but it works great and will play any format I throw at it.

On the negative side, it cannot handle True HD sound, which is not unique in the world of media players.
Also, organizing your files on your hdds can be problem.
One of my hdds must have close to ~ 1000 converted standard dvd files.
It gets old trying to scroll through the list.

Initailly, I thought of organizing folders by genre, but this quickly lost to simple A-D, E-H, etc., folders.

The last firmware update made things a bit faster, but a page up/page down function would help.

I think you'll see better BD support (HD audio) and improved menu function in the near future

The WDTV (gen1) has the page up/down feature and a search function but one thing no player I've seen as of yet will support is the XML files for movie description (synopsis, movie rating and so forth).
I hear the newer Argosy HV6xxx is the bomb but haven't actually tried one out yet but I've been good this year so Santa just might....

[mike_tee_vee]

As yet, Fab does not support BD menu function, but I believe it is on the to-do list. No word on when...at least not to my ears.

I have an Argosy HV335T...picked it up at Amazon last March for $89.
The player itself has limited functionality/controls, but it works great and will play any format I throw at it.

On the negative side, it cannot handle True HD sound, which is not unique in the world of media players.
Also, organizing your files on your hdds can be problem.
One of my hdds must have close to ~ 1000 converted standard dvd files.
It gets old trying to scroll through the list.

Initailly, I thought of organizing folders by genre, but this quickly lost to simple A-D, E-H, etc., folders.

The last firmware update made things a bit faster, but a page up/page down function would help.

I think you'll see better BD support (HD audio) and improved menu function in the near future

Very interesting! So do you prefer the Argosy to something like the Western Digital WDTV Live? Is USB hard drive support pretty good?

[maineman]

As yet, Fab does not support BD menu function, but I believe it is on the to-do list. No word on when...at least not to my ears.

I have an Argosy HV335T...picked it up at Amazon last March for $89.
The player itself has limited functionality/controls, but it works great and will play any format I throw at it.

On the negative side, it cannot handle True HD sound, which is not unique in the world of media players.
Also, organizing your files on your hdds can be problem.
One of my hdds must have close to ~ 1000 converted standard dvd files.
It gets old trying to scroll through the list.

Initailly, I thought of organizing folders by genre, but this quickly lost to simple A-D, E-H, etc., folders.

The last firmware update made things a bit faster, but a page up/page down function would help.

I think you'll see better BD support (HD audio) and improved menu function in the near future

[Racem22]

Well, I know maineman uses an Argosy player model # HV335T and I'm guessing it can play menus and such, but he will have to give you more details. I know it's definitely a good player, if you're looking to get one.

[mike_tee_vee]

Well, I usually don't rip to .ISO, but
yup, my initial rip is
BD disc ---> uncompressed ---> hdd (BD50) (Main Movie, Full Disc or the soon-to-be-released, Customize)

Generally, I archive to hdds and watch my flicks via my media player.

In any case, my next rip is to a hdd or can be burned to a disc

Already ripped hdd files (BD50) ---> compress to ----> BD25, BD9, BD5 (I never use BD5) or convert to standard dvd9 (BD to DVD).

maineman,

What media player do you use to watch your rips? Are the menus functional? I'm assuming it connects to your TV?

[maineman]

Do you rip to ISO on your initial rip to the HD or some other?
Stuart

Well, I usually don't rip to .ISO, but
yup, my initial rip is
BD disc ---> uncompressed ---> hdd (BD50) (Main Movie, Full Disc or the soon-to-be-released, Customize)

Generally, I archive to hdds and watch my flicks via my media player.

In any case, my next rip is to a hdd or can be burned to a disc

Already ripped hdd files (BD50) ---> compress to ----> BD25, BD9, BD5 (I never use BD5) or convert to standard dvd9 (BD to DVD).

[sjm992]

Please do not compress at all on the initial rip from the BD disc.

Do you rip to ISO on your initial rip to the HD or some other?
Stuart

[DharmaBummed69]

You may also want to consider that if you upgrade to a new CPU of the LGA 1156 or 1366 variety you will be looking at buying a new motherboard or your going to be pretty disappointed when you try to drop a LGA 1156 or 1366 into a LGA 775 motherboard. Also possibly RAM also if you don't already have DDR3. You may think about overclocking your current CPU. I have my Q9300 overclocked to 3.30GHz and get 3-6 MBps on normal and around 2MBps on High Quality. Depends on the codec used on the movie.

[W&B]

I understand and for all I know it may be faster. Actually I looked on newegg and they don't even offer the i7 920s anymore, simply not listed there anywhere. The 950 is the lowest i7 available for $294.

[btufail]

Not sure that cpu would be an upgrade considering it's a dual core and the op has a quad but newegg has a i7 920 quad for $280 (give or take last time I checked).

EDIT: forgot to mention, if the op does upgrade the cpu they should make sure it's compatible with the motherboard they have.

Yeah I considered that. But for the money he had I figured it was the only logical choice. Almost all of the i-7 processors were around $350-400 alone. & from what I heard some of the i-5's are pretty fast. But it was just a suggestion.

[maineman]

Hi Mike,

Although you may be doing this already, it's not evident from your post.

Please do not compress at all on the initial rip from the BD disc.
This will take an inordinate amount of time and will cause unnecessary wear and tear on your BD drive.

Just to give you a point of comparison...
I'm running a pretty average core i7 build (I built it Oct '09) with:
Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz 4 x 256KB L2 Cache 8MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 130W Quad-Core
EVGA 896-P3-1257-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked Edition 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 .

Nothing fancy mind you, but seeing typical times of 12-15 MB/s
I'm ripping Inception (R1) as I type
and looking at 14 MB/s with these settings:

[srb01]

I think you need to take several items into consideration before making this purchase. Reading/following the posts, it seems that more and more people, myself included are having/had problems with Coreavc and Cuda, and DVX with audio sunc, and video glitches and other problems. The programers are telling us to switch all codecs to software, killing any chance of GPU off-loading. This isn't new, it's been going on now for months. Only the programmers can tell us when this problem is going to be rectified, IF EVER.
So to get any speed in your BluRay processing, for the interum I'd buy the biggest, baddest 6 or/more core CPU I could get, and forget about any GPU off-loading. Just get the re-processing done with CPU power. It's too bad, we are now back to having paid for a program that's no faster or better for processing, than one we can get for free. (The ripping portion, of course is a different matter). No disrespect, just stating the obvious.