kjDKDGJ2@AHJU.com wrote:
Or did the movies all come on DVDs?
The laptop is about 4 years old and came with W10 installed, which was changed to W8.1, for G3-dongle compatibility.
It's got a HDMI socket, which the TV also has.
So would the video show on the TV? And what about sound?
What preliminary tests can I do with my mate's selection of "CD movies"?
TIA.
This article was from 12 years ago. It covers Windows Media Center on Win 7.
https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2010/12/17/connecting-your-pc-to-an-hdtv-with-hdmi/
The player there, you could select a particular output on the computer,
for the "theater screen". WMC was an example of the "ten foot interface"
idea for home theater usage.
Windows Media Player (WMP, a player for the computer screen), is still on Windows 10 today, but its state is perilous (could be discontinued
at any time).
Windows Media Center, the topic of that blog article above, it was kinda "standard" in Windows 7, was a $$$ addon in Windows 8 (but the
amount of money was only enough to pay the MPLA licensing fee).
In Windows 10, a beta of WMC was available for a short time
(in other words, not a product offering), but WMC did not
make it into the real world. So it's no longer there, the thinking
being that TV recording is dead and nobody wants/needs WMC.
WMC was mainly concerned with recording TV for later playback,
using TV tuner cards or USB tuners.
Today, third parties make various softwares associated with movies.
Perhaps examples can be seen in the
Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) section.
https://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/htpc
To make a movie theater, perhaps additional hardware items would be:
1) USB "IR blaster" receiver, might need driver for
Kodi to see it. This is a TV remote control interface sensor,
on the end of a USB cable, for computer usage.
2) TV remote sends IR signals to IR blaster, so that
the cursor keys on the remote work to actuate the
"ten foot interface" on the HTPC software. The
up-down-left-right buttons on the remote, allow navigating
the ten foot interface, while sitting on your couch.
In a sense, your TV remote becomes a "keyboard".
That would be an example, of customizing a computer setup,
so that you could play movies from your couch.
Since I'm not a media guy, I can only paint the barest
sketches of ideas.
*******
You can find third party movie players, like WinDVD.
Perhaps that will have a "theater setup" mode.
Video playback is a moderately complicated topic. The application
"ffmpeg" and the included "ffplay" executable, make testing
("sniffing") of media files a lot easier to do, to figure out
what they are. And then you can decide whether hunting down
an additional player makes sense or not. This is where you
start, when analyzing the content on the CD samples you have.
FFMPEG is preferable to WMP (the one that's still included on Win10).
That's because WMP relies on codec files, and while Win10
includes a lot more codecs than the old days, WMP is still
going to be stumped most of the time, by what you put in the
DVD tray.
FFMPEG is standard on Linux, but Windows builds are only
offered on a few private web sites. Zeranoe was closed down
several months ago, so no more Windows builds from there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg
Operating system Various, including Windows, macOS, and Linux.
...the project only distributes source code
But help is on the way. Downloads here. There is an element of
trust involved here, that there's no malware on these, and the
Videohelp people likely scan these with Virustotal web site first.
https://www.videohelp.com/software/ffmpeg
You run that from the command line.
1) Plug in the CD you've got.
2) Open a Command Prompt window.
If right-clicking Start only shows "Powershell",
select the non-administrator Powershell, when it opens
type "cmd" <enter>, into it, to make it run as
a Command Prompt window. It will remain blue in color.
3) cd /d C:\ffmpeg\bin # where you unpacked the FFMPEG zip
# I put mine at the top of C: for fun.
ffplay E:\VOB\some.divx # play a video file from the CD.
# The executable is being fetched from
# the "current working directory" set by "cd" cmd
That will at least get you started in the world of
video playback. To do a "pretty" presentation, there's
a lot more to it than that, but you have to start somewhere.
You can put video content on a CD, as the CD is just a
"data disc" and can carry anything with bytes in it. But
the length of the movie is limited, and if you tried
to stuff two hours of content on there, it would
look like shit (blurry due to limited bitrate). Especially
if using a big screen TV supporting super-hi resolutions.
Some of the old home content was DIVX, had a "square form factor",
and will take some getting used to. It would be like
drinking warm beer, if you only like cold beer :-)
Once you see the content using FFMPEG, you can then decide
how much more time to waste on these CDs of yours.
*******
HDMI carries the LCD monitor signal, but also carries sound.
"Manage Sound Devices"
https://www.tenforums.com/attachments/tutorials/226339d1551802728-enable-disable-sound-output-device-windows-sound_output_devices_device_properties-settings-1.jpg
Notice the "NVidia High Definition Audio" here, on the monitor entry ?
That's sound over HDMI. When your TV HDMI is plugged in, the
name of the TV may appear there, and you can select the
<name of video card company> entry you see. It could be
NVidia, AMD, Intel, as examples.
https://www.tenforums.com/attachments/tutorials/226342d1551802728-enable-disable-sound-output-device-windows-sound_output_devices_manage_sound_devices-settings-2.png
Instead of running sound through the computer speakers
("Analog Audio, Line Out"), you can select the TV set
to receive the sound.
I'd show you the tutorial page, but it's jam-packed with
adverts and a waste of time.
Paul
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