SO Close! (Score 1)

I picked up QCast a few months ago and was hoping to use it to watch stuff that I'd pulled off my TiVo. The bottom line is, they still have some performance issues to work out before you can watch high quality video. I've got a ton of stuff I've ripped from TiVo and up-sampled to Divx 640x480 from MPEG2 480x480 (SVHS - native TiVo aspect ratio for high and best quality video). They start to play okay, then it goes to slide show with audio, then it crashes. I spent weeks fiddling the Divx encoder trying to find just the right combination of size, bit-rate and quality, and was never satisfied. I did get an episode of Futurama and Cowboy Bebop to look real good at 512x384 (BroadQ's highest recommended resolution), but non-animation shows would skip frames no matter what the bit-rate was. But if you down-sample to 320x240, everything plays perfectly at pretty high bit rates - just with a noticable loss of resolution. The QCast decoder does support MPEG1/2, so I thought I would try playing a captured TiVo MPEG2 - no dice. I got one or two frames, and then crash. From what I've read on their forums, there seems to be a bandwidth problem with the PS2 itself (or rather, their software's use of the PS2's hardware), it just can't handle high-res quick enough.

The next rev of the software (due out "real soon now") addresses some of the performance issues, FF/Rew (it's missing currently), and has "expanded and enhanced codec support". Following this release, they plan on concentrating on performance issues, which unfortunately means re-writing their media player from scratch. Ouch.

I really hope they get it working, though.. If I could play 480x480x4Mb MPEG2, I'd be TOTALLY happy. I don't mind transcoding to Divx at a lower bitrate, as long as the quality is there. Its a great product with tons of potential, and a great MP3 player in the meantime. Of course once I get HDTV, I'll be screwed all over again... Oh well.