It's the first thing that came to mind as a reply


Okay maybe a lil embarrassed

i have a pretty decent download speed but i cant upload worth shit...i'm not used to uploading movies, i'm used the the cd world and just using megaupload or one of those filesharing sites, so in my oppinion, 700mb would be best for me in avi format if i am doing something for someone and it does't really matter to me what i am receiving the format in...just just need help with avis and then a srt subtitle file, how am i supposed to embede that or burn a dvd and attach the subtitles? thanx for taking my input

you don't, you don't re-encode avis at all providing you have the right (and pretty cheap) hardware. You can buy a flakey dvd player with xvid support for what, £40 at a supermarket/walmart/bestbuy/nettos/whereever. I'd suggest a modified Xbox myself.

You burn them as a data disc project not a dvd-video project, and then you put them into your MPEG4 capable DVD player (the Xbox being the most capable standalone MPEG4 player), and then you select the avi file from the list of files on the disc and hit play. Stuff like subs will be supported by most players, xbox supports all formats, crummy standalones support srt but not vobs and other technical flaws related to their cheapness.


It sounds like you've not bought a dvd player in a long, long time? I would suggest an upgrade. You can get a second hand xbox with a 1 year warranty in the uk for about £50. For a game rental and a bit of work, you can then modify it and load on linux, and then its a matter of either networking it up to your pc or burning avis to a disc and playing from there. Its by far the most capable solution and if your scared of general computer work, you can pay a premium and get a hardware modified xbox for sub £100 (rip off knowing that softmodding is so easy, see pca's sticky topic guide).

Alternatively you can get a flakier dvd player that's "Divx Certified", although that might have trouble with advanced profile stuff.

In this day and age you really don't need to convert an avi to mpeg2/vobs, you just burn them as straight data as you would any other file backup to a DVD-r disc. The reason mpeg4s dominate emule and all p2p networks is because they are playable as is, otherwise everything would be dvdr isos and vcd isos/ mpegs

Subtitles are playable as is on most decent players. You just need to rename the filenames to match the avi filename.

Essentially, VCD is MPEG1, a totally antequated format from the late 80s, DVD-Video is MPEG2, a very old codec from about 1996, and MPEG4 is the replacement for both of them which is highly compressible, superior quality and a more manageable format.

I'd strongly recommend looking into buying an xbox and performing the relatively simple task of modifying it. Then you can forget about all this re-encoding/transcoding bollocks, and play the downloaded file exactly as is with no faffing

Not only stuff like that. Some time ago I gave a friend of mine some DVDs full with comics in .cbr format. Last week he told me that he can read them on his TV using his player. Forgot which one he has, since it was not important for me. But I was really surprised.

yeah well i'm still flabberghasted that xbox plays xvids inside rars

Does it make sense to rar xvids? How good do they compress?

scene releases mate, they always come packed as rars because of the likelihood of corruption during ftp transfers. Newsgroups and torrent releases are often straight from topsites unrarred.

Its even in tdx how much they have to split the rars by, or it was anyway

Just checked. The tdx standard seem to be to use no compression. That way rars are more or less just split files, probably only the first few bytes differ. Therefore some players like VLC can play them without knowledge of the rar format itself.

xbox plays compressed, uncompressed, split or unsplit rars as if they were just avis. So i can just share my incoming directories from news and play them from inside without having to unrar the things first

Spud happy with these?
Or are they not that good?

They are excellent, and you can't really have a problem with something so simple. The only thing worth mentioning is that you should look into getting a draw or some static bags, or something to store your hdd in when they are not in use.

But they do exactly what they say on the tin. Check your SATA controller supports hot swap btw.

Cool to know.
Gonna order a couple of them, 1 for every pc I have. And hotswap shouldn't be a problem all of them are capable of that.

No problem storing hd's either, for my server I once ordered 20 hd's and they got shipped in the original package. 1 big box with 20 sealable plastic boxes.
Really sweet.

I prefer the Seagate SeaShells.... hard plastic cases. I just can't find anywhere that will give me any