[geeks] Making HD DVD at home

[Francois Dion]

So you bought an HD DVD player? Or just saw one at your local costco
for less than a regular DVD player and wondered if you shouldn't pick
one up? Or stumbled upon the videophile's dream HD-XA2? Well, they
wont be making HD DVD movies forever tought, so...

But, it does make a lot more sense if you can burn your own HD DVD on
the cheap. Say, on a regular DVD-R. HD on cheap media...

Well, here it is. I've been working on this for a while and after many
tests, it works extremely well. It is very cool to get a bunch of
movie trailers, burn on DVD-R and playback in full 1080 or even 720p.
Or record OTA with a digital tuner, say, Knight Rider 3000, put it on
DVD-R and watch it whenever you want without using an HTPC or the
like.

Assuming an MPEG2 in 1280x720 or 1920x1080 you can do it directly,
unless the multiplexing is messed up or it is not a Program Stream.
OTA HDTV is in MPEG2 but transport stream. In that case you would
first use:

$ mencoder capture.mpg -of mpeg -mpegopts
format=dvd:tsaf:muxrate=18000 -oac copy -ovc copy -o video.mpg

Then you author the video.mpg file to a dvd disk layout:

dvd -o dvd -x config.xml

assuming config.xml contains:
<dvdauthor>
    <vmgm />
    <titleset>
        <titles>
            <pgc>
                <vob file="video.mpg" />
            </pgc>
        </titles>
    </titleset>
</dvdauthor>


Then you test your disk layout with mplayer:

mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /video/test/dvd/

If everything is cool:
mkisofs -dvd-video -udf -o dvd.iso dvd/

and burn to dvd:

cdrw -i dvd.iso

This DVD-R will play in any HD DVD player. It will also play on any
computer powerfull enough to render high def and run mplayer.

The above was done on Solaris, adjust to taste for whatever OS you use.

Francois