How to "backup" HD DVD movies with your Xbox 360 and a PC

Sometimes it's hard to draw the line between "fair use" and "just plain ol' dumb," but if being in charge of the playback and storage of your purchased media is of the utmost importance to you -- to the tune of a couple grand -- then Jake Ludington over at MediBlab has a solution for you. His argument in favor such extreme measures is the tried and true "backup" excuse, since, so far, managed copy hasn't made its way into his discs or hardware. Of course, with the amount of money involved in his method, he would probably be better off just paying buying a few extra copies of any disc he might purchase, and storing 'em in a vault someplace. However, if you would like to follow in Jake's fair usin' footsteps, the method is really quite straightforward. Just score yourself an Xbox 360 and HD DVD drive (one of the view HD DVD solutions which will output 1080i or 720p via component), a minimum of 4 eSATA drives in a RAID 0 array (for which you might need an external SATA card), an AJA XENA LG analog HD capture card (which will be doing most of the heavy lifting in this process), and a speedy PC for processing the video once you've got it all captured. Not quite 1080p, and not quite digital perfection, but it should win you a good bit of love and recognition in the BitTorrent community be plenty good for most "backup" purposes.

[Via eHomeUpgrade]

[Billy Bob @ Dec 4th 2006 6:16PM]

no one would download an hd movie via bittorrent
everythings divx anyways

[mespinosam @ Dec 4th 2006 6:30PM]

thats because u haven't seen hd po rn

[Tonicboy @ Dec 4th 2006 6:48PM]

@Billy Bob

"no one would download an hd movie via bittorrent
everythings divx anyways"

Sorry, I don't see the sense in your argument. Are you implying that most bittorrent downloads are in divx because it is the best codec? So are you actually arguing that h.264 is an INFERIOR codec to divx?! See, this is the point where you are betraying your complete ignorance about video codecs and HD movies. An HD movie in divx would be probably twice as large as one in h.264. Furthermore, there is nothing to prevent someone from encoding an HD movie in divx (as silly as that would be), so you're contradicting yourself. Finally, do a quick Google on "720p torrent" or "1080 torrent" and you'll see that there is plenty of HD content available on bittorrent, so clearly, SOMEONE is downloading this stuff.

[Tech^Cellfish @ Dec 5th 2006 2:54AM]

Well, I for one download hd movies or regular dvdr. Everything between 4,5gb and 30gb.

[Hostile slick inbound @ Dec 4th 2006 6:43PM]

i download hd movies all the time via usenet.

Divx? Time to upgrade from dial up.

[Castle @ Dec 4th 2006 6:56PM]

Basically you're doing a analog capture of the video using Hi-def video capture card and a capturing them onto a RAID harddrives, nothing really special or surprising, this is the reason why Blu-ray/HD-DVD created HDCP and ICT tokens for.

Anybody that knows how to do this, would have figured this out without the need for this article, but its incredibly cumbersome and relatively expensive.

Pointless. . .

[Dave @ Dec 4th 2006 7:13PM]

Right. This solution sucks. It might be worth it if you were able to retrieve the content digitally--but analog capture? Meh.

[Paul @ Dec 4th 2006 7:16PM]

"win you a good bit of love and recognition in the BitTorrent community"

Is this like 1 step above being the most popular kid in the chess club?

[mike @ Dec 4th 2006 7:55PM]

This post really demonstrates to me the dire need for an analog HDTV recording solution (one that doesn't cost thousands of dollars). Right now there are two that I know of, this card and W-VHS (a defunct HD cassette tape format). It's sad to admit, but it seems like with this generation of video formats, the studios have finally won. Right now there just is no practical solution for analog recording from an HD source. This will only get worse as component video and VGA, the two analog HD options, are replaced by HDMI. The analog hole is closing, and the studios can now have their way with all the DRM they have wanted for years. I would LOVE to see somebody come out with an affordable analog HD recording solution for the PC, like the SD counterparts that have been around for years, but it just doesn't seem to be happening. It's really a shame, the consumers are running out of options while the studios have their way. Of course it's only a matter of time until the HD DVD software is cracked, which would really be the ideal way to backup these movies, but until then, we're all pretty much stuck.

[Mischa Lockton @ Dec 4th 2006 8:06PM]

Isn't the xbox+hd-dvd capable of 1080p? What is this "i" crap?

[... @ Dec 4th 2006 10:27PM]

the xbox 360 can't output data in 1080p since it its gpu isn't powerfull enough. That and everyone (except the consumers) are pushing to only let 1080p out over hdmi with a ton of drm crap on it to prevent you from doing this.

If you want to capture data in 1080p you need a ps3...

[mb @ Dec 4th 2006 8:17PM]

Analog hole = not that interesting.

[BloggersHQ @ Dec 4th 2006 8:21PM]

Hell yeah, this is definately a good move for the BT community :D. Ever since I got my 20' WS. I've been lookin for HD content.

[... @ Dec 4th 2006 9:07PM]

well the site has tanked, so I can't really say this for sure... But it looks like they are just running the composite out of the xbox into a capture card and saving the data to a hard disk...

w00t I can backup home videos by playing them into a caputre card!!!1111eleven

Although the fact that he wants 4 drives in a raid 0 (presumably for faster transfers...) worries me... A normal 500gb 7200rpm drive will take over a gb/s data a second....

[ken52787 @ Dec 4th 2006 9:53PM]

...

He's connecting the component for a HD capture. The card records in uncompressed HD, and I'm sorry, but your 500gb 7200rpm drive is neither big enough or fast enough to handle uncompressed HD.

[Bluephoenix @ Dec 4th 2006 10:12PM]

or since the Xbox 360 drive is simpl an SATA drive itself just turn the drive module into a hot-swap bay (only a dremel is required) and use one of the xbox 360 drive navigators freely available on the web to pull the movie in original format and encoding. you save plenty of money that way (no cumbersome capture card)

I don't own a 360, but this solution is the most obvious and logical of any that come to mind.

[sr @ Dec 4th 2006 10:20PM]

This is not rocket science like this guy discovered something. The HD-DVD camp really needed better penetration so they caved and allowed HD output in analog because the 360 lacks HDMI. This is just like recording analog output from a CD, SACD, or DVD-A with a digital sound recording card or device.

The method has its advantages and disadvantages. The fact that it can done relatively cheaply and easily is an advantage. The fact that you will compromise quality compared to the original digital copy is a disadvantage (although the prevalence of Divx copies of DVDs shows that people couldn't care less).

[jtaft @ Dec 5th 2006 12:09AM]

The XBOX 360 can output in 1080P but only using VGA. I have my Sony Bravia 1080P LCD hooked up through its VGA/PC input.

[Rollins @ Dec 5th 2006 12:49AM]

So I guess all the news about the 360 gaining 1080p in a firmware update a while back didn't mean anything? I love Sony fanboys.

[Russell @ Dec 5th 2006 12:02AM]

HDCP is already broken, we just don't have a good way of capturing it.

I want an HDMI > Firewire converter that I can use the HDCP stripper on... That way the hardware can compress the uncompressed digital data back down to a mpeg2/4/vc1 stream that can be captured.

Not completely lossless but good enough.

Oh, and hopefully AACS will be broken soon so we can rip and strip HDDVD/BluRay content...

[mase @ Dec 5th 2006 1:00AM]

Doesn't anybody proofread the articles, Engadget?

[Vanillacide @ Dec 5th 2006 6:24AM]

We say it once we say it a million times...

For movies that are 24p (i.e. 24 frames per second) as all HD DVD and Blu-ray movies are, 1080i vs 1080p is about signal transport not about resolution.

1080i and 1080p both resolve to 1920x1080 pixels at 24 frames per second.

[Ian @ Dec 5th 2006 1:52PM]

Not sure where all this confusion comes from:

1- You can do 1080p via compoent on the 360.
2- YOu can do HD via DiVX. But H.264 or VC1/WMV would be better.
3- The method outlined in this article (analog capture) is costly and slow.

[Wes Felter @ Dec 5th 2006 1:58PM]

Recording HDMI is much cheaper than recording component:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

[Manny Fleurmond @ Dec 5th 2006 10:58PM]

Thats ok except once they start being heavy with the DRM, that card won't work.