Pirates are watching Blu Ray movies on the Xbox 360s???

[Anthony1]

First off, just want to say that I don't endorse this sort of activity, but I found it to be strangely ironic. Apparently, Blu Ray and HD-DVD have been cracked for some time now, and with the prices of blank Blu Ray disks and blank HD-DVD disks being so high, people aren't putting the backups on blank High Def disks. Instead, they are taking the ripped files and converting them into WMV-HD, and then putting that on either DVD9's or DVD5's, depending on the length of the movie. Then they simply put the DVD into their Xbox 360 system, and voila! they are watching Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest Blu Ray edition on their Xbox 360. You don't even need the HD-DVD add on for this. All you need is a regular Xbox 360 system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jB4RBsVCInA

How exactly do you squeeze 25 gigs or 50 gigs of movie information onto a little 9 or 5 gig dvd? By removing all the extras, using regular 5.1 sound instead of lossless 5.1, and converting the 1080p video to 720p. I haven't actually seen one of these myself, so I can't say how close they look to the Blu Ray or HD-DVD original, but suposedly it's really close. It will be interesting to see if this trickles down to the street vendors that deal in pirated movies. All of a sudden we'll see a spike in Xbox 360 core system sales, lol.

[Kejoriv]

Interesting. Do you have a link to the article?

[heybtbm]

Sounds like a lot of work for minimal payoff.

[NE146]

Yeah.. except hardly anyone does the converting themselves. Someone else out there in the world does it, and all you gotta do is download the wmv-hd and you're done.

Personally, for the most part, I pass. It's only for pixel nerds. Much easier to download a couple hundred meg xvid, watch, delete. Done.

[tom]

so these pirates are watching Pirates of the Caribbean? Sounds fair to me.

[Mr. Smashy]

There shouldn't be any need to reduce the resolution from 1080p to 720p for most movies unless you're looking to fit a movie onto a single layer DVD.

[Overbite]

so whats the point of watching the blu-ray version if they take all of the fancy stuff out? Why not just get the DVD version?

[Anthony1]

so whats the point of watching the blu-ray version if they take all of the fancy stuff out? Why not just get the DVD version?


Maybe because regular DVD's are 720 x 480, while these WMV-HD disks are 1280 x 720. Also, lossless sound on a Blu Ray disk or HD-DVD disk requires a receiver that can accept audio over HDMI, and right now, there aren't that many receivers that do that, and they aren't cheap. So regular 5.1 Dolby Digital isn't that bad, all things considered. Plus people that get these disks don't need any special hardware, other than a regular Xbox 360 (or other device that can play back WMV-HD).

[njiska]

Sounds like a lot of work for minimal payoff.

Actually a lot of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray rips coming to the News Groups are in both the unltered form and the Reduced DVD9 size. So the work is already done for you. Truth be told on a 1080p display (I used my 1920x1200 Notebook screen for my test) it's very, very hard to tell.

[agbulls]

Maybe because regular DVD's are 720 x 480, while these WMV-HD disks are 1280 x 720. Also, lossless sound on a Blu Ray disk or HD-DVD disk requires a receiver that can accept audio over HDMI, and right now, there aren't that many receivers that do that, and they aren't cheap. So regular 5.1 Dolby Digital isn't that bad, all things considered. Plus people that get these disks don't need any special hardware, other than a regular Xbox 360 (or other device that can play back WMV-HD).

Are you saying a totally non-modified 360 with component cables will play a downloaded and burned WMV-HD movie on a DVD-9 in 1080p?

If so, how can other people not realize how fucking cool that is?

[Anthony1]

Are you saying a totally non-modified 360 with component cables will play a downloaded and burned WMV-HD movie on a DVD-9 in 1080p?

If so, how can other people not realize how fucking cool that is?


1. Supposedly, any Xbox 360 will work, as long as it has last years Fall update (apparently that is the update that allows you to view WMV-HD movies on it)

2. I'm not so sure about the 1080p part. From what I understand, most of the movies are converted to 720p for space considerations. Technically, I think 1080p wouldn't be a problem, but for most movies, it would be hard to fit them on a DVD9.

3. Yeah, it is fucking cool, depending on how you feel about piracy. I mean, to think that all you need is a freaking Xbox 360, you don't need a Blu Ray player, you don't need a HD-DVD player, you don't even need the HD-DVD add on. All you need is a 360 with the fall update, and you can play these movies. Just imagine if the Core 360's go down to $199.99. There will be people buying extra Core's to use in different rooms, like they are glorified WMV-HD players, lol.

[jonjandran]

Yea I've been seeing this for the past 3-4 weeks.

The rips/conversions are usually very good quality. Sometimes the audio is off but not often.

720p looks good, you can see some slight quality loss but it is usually VERY minimal. And when I say you can see some less I mean on a Huge screen not a small Lcd.

Pretty cool. And you can stream these files from your computer to the Xbox 360 and PS3 over your network also :)

[roushimsx]

That's pretty awesome. I'm not too huge on movie piracy (I'm a pixel nerd :( )or else I'd probably be all over this. As it is, I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with watching movies I get in from Netflix at a reasonable speed.

Shit, and we still have seasons 5-7 of Next Generation along with the TNG movies we need to watch. Ensign Ro comes in in Season 5, right? Woo woo. Never knew Michelle Forbes had that bit role in season 4 though...that was weird.

[Overbite]

star trek nerd alert woop woop

[Push Upstairs]

Don't listen to Overbite, he only posts on here when he isn't working on his Starfleet uniform.

[petewhitley]

Christ that's epic. I love piracy and I love my Xbox 360. It's a match made in heaven.