make a DC DVD addon?

[nate9999]

I am probably going to get a swift "no" for this question, but i am just curious. We all know that a DVD addon was planned for the DC but go scrapped, but it would have been soooo cool if it was released. My idea is this. Would it be possible to connect a DC and a PS2 (probably with BBAs i guess, with a crossover cable?), using the PS2 as a "DVD addon"? Like i said, this idea is pretty far fetched, but i was thinking about it and figured i would ask you all here.

[Elven6]

Mabye if someone were to make the proper cable and find a appropriate DVD player and write up a program for it. But in the end it would be easier to watch movies on the dvd player itself.

[VampDude]

What would be the point of DVD on the DC thou?

I mean pretty much everyone here has either a DVD player or a PS2, so they would just use that instead.

[JKKDARK]

It's impossible. Buy a PS2 or a DVD Player

[nate9999]

I was thinking more for homebrew purposes rather than watching movies, i already have a ps2 and dvd player for that. With the PS2 hooked up to the DC, then the DC basically has a hard drive through the PS2 as well, for those who have one.

[Elven6]

I was thinking more for homebrew purposes rather than watching movies, i already have a ps2 and dvd player for that. With the PS2 hooked up to the DC, then the DC basically has a hard drive through the PS2 as well, for those who have one.

Does that actually work?

[Cloudhunter]

No, it's just a theory on how it could be done.

It would have a crappy transfer rate and it would have to be done through homebrew at each side.

You would be better just running PS2 homebrew...

Cloudy

[VampDude]

No, it's just a theory on how it could be done.

It would have a crappy transfer rate and it would have to be done through homebrew at each side.

You would be better just running PS2 homebrew...

Cloudy

The only possible way is to modify the whole console, changing the CD drive for the PS2's DVD drive and somehow modifying it to work on its own within the Dreamcast (but the DVD drive is too big for the DC's casing) The modding idea's are endless, but sadly theres not enough people to at lest try them all :(

[IUnNamedI]

Well i see where he is heading with this... but There is no need really for a dvd drive for the dc... I don't think the processing power of the dc would be enough to bolster a home brew game that is large enough to fill a dvd? unless I'm wrong...

[Elven6]

Well i see where he is heading with this... but There is no need really for a dvd drive for the dc... I don't think the processing power of the dc would be enough to bolster a home brew game that is large enough to fill a dvd? unless I'm wrong...

Well Sega was making a DVD add on so that means it can support one.

[jvilla1983]

Just a suggestion, but wouldnt it be better if someone had ported an x.264 codec to the dreamcast and than had movies run off of that? With sound, i'm able to compress with decent video quality down to about 600 megs for a 2 hour movie (Lord of the Rings; Fellowship of the Ring SE: disc 1).


or.. you could just buy a dvd player and save a lot of needless trouble. =-)


Actually, instead of daisy chaining a bunch of systems for the use of the hard disc, what someone needs to do is create a USB interface that works with the Dreamcast. It would be a hard feat, but if it was created, the possibilities would be endless with what could be created for it.

[dcdood]

i had a small theory: If DVD Supports GD-ROM, replace the drive, Dreamcast should accept it.

another one was, i heard of a moddified IDE Port or something. google it, make a external casing containing a DVD-ROM Drive. (im not sure if possible but) Use Linux on a DreamCast, to Read the DVD Drive. and use KOS to simultaniously work with linux to Access the DVD Drive and load external homebrew from the Drive.
(this may not even work, but it's a thought. you would really need to know Linux, Dreamcast's Limits)

[Masta-G]

I dont think the dreamcast is powerful enough to process MPEG2 video used on dvds, let alone DTS/Dolbu Digital 5.1
It would be easy to hook up some drive to the modem interface or something, but dont count on watching movies.

[OneThirty8]

I dont think the dreamcast is powerful enough to process MPEG2 video used on dvds, let alone DTS/Dolbu Digital 5.1
It would be easy to hook up some drive to the modem interface or something, but dont count on watching movies.
It's probably not powerful enough to decode and display DVD-resolution video fast enough to produce a watchable result. My guess would be that those audio formats might actually present less of a problem. I'm pretty sure that KOS currently supports more than one streaming stereo audio channel. Hacking something together to convert the rear-channel stuff to a 'Pro-Logic rear channel' wouldn't really take that much work, and the center channel could either be a mono streaming channel or mixed with the left and right channels. Downmixing would take some time obviously, but not nearly as much time as we'd be talking about to decode and display DVD-quality video. In fact, displaying the video would probably take longer than decoding it. It has to be converted to a compatibly color format (uyvy would be the fastest, and that's what DVDivX and VC/DC both use) and then copied to the video hardware (this tends to be slow, even using store queues for the transfer like VC/DC does).

[Christuserloeser]

I dont think the dreamcast is powerful enough to process MPEG2 video used on dvds

Sofdec is around the same specs as MPEG2 used for DVDs and it's decoded via software, not hardware like on PS2.

http://web.archive.org/web/20011101161000/www.cric.co.jp/english/mmlab_sfd_e.htm

[Elven6]

It's probably not powerful enough to decode and display DVD-resolution video fast enough to produce a watchable result. My guess would be that those audio formats might actually present less of a problem. I'm pretty sure that KOS currently supports more than one streaming stereo audio channel. Hacking something together to convert the rear-channel stuff to a 'Pro-Logic rear channel' wouldn't really take that much work, and the center channel could either be a mono streaming channel or mixed with the left and right channels. Downmixing would take some time obviously, but not nearly as much time as we'd be talking about to decode and display DVD-quality video. In fact, displaying the video would probably take longer than decoding it. It has to be converted to a compatibly color format (uyvy would be the fastest, and that's what DVDivX and VC/DC both use) and then copied to the video hardware (this tends to be slow, even using store queues for the transfer like VC/DC does).


Sega was making a DVD add on for the Dreamcast, so I don't think that is a problem, unless the drive itself had a processor in it.

[quzar]

Sofdec is around the same specs as MPEG2 used for DVDs and it's decoded via software, not hardware like on PS2.

http://web.archive.org/web/20011101161000/www.cric.co.jp/english/mmlab_sfd_e.htm

No, it's not. Nowhere close. They're both MPEG2, and they probably both have similar maximum specs. That's like saying "well dreamcast can play divx, and I've seen HD divx stuff, so the DC can do HD".

The only way I see anyone ever getting DVD reading on the DC is via the IDE interface.

[Masta-G]

yeah, I think uDcDivx and VC/DC allready pushed video playback on the dreamcast to its maximum (bitrate-wise).
I was kinda hoping DcDivX got a bit optimized to support most ~90min 700MB divx movies with subtitles (.srt) support, so I could use my dreamcast console as a real DivX/Xvid player without having to downsample my movies.
Guess we have to do it with xbmc:P

[OneThirty8]

yeah, I think uDcDivx and VC/DC allready pushed video playback on the dreamcast to its maximum (bitrate-wise).

Nah. The last release of VC/DC was to replace the horrible audio output system that I used in the initial release. The Dreamcast is capable of better quality than that with MPEG-1/2. With VCD-quality MPEG-1, I think you should be able to expect about 2 or 3 dropped frames/second maximum. VC/DC 0.1a drops about 2/3 of all frames if it can, which is obviously far short of what I had hoped for. That was partly due to the less-than-optimal way the output systems work (no multi-threading at all) and partly due to my inferior framerate-checking code. Next release will be much better--but no promises on when that will be.

[Masta-G]

Nah. The last release of VC/DC was to replace the horrible audio output system that I used in the initial release. The Dreamcast is capable of better quality than that with MPEG-1/2. With VCD-quality MPEG-1, I think you should be able to expect about 2 or 3 dropped frames/second maximum. VC/DC 0.1a drops about 2/3 of all frames if it can, which is obviously far short of what I had hoped for. That was partly due to the less-than-optimal way the output systems work (no multi-threading at all) and partly due to my inferior framerate-checking code. Next release will be much better--but no promises on when that will be.

This makes me very happy to hear :)
Both my dreamcast consoles will be happy enough to try 'em once its released.
Keep up the good work:thumbup:

[OneThirty8]

This makes me very happy to hear :)
Both my dreamcast consoles will be happy enough to try 'em once its released.
Keep up the good work:thumbup:
Thanks. :-) There are still a number of bugs to fix. I'm probably going to rewrite most of the VCD-specific stuff. And the code is a real mess at this point, so I need to clean it up a lot and get rid of all the stuff I have commented/#ifded-ed out, move things like synchronization code to new modules... stuff like that.

[Moonfrost]

I made a post in here...what happened? I didn't talk about piracy at all!!

[reliantkcar]

the dreamcast was built to play dvd's as it turns out. read the last 2 things the graphics chip can do

http://www.segatech.com/technical/gpu/index.html

[dcdood]

most GPUs of the late 90s supported DVD Encoding, so this didn't come of a suprise, just the fact that shenmue would have such a higher sound rate over compressing for GDs

2 issues would still be transfer rate and sound. I'd imagine that if anything, you'll have to work via BBA|Modem Bus over Serial to have DVD Playback. and Sound maybe compatable, the SPU has many channels so DD might be possible, i had no problems with DVD on ps2 with stereo.

If you hack the bios and insert DVD code, than GD-Roms and DVDs can live together. or just use cd-r to access DVD like Linux or NetBSD

[NeverGoingBack]

what if you just wanted to use it to load more homebrew stuff on one disc. say you wanted to load it up with about 3g of stuff rather than 700mb

this would be a great and simple use for dc dvd drive.