DVD Player Core?

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LamerDeluxe
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by LamerDeluxe »

PS2 Doesn't do RGB output with DVDs, you'll get a green display.
elvis
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by elvis »

hiddenbyleaves wrote: Mon Mar 01, 2021 5:36 pm Is there some other easy way to play an iso on an old tv through rgb scart?
Caveat: I work in film/TV/media as well as digital perseveration (amongst other industries).

DVD is MPEG2 compressed, but more importantly 4:2:0 YUV and interlaced. There's very little to be gained in playing these via RGB/SCART over S-Video, and in some cases it's even worse as the natural smoothing offered by "worse" connections helps. There's a reason CVBS and S-Video we popular connectors, despite the fact that it somewhat ruins the look of our old games. Likewise interlacing is an abomination in old games, but perfectly fine for video displayed on a CRT and viewed from a distance.

Additionally, there's no low latency requirement for video. "Lag" in the terms we use in video games (latency between controller input and video output) is non existent in video, and as long as video and audio sync, everything is fine.

I'm very much in love with the MiSTer project, but sometimes discussions on these forums fall under the banner of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should". I happily use a number of cheap SBCs as media players in my games rooms for playing 4:3 SD content on CRTs. You can purchase $10-$20 devices like "Orange Pi" hardware, install LibreElec and have a functioning, simple to use media player for CRTs in minutes (with perfect modelines and better centering options as well).

Perhaps for the uberminimalists who utterly insist on only having a single device hooked up to a single CRT as the upper limit to their setup complexity, this thread makes sense. To me, who's got all manner of devices in their three games rooms, from MiSTers to real consoles and computers to real arcade machines to small SBC boards and more, just use the best tool for the job instead of trying to hammer more things into devices that don't need to be "everything and the kitchen sink".

If someone absolutely wants to spend their time writing a "DVD player core" for fun or education, more power to them. But honestly, there exist cheaper and easier solutions right now that are completely competent for the requirement of MPEG2 4:2:0 interlaced video playback on a CRT, and there's really no urgency for MiSTer to tackle that.
Hackshed_Carl
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by Hackshed_Carl »

Personally I don't see the problem with having a DVD player core, or an MP3 player core, or a chip tune player core. They would all add an additional feature to an already amazing platform and while it might not quite fit into the overall vision of a retro gaming/computing platform, it would at least be an option for those that would use it.
So with my above statement, I have to disagree with the comments saying "Just buy a DVD player", you could always counter that with "Just buy a SNES"

On the other hand, realistically, It won't happen unless someone sits down to write it, just the same as every other core.
The reason we have so many amazing cores on the platform is because so far, the people with the skill set to write cores focus on the cores *they* want to use or have an interest in writing.

That's not to say that you can't make the suggestion in the forum like the OP did but simply expecting the core to appear because you want it isn't how it works.

My best suggestion would be to start to look at how FPGA programming works. Once / If you start to get the basics down, your next step would be to join the dev-talk channel on the Discord server and start chatting with the devs.
The people in that channel are genuinely nice folk to talk to and if you show that you're willing to learn something new, I imagine that many of them would offer support and guidance with your development.

Quick note on the above..... the dev-talk channel ins't a place to jump in to and start demanding cores or features, it's a place to discuss actual development of FPGA related works.

Hope this post comes across as the well intended post it's supposed to be and not the ramblings of a mad man.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by elvis »

Hackshed_Carl wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 8:35 pm So with my above statement, I have to disagree with the comments saying "Just buy a DVD player", you could always counter that with "Just buy a SNES"
Price and availability are dramatically different, however (certainly outside of Japan and North America). And for software solutions of each, quality and latency differ dramatically also.

I don't think these statements are comparable as a result.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by Hackshed_Carl »

I agree with that, my statement was simply used as an example.
That way purely me "sitting on the fence" for that particular argument.

Edit :-

"Sitting on the fence" may not be the correct term here. I was simply trying to offer a counter point to that particular statement.
I like to think of the forums as a form of discussion rather than a form of argument.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by throAU »

Whilst it’s not core functionality for the project yet I feel that a DVD core would not be wasted effort. Presumably there will be a newer board than the de10 in future and also presumably the ps2 will be an eventual target.

Thus a decoder for DVD play back would benefit that and other cores that utilise the DVD codecs.

In terms of “urgency” though it’s way off?
softtest9
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by softtest9 »

Before we talk about MPEG-2/DVD video, what about MPEG-1? The PS1 has hardware support for MPEG-1 video, so perhaps a software developer could whip up a video player for the PS1? That video player could then be used after Laxer3a's PS1 core has been released.

Another option could be to simply play videos inside Windows 95 with the ao486 core. The quality may be more limited though and it's less convenient.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by dmckean »

throAU wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 9:35 pmpresumably the ps2 will be an eventual target.
I would be surprised if this happened in the next 15 years. The PS2 hardware is incredibly complex and the CPU and GPU combined have over 53 million transistors. It would be a gargantuan effort to implement something like this.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by Slipard »

softtest9 wrote: Wed Mar 03, 2021 12:04 am Before we talk about MPEG-2/DVD video, what about MPEG-1?
MPEG-1 is usually into the MPEG-2 package, so I would say that once you started MPEG-2 you also do MPEG-1 (or MPEG-1, then MPEG-2).
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by throAU »

dmckean wrote: Wed Mar 03, 2021 2:32 am
throAU wrote: Tue Mar 02, 2021 9:35 pmpresumably the ps2 will be an eventual target.
I would be surprised if this happened in the next 15 years. The PS2 hardware is incredibly complex and the CPU and GPU combined have over 53 million transistors. It would be a gargantuan effort to implement something like this.
Yes and no

It has a lot of transistors yes but at least the architecture is uniform and relatively sane. I.e. same building blocks copied many times.

Not like say, the Saturn with many different processors and tight timing and caching issues between them.

I’m not saying it will happen any time soon though, but eventually I suspect it will. DVD work prior will be one less thing to do in the future.

Again. Not saying it would be urgent. Merely that long term it would not be wasted effort (as some may be implying with the “just buy a DVD player” stuff.

Playing devils advocate.

100% agreed short term though there’s plenty of more relevant cores.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by redsteakraw »

Just to let everyone know there already is an open source and freely licensed(BSD) MPEG-2 decoder core.

https://opencores.org/projects/mpeg2fpga

So if anyone is really interested in the DVD player core you already have a good starting point.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by hiddenbyleaves »

Surely it would all be worth it for this https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000IFQLPA
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by Moondandy »

That's cool there is an mpeg2 core already, that could be a interesting project for someone to try port it to the DE10-Nano and improve their skills if nothing else. Being able to decode mpeg1 would presumably be useful in future cores, as stated, potentially even on the Saturn.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by Shogun »

This would be a nice way to watch some of the older lower res videos I have on my CRT. I don't have a way to get files from my PC to the CRT with a decent picture at the moment except to burn them to DVD. Not sure if there are better methods I haven't looked into it.
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by deltax0 »

You can always get a nvidea shield or something.
It will play the movie's you put on a drive and ai upscale them if you want to 4k.

-Edit... I just remembered that they had games packed in dvd's. Maybe that would show some use in the mister then.
I guess for CRT sake to watch video crisp. IDK make a core from something good and expensive hardware so it's worth wile in the mister. Maybe with some tweek settings. Down scaling for example. Maybe some codec support. avi, mp4, .mov ect.
Maybe allow for external dvd players for cd cores.
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Neocaron
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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by Neocaron »

Any update on this? I know the Sam extension is able to play videos from archive.org so a video player must have been implemented but I don't know if it's possible to play anything locally.

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Re: DVD Player Core?

Unread post by CTSS »

I would buy an open source player box that runs Kodi (without any china android malware) and comes with a fpga that got cores for disc formats. Get a "real" hardware player for Kodi (setup as external player for disc images) to play DVD, BluRay and UHD BluRay images would be great. And of course you can use the fpga to load up games or any other cores provided. That would be the best selling box ever in history if there is the right marketing for it. If some one got the skill to do this, let me know to be the first on kickstarter to throw money at you.

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