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Star Wars HD coming in November! All SIX movies! — Page 7

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Originally posted by: BountyHunter
I was able to record them all on my DVR....but no one really got back to me about whether or not it can be used.


Well, it depends on your cable provider. The next step requires you do a little research, or provide enough information for someone else to do the research. Neither has happened. Is there 5C encryption on the capture? Yes? Then there's no chance (at the moment). No? Then it's pretty simple.
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Well considering the fact that I don't even know what a 5C encryption is...I'm probably gonna need help.
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Originally posted by: BountyHunter
Well considering the fact that I don't even know what a 5C encryption is...I'm probably gonna need help.


Ha! Yeah, maybe...

I don't know precisely what 5C is (it's encryption of some sort), but I do know what it does: it disables output of the raw data by Firewire (aka IEEE 1394), which means you can't dump the movie to your harddrive unencrypted.

Probably the easiest route forward is to give the make and model of your PVR, your location (city, state), and the name of your cable provider. From that, someone can sort out if it's likely you've got 5C applied or not. Saves you the hassle of sorting out a bunch of cables and applications, only to find it was a hopeless task to begin with.
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What are the PC requirements for playing a .mkv file? I have a AMD Athlon XP 2800+ with 1GB PC3200 RAM and a ATI Radeon x700 Pro. Do I make the cut? i don't have a problem playing .ts files or streaming them onto my XBOX 360.

It’s Not the Years, It’s the Mileage.

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And the fact that SKY TV hasn't played them yet would explain why there are not any .ts versions on a.b.hdtv

It’s Not the Years, It’s the Mileage.

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Originally posted by: IrishLuck1980
And the fact that SKY TV hasn't played them yet would explain why there are not any .ts versions on a.b.hdtv


If someone were able to get Cinemax without the 5c encryption (as I know someone was able to on AVS) there would be.
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Perhaps this person on AVS that has Cinemax without 5c can help us out by providing the raw capture of the HD broadcasts of the Star Wars trilogy and the prequels to us?

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Originally posted by: Dunedain
Perhaps this person on AVS that has Cinemax without 5c can help us out by providing the raw capture of the HD broadcasts of the Star Wars trilogy and the prequels to us?


Duh. Don't you think I tried already?

never got a response.
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I'm pretty sure my notebook does not have a firewire connection anyway...so its a moot point.

I mean, I didn't see anything that said "IEEE 1394" anywhere, so I assume that means no...
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Originally posted by: Dunedain
So no one was able to record the Star Wars movies in HD off of Cinemax in a way that would allow ready copying over to high definition DVD's?
Originally posted by: Karyudo
Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
Told you.

I'm sure someone did. Hopefully it will show up one day.


I doubt it. It will be superseded by the superior, h264-encoded, 5C-free version airing in January on SkyHD. Just like it's pretty much been pre-empted by the PremierHD airing (German language crawl and subs notwithstanding).

Proving once again that the best place to get American HD movies is Europe.


The Cinemax rips are up on the hdtv binaries group.
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Originally posted by: Zeromancer
The Cinemax rips are up on the hdtv binaries group.


Umm... could you be a bit more specific about "hdtv binaries group"? Because they are not up in a.b.hdtv, which is what I'd imagine most people think of as "the hdtv binaries group".

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Do these files have unaltered video, just as they were shown on Cinemax? Because I don't recall seeing anyone complain that they looked bad on Cinemax. I don't expect them to look as good as if they were released on a dual-layer Blu-Ray disk, but hopefully they looked pretty solid on Cinemax.

If the video is unaltered, then I guess we have our straight captures of the Star Wars trilogy (well, the 2004 set anyhow) and the prequels in HD finally. This means that they can be preserved for watching in HD from further possible changes in the Star Wars 30th Anniversary set (after which, they may or may not be released on high definition DVD without the 30th Anniversary changes). And it also provides a relatively high-quality source for use in restoration of the unaltered original trilogy. So, who has the Blu-Ray burners?

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Don't "get" HD? Do you mean understand it? I know enough about it to know that it's nice to have the Star Wars trilogy and the prequels available in HD finally, especially considering the possible changes that might be made in the 30th anniversary set. I assume the bit-rate (and maybe not even the res?) on Cinemax isn't going to be as good as one would expect on a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray version, but it's the best available so far, so you make do.

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Originally posted by: DVD-BOY
abhdtv.net has a post regarding the the posting.

So it does. I'm even a member over there, but I always forget to keep an eye on the forums. What I learned today was that maybe I shouldn't be so quick to erase headers for movies starring pop tarts...

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Dunedain, what is it you mean about the video being "unaltered"? If you're asking if the Cinemax showed the original, unaltered trilogy (as it was before 1997), no, it didn't. They showed the 2004 versions.

Secondly, right now, the best available HD versions are from a german HD channel that showed them a couple months ago. However, Sky HD (a set of British channels, similar to HBO) is supposed to be airing them on one of their HD channels in January, and right now, the highest quality HD rips have been coming from their channels. High bitrate, good compression, etc. So at that point, that'll be the best available.

But there is no HD version of the pre-97 movies. The best version of that available is the recent DVD release that was sourced from the videodisc transfer.
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tweaker: What I mean by unaltered in this case is that the video that the guy captured from Cinemax has not been re-encoded to save space or anything like that that might affect the video quality. Just a straight capture of the video exactly as it was put out by Cinemax with no alterations. If I recall correctly, the German version that was on recently did have a rather good bit-rate, but the German subtitles take that out of the running for a good HD capture to watch at home, unless you happen to be German.

This upcoming Star Wars showing on Sky HD is expected to be quite good looking from what everyone's saying, so that's good news. But they will all have to be slowed down to the proper film speed (no PAL speed up) and the audio replaced with the U.S. Star Wars trilogy and prequel DVD 5.1 soundtracks. So in the mean time, the Cinemax broadcast is the best available. In any case, get the Blu-Ray burners ready.

As far as the unaltered original Star Wars trilogy with a new transfer from the fully restored master film prints on DVD (and then eventually on high definition DVD), that's what we all really want. But for now, let's at least get the 2004 trilogy set and the prequels in HD before any further changes are made in the 30th anniversary set.

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Eh, from what I understand, the 2004 version is an absolute mess, with the color and luminescence levels completely off, aside from the sfx alterations. Nowhere to really go from here but up. Why the need to preserve an altered film?
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Because then we'll have a clean HD source to work from for restoration projects, the same as some do now from the 2004 DVD set, but this will provide even more res. The colors certainly are off in many cases, but that can be corrected rather well. And then in the scenes that don't have the SE changes, at least we'll have a pretty good looking HD set of the original trilogy. Plus, the idea of preserving even the 2004 set in HD before further possible changes are made is rather appealing, at least this way Lucas can't mess it up any more before we have it in HD. And, of course, having the prequels in HD before changes end up getting made to them in the 30th anniversary set is good, too.

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Dunedain just likes using the words HD and Blu-Ray...and that's about it.
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Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
You really don't get HD, do you...
Originally posted by: digitalfreaknyc
Dunedain just likes using the words HD and Blu-Ray...and that's about it.


LOL! DFNYC, you're harsh, but funny man!

Now seriously, it's looking like the SkyHD is going to be the best 'source', so theoretically speaking:

- H264 sourced 25fps converted to 23.98 fps AVI (Not sure if Huffy goes to 1080...) Someone on the ABHDTV.net forums who did an MPEG-2 conversion talked about Procoder doing a 'nearest' frame conversion.

- Sync with NTSC AC3 from 2004 DVD - encode a dirty 'ref' movie to sync with?

- Re-encode to H264 to fit on a DVD-9 (Or wait for HD-15 / HD-30?). I'm not sure yet whether Mainconcept H264 encoder would apply perfect 3:2 flags to a video file. Perhaps that should be done at the AVI stage?

Not ideal with the re-encoding, but unlike MPEG-2, I don't think the raw H264 would drop into an HD DVD authoring app, plus we would need to frame-rate convert.

With regards to authoring, who knows what 2007 will bring from Apple and DVDSPx, or there is the Scenarist 4 SCA route...

But what do I know, I still owe DFNYC a copy of my Indiana Jones DVD EPK Encode.

Save London’s Curzon Soho Cinema

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Actually, I prefer the acronym HD-DVD. It looks and sounds cooler, plus it describes what it is better, since both types of disk are high definition DVD's. But Blu-Ray has better technical specs, so I'll have to give them that.

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.

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Regardless of one's preference for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, neither is really necessary. A 1080i x264 encode sized to fit on a DVD-9 looks quite nice, but the problem is, unless you're running a dual-core machine, you won't be able to play the damn thing. The only way you'd be able to watch it at 1080 would be to reencode the H.264 TS (Sky HD utilizes H.264 compression, rather than MPEG2) to MPEG2.

For the vast majority of people, 720p is as high as you can go while utilizing H.264/x264 codecs, and a 720p encode of the Star Wars films looks great even when squeezed down to a DVD-5.

So Dunedain, seriously, at 20 to 30 bucks a disc, using Blu-Ray discs is stupid...not even accounting for the cost of the damn drives. If you want to play with bigger files, just use a hard drive.
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Personally, I have no intention to watch them on a computer. I'd much rather sit in front a t.v. on the couch and crank up my home theater stereo equipment and watch it that way. I plan to get a high definition DVD set top player one of these days, whether HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, I'm not sure, and just stick the disk in there and watch it on a HD t.v. As far as the Blu-Ray burner needed to make the HD backup copies at full quality, all one needs is access to one a friend owns to crank some out or a burner on some PC anywhere that you can use would work fine. No need for everyone to go out and buy dozens of Blu-Ray burners for $1,000 each, that's completely impractical. I certainly don't mind spending $30 per blank disk to have the Star Wars trilogy plus the prequels in HD before any further changes can be made.

The Star Wars trilogy. There can be only one.