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PS2 Gets A Working Divx Player

Posted by Hemos on Mon Dec 02, 2002 08:45 AM
from the no-sorenson-yet dept.
Technology
An anonymous reader writes "Over the weekend, the PS2reality team released the first working Divx player for the Playstation 2. Site is in spanish, so try using babel for translation. Works with Divx 3 and up. You can also swap your avi cd-roms if you have a modchip or you can use the other various swap techniques out there for the PS2. Divx player does require some way of booting the homebrew program, either no-swap modchip or modchip+bootdisc( e.g swap magic, gameshark, etc.) would work."
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  • Or.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by GeorgeH (5469) on Monday December 02 2002, @08:48AM (#4792792) Homepage Journal
    If you don't want to deal with modchips and swapping you can get a Qcast [broadq.com] for $50 (thinkgeek sells 'em too) and play MP3, OGG, MPEG and DivX files streamed from a Windows, Mac OS X or Linux system over the network.

    • Re:Or.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mysticalfruit (533341)
      I went out and bought a copy of Qcast a couple of months ago and I like it. It works as adverstised. The only issue I've had is that you have to be very particular in how you encode the divx stuff, otherwise it scarf at the files.
    • Arghh...that page is cool...but geez! It's dooo much damn info on one page!

      Some people need to learn that they should ORGANIZE stuff better.
    • It requires you install software on your host computer.

      Why can't qcast mount a remote samba partition or win32 partition? Simplify the life of your customers, please....

      • Re:WOW (Score:5, Interesting)

        by droopus (33472) on Monday December 02 2002, @09:47AM (#4793160)
        Yep, been using it for months and it's great. I've posted [slashdot.org] about it at least seven times and I tried submitting stories about Qcast twice: once in early September, once a month later, but they were rejected.

        I have only two even slightly negative comments about Qcast: it won't play any movie in a nonstandard resolution (they are working on it) and since there are no VCR-like controls (FF/RW/Scan) you have to be REAL careful with the controller. My wife and I were watching a movie Saturday and my little girl came in and tripped over the controller. Bam! Back to the beginning, and no way to advance to the point where you were watching. That's my only real complaint, and a simple "are you sure?" dialog would fix that.

        Other than that, it absolutely works as advertised. I have it installed on 2 PS2s, one at the TV and one at the stereo (both looking at the same machine in my office.) Streams pretty much anything you throw at it, cleanly, glitch-free and with an easy to use UI.

        Buy it, it's well worth the cash.

          • Re:WOW (Score:2)

            by 1984 (56406)
            Yes, with a caveat. At least for the betas, you couldn't configure the network settings using the DVD remote. But you can control the software with the remote once loaded. Haven't had to reconfigure the network since v1.0 came out, so I haven't checked if this has been fixed.

      • QCast? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by gilesjuk (604902)
        The QCast guys couldn't be bothered to make a CD filesystem so they stream the DIVX files from a PC. Ugly solution and it's commercial software. PS2Reality's player reads from any CD, is small enough to be included on the CD and works great with DIVX+MP3 audio AVIs. It's also free. Proof that commercial software isn't always better.

        • Re:QCast? (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          That's a bunch of crap.

          Broadq/qcast is designed to be used on any PS2 (with a Sony NIC). The homebrew player only works with mod PS2's -- that's why it can read data off of CD-- but only specially formatted data!!!

          If you look at the homebrew docs, there are a lot of restrictions on how the CD's have to be formatted if you're using a swap method. If you want to use the swap method, you have to make special CD's for use by the system using the CDGEN app, and include a copy of the PS2DivX player on the CD.

          If you want to separate out your avi files on a different CD, you need a no-swap modchip. Again, this needs to be made using the special CDGEN application.

          Qcast is much easier than this, and it's commercial because they have to press CDs!

  • XBox (Score:5, Informative)

    by NetJunkie (56134) <jason@nash.gmail@com> on Monday December 02 2002, @08:51AM (#4792806)
    The XBox media player does most media including DIVX, SVCD, VCD, mp3, etc. The next version due any time has a great interface and even better media support. It would be a great system to make an XBox a good media server.

    • Re:XBox (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gilesjuk (604902)
      That's hardly suprising, it's a familiar API. You have to commend the PS2 dev scene, they've created their own libraries for the PS2 hardware and built their own development suite.

  • Steps to Success (Score:5, Funny)

    by ekrout (139379) on Monday December 02 2002, @08:54AM (#4792823) Journal
    1) Spend several years researching Sony's Playstation 2 entertainment console
    2) Enlist a few smart friends to help you build a mod chip that allows Divx movies to be decoded
    3) Get some recognition for your hack by posting a story to the most popular geek news site in the world
    4) Get phone call from Sony's lawyers
    5) Get phone call from Web host's sysadmin
    6) Learn that you're the defendant in a billion dollar lawsuit
    7) Learn that your Web server's disk died, bringing all of your research from the past couple of years down with it
    8) Shoot self.
    • 9) ...
      10) Profit!
      • Typically modchips also allow playing of pirated discs. This means that most modchips circumvent copy protection on all PS2 games.

        Sony may also manage to convince the court that there are legal restrictions on allowing unlicenced software to use the software inside the PS2 ROMs. Of course, this doesn't make a lot of sense. This is why big corporation pay a lot of money to lawyers who can make illogical arguments sound like they make sense.
          • Do you know of a good way to distinguish homebrew software from pirated software?

            No. This means that any mechanism that must be circumvented to allow home brew software must also circumvent the copy protection. The fact that they're doing it for a legitimate purpose does not neccesarily make the act itself legal.

            It'll be difficult for the plaintiffs' counsel to argue that the DMCA trumps Sega.

            But not impossible. Copyright law has changed since then. Also, they could still choose to prosecute in a different country.

  • Hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jbmoll (629525) on Monday December 02 2002, @08:54AM (#4792826)
    Well if we all have computers why go buy a ps2 and try and modifiy it when you can watch it on the computer. Seems like a risky way to blow up your ps2.

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lebannen (626462)
      On the other hand, location matters as well.

      Personally, I live in a bedsit-type thing, so my living-room is also my computer room; easy to watch computery stuff from my sofa.

      However, in your average house [hahaha], the computer tends to be in a different room from the sofa, sound system, and/or TV. Whereas the PS2 will be in the right spot. I know several people who have an old PC hidden in their living room for DVDs and divxs... but if there's a playstation 2 there, seems a lot less hassle to just install something nice like this.

    • Re:Hmmm (Score:3, Insightful)

      by droopus (33472)
      Because, other than geeks....people do not consume media in an unfamiliar paradigm. They want tunes in their car, their portable device or their stereo.

      They want movies on their TV. Qcast allows both of these. I have a Cinema Display and I won't even watch a movie on that. Rather than lying on my couch looking at a 61" Toshiba? No contest.

      As for "blowing up your PS2" using Qcast puts far less strain on the graphics chips in the PS2 than GTA: it merely becomes an interface device. IMO, Qcast (and Roomlink, eventually) are the PS2's killer apps.

  • Get this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Apreche (239272) on Monday December 02 2002, @08:57AM (#4792843) Homepage Journal
    If you want to watch DivX's on your TV, get a video card with S-Video out. It's a lot easier to plug that into the video in on your television and put another cable from your sound card to your reciever than it is to mod a PS2.
    And video cards are cheap. Just stick it in a PCI slot and set it as a second display. It's the cheapest solution.

    I'll be impressed when somebody has a portable DivX players so I can watch TV episodes on the go.

    • Re:Get this (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 91degrees (207121) on Monday December 02 2002, @09:03AM (#4792885) Journal
      I am not lugging my PC downstairs just to watch a movie thanks.

      That said, it would probably be less hassle all round to buy a DVD player with VCD capability and reencode the DivXs to VCD.
      • You don't have TV in your dorm room?

        Since college students (including me at the time) refuse to see things from the perspective of the real world, we must adapt and interpret their comments as if from the cozy confines of a dorm.

        Joe

    • Re:Get this (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mrob2002 (564229)
      The Sharp Zaurus plus tkcVideo lets me watch DivX on the go. A 25 minute TV show compresses down to about 50 Mbytes, so I can fit two episodes onto a 128M Compact Flash card. Pretty watchable too on long boring train journeys.
        • MAME is available for the Zaurus. Whether or not it's a decent platform for it - that's debatable. The controls are all there (it has diagonals on the D-pad and multiple button presses are supported). The issue right now is speed of emulation - last time I tried the Z version of MAME I was unable to play alot of games at full speed. I'm not sure if this is a processor-speed limitation, or if the code just needs more optimization.

          On the other hand, the NES emu works perfectly. I've had quite a few excellent games of Bubble Bobble on the subway lately (while listening to MP3's via XMMS)

    • Enter the Sharp Zaurus, using either the mplayer [killefiz.de] port, OpieMediaplayer2 [killefiz.de], or the commercial tkcVideo [thekompany.com]. Not exactly the screen size you're probably looking for, but hey, it works. Plus, the 640x480 zaurus is available in japan.
    • Actually, a PS2 mod is fairly easy these days. Usually it revolves around removing the case (which you'd have to do to put a PCI card into the PC) and a single wiring solder (usually 2 points). Oh, and plugging in a USB device.

      Yes, I realize that opening a PS2 is different from opening a PC, but the fact remains that it's not remotely difficult. And considering how much wiring the average person has to do to get a signal from their PC to their TV, this is a very useful product.

      I however haven't checked the website yet on the one item that killed the Dreamcasts Divx player: reencoding. I know for formatting purposes, Divx needed to be reencoded to play it on the dreamcast. Usually that was time consuming and a general pain. Anyone know if this one needs that too?
    • mmm, ain't these things called laptops? Seriously I had a dell something or other for sometime and a long commute time. So I watched anime fansubs in the train. Worked perfectly except I kept burning my penis :p

      Oh and for those posters who want to watch in their living room and ain't allowed to put their computer there, laptops come with tv-outs nowadays. Granted picture quality may suck.

      Isn't including DivX support in hardware a bit tricky? Not only do they keep changing but isn't the legal state a bit to unclear for a hardware company to mess around with? Sure they have to pay a royalty for DVD but that is simple. Sign the check and you are in the clear.

      • Video quality last time I ran an 80ft (25metres in english) cable was fine - However I'm not a videophile. That was a cheap RJ59 coax, and 2 BNC connecters.

        You could also get a 2.4GHz videosender.

        But dont give me crap about component color from your xbox being better then SVideo from the PC. We are talking about a freaking divx here!
  • I can get a walkman sized cd player which can play divX. I've seen one that can play VCD's.

    I'd want divX, DVD, SVCD, MP3, VCD playback, etc. that can fit in my jacket pocket so I can take it around to another house/office and watch movies without having to lug a laptop.

    Plus to complete the functionality, how about CD-R, CD-RW or DVD-R support. Make it connect up via a Firewire cable for high-speed data, recharging, cross platform support and interfacing with DV cameras.

    Until then, playing around with consoles will have to do... evening though I only have a Dreamcast.. which can play divx, but only at lously bitrates.

  • Linux kit (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mtthws (572660) on Monday December 02 2002, @09:07AM (#4792905) Homepage
    I know the linux kit for the ps2 has been out for a while, so I was wondering if anyone knows of any divx players for linux that have been ported to the ps2 yet? It seems like it would be a lot nicer to just boot it linux then watch your movie from mplayer instead of having to mod you ps2 and keep changing cds just to watch a divx movie.
    • The mod talked about here is much less intrusive and difficult than the linux kit.

    • Re:Linux kit (Score:2, Insightful)

      by yerricde (125198)

      I was wondering if anyone knows of any divx players for linux that have been ported to the ps2 yet

      PS2 Linux can't read CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, or DVD+RW media. Its only storage devices are the 8 MB memory card and the network connector (and possibly the IEEE 1394 connector).

      • ...and the hard disk supplied with the Linux kit and possibly USB storage devices if anyone wants to hack up the kernel to support them.

      • Re:Linux kit (Score:2, Interesting)

        by XMunkki (533952)
        As I don't have a PS2 with a modchip, I can't verify this, but I have heard from many instances that if your PS2 can read CD-R:s, so does the Linux. Of course this means that you already must have a PS2 with the necessary mods and thus could use the homebrewn divx player. Advantages with the Linux version are clear. Some people (like me) keep all their divx movies in a separate network server. Plus it's easier to develop for Linux (own patches, frontends, GUIs, filters etc.)

        Also I'm sure on the status of the USB CD-ROM support, but I guess it may be possible to plug in an external CD drive which you can use freely.

        • the linux kit comes with a hard drive too.

          But how do you get things on and off that hard drive? Let me rephrase that:

          PS2 Linux can't read CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, or DVD+RW media. Its only removable storage device large enough to hold a feature-length DivX movie is the network connector (and possibly the IEEE 1394 connector).

              • Re:not removable (Score:2, Insightful)

                by joshsisk (161347)
                And if your PC is not in the same room as your PS2, and you can't pull CAT5 cable through your walls (either you don't own your home or bringing the rest of your wiring up to the current code is prohibitively expensive), then what do you do?

                I dunno, get a wireless router? Run the cable along the hallway? Move the lightweight playstation?

                Seriously, if you are geeky enough to have the Linux add-on for the PS2, you probably also have it connected to your home network.

  • I wonder how well will it perform. Although I'm aware these are two entirely different platforms, I'm kinda disappointed at how bad DivX plays in my P2/400.

  • Not the intended use... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PjotrP (593817) on Monday December 02 2002, @09:24AM (#4793008)
    So clearly this should not even be on slashdot. Surely this way of using something that is designed to play ps2 games and dvd's to do something else is illegal! Sony might wanna bring a hardware divx player on the market in a later stage. By violating the PS2 in such a way you are effectively stealing money from them which you might have paid for their divx player when it will be released. I hope slashdot will quickly remove this newsitem and stops supporting theft!
    • I'd mod you up as funny if I had any points left.

      Slashdot, the voice of corporate america! ;)
    • Not all DIVX is illegal, I could take a family video and divx it and plop it on a CD, Send it to my uncle in toronto or somthin and he could watch it on his PS2. Plus, who fucking cares if the software developers don't make it ... I don't, I found a nice home in linux. So if windows and those shitty game companys die ... fuck them

  • Some English (Score:5, Funny)

    by ReadParse (38517) <john@noSpam.funnycow.com> on Monday December 02 2002, @09:26AM (#4793016) Homepage
    Funny that it's all in spanish except "Make a Donation" :)
  • The website may be in spanish, but fortunately the zipped archive comes with a nice little english readme file. Very useful actualy. Now I can take my piracy one step further by watching them on my tv, the way dvd rips were never ment to be viewed! For the longest time i've been confined by this pussy 1600 x 1200 15" laptop monitor but now i can move into a 800 x 600 27 inch screen! muwahaha!
  • Yah this sounds like a neat idea, but lets rethink this for a second... DVD > Computer (some loss of quality) > DivX (definite loss of quality to save space) > TV (loss of picture resolution now). Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me... I mean I guess its ok if you are all about ripping off movies and old tv shows, but seems like a very expensive round about way to do that.
    • Please, explain to me how transferring the data from a DVD to the computer results in some loss of quality (considering that the divx encoding stage is yet to happen.) It exists as digital information on the DVD, it exists as the same digital information on my HD but somehow there was a magical degredation of the quality during the transfer?!

  • Come on... (Score:4, Funny)

    by pctainto (325762) on Monday December 02 2002, @10:28AM (#4793475) Homepage
    I mean, PS2 has all the hardware to be able to play divx files, so, it seems that making the mod chip would be hard, but not exceptionally hard. People should instead focus on getting divx players to run on PSX or Nintendo 64 (buy cartridge divxs, heh). Come on, make it harder and less usable, like the people that modify C64s...

  • From the webpage (Score:3, Funny)

    by Espectr0 (577637) on Monday December 02 2002, @10:45AM (#4793585) Journal
    Debido a la gran cantidad de visitantes que ha recibido la web sobre las 18:00 horas, el servidor se ha venido abajo sin permitirnos tan siquiera, dar un enlace de descarga del reproductor. Hasta hace escasos minutos no hemos podido volver a acceder a la web, lo que nos ha obligado a empezar a distribuir el reproductor por otros canales.

    Translation: thanks to those sob's from slashdot, now we cannot release our player due to severe slashdotting. Those goats! ;)

  • Bridging Cultures... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Slackrat (128095) on Monday December 02 2002, @10:47AM (#4793596)

    Debido a la gran cantidad de visitantes que ha recibido la web sobre las 18:00 horas, el servidor se ha venido abajo sin permitirnos tan siquiera, dar un enlace de descarga del reproductor.

    Universal in any language: we've been Slashdotted.

  • Mirrors for downloading the player (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tensor (102132) on Monday December 02 2002, @06:46PM (#4797524)
    These are the places to download the player:

    PS2Newz.net [ps2newz.net]
    PS2Ownz.com [rr.com]
    elotrolado.net [hosteol.com]
    crackmanworld.com [afiliadosw...imites.com]
    indicedivx.com [indicedivx.com]
    bandaancha.st [bandaancha.st]
  • VCD, SVCD, DVD; ok, Mpeg2 compresion... Mp3; ok, Mpeg layer 3 compresion... but DivX, How many version of DivX are now? Too fast changes for hardware descompresion...
    • I don't understand spanish, so I haven't read the article, but the DivX player for Dreamcast is extremely anal about bitrates. I have yet to play a DivX on my Dreamcast with acceptable quality.

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