Can any one help, i wont to know if i buy a Sony DVP-CX860 a mass storage device for DVDs, and have that plugged into my main TV in my front room, which has the Linksys 2200 attached to it, will it let me push that DVD that is loaded into my kitchen to watch. Also will the system talk to the Windows media centre and see all of the DVD sleeves or will it be a totally different section i need to look at to see my DVD collection.
Thanks
Its not currently possible to stream DVD's to media center extenders via DVD changers or even off the hard disk for that matter.
What have you got in the Kitchen another media center extender?
The My Movies add-in supports Disk changers but would only work on the actual VMC PC not on the extenders.
I convert my DVD's (VOB's) to DVR-MS file format using an application called Video Redo for playback on the extenders using the My Movies UI.
Stu aka C-Dub
The Windows Media Center Blog
cw-kid is right, its currently not supported to stream from a dvd changer to an extender. So you unfortunately won't be able to access and playback DVD's through the extender from a changer.
I personally store all my dvd's on my windows home server. I take the vob files directly using a binary copy on the vobs and stick them as a single mpeg file on the Windows Home Server and then access them through Videos.
I use a free program called DVD Decrypter (http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/) to rip DVDs to ISO files, but you can also rip them as VOBs (single or split files), which you can then just rename to MPG. I then use My Movies (http://www.mymovies.dk/) to access the DVD library from within VMC's 10' interface.
You can also use DVDFab, which comes in several versions. The free one has enough functionality to rip the DVD to your hard drive:
http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm
By FAR my favorite program is MagicDVDRipper, I love this app because it can rip without modifying the mpeg2 format so it rips SUPER fast. Typically it takes under 2 mins a dvd movie to rip on my main machine. True MPEG2 isn't the perfect format because you can ff and can only skip. But I can live with this, speed is the most important thing for me in conversion :) Quality in the MPEG2 is also fantastic so I'm happy.
Ok, I'm confused about what you said Steve ... you can rip a DVD movie disk in 2 minutes using MagicDVDRipper? Wow ... Most DVD drives read DVD-ROM and DVD-Video discs at a max speed of 16x. Take a look at any of the reviews at:
http://www.cdrlabs.com/
On my own system, I can rip a dual-layer in about 12-15 minutes, averaging 11x-12x for the entire process. How can this software rip DVDs in 2 minutes?
Also, how do other DVD rippers modify the MPEG2 format? I thought DVDs are stored in a VOB format, which is MPEG2 (you can simply rename the VOB to MPG or MPEG and it'll play). Thus, DVD rippers simply perform decryption and output the VOBs. How are the MPEG2 streams modified?
Hey Tarrant I use a patched LiteOn SOHD-16P9S drive, my 2 mins is a bit misleading as I was giving the time to convert a local dvd img mounted with daemon tools, using MagicDVDRipper straight from disk is very fast too though, I just timed it, it takes around 4.9 minutes to rip (single layer). The software is not providing any new ability to go faster though, that's not what I was trying to say.
The point I'm making about this software is it is the only software I personally have found (i'm sure there is more though) which does a straight select your track and give me an mpeg without touching the container or format of the original vob files. It is effectively the same as doing copy /b with all the vobs on a dvd to a single file and changing the extension to mpeg. It however offers this is a no brainer solution which works great. I personally don't care about re-encoding at all which is what 90% of DVD rippers tend to offer.
When you say how do other dvd rippers modify the mpeg2 format, again in my personal experience, most dvd ripping software does one of two things, it either rips you the vobs and then you have to convert them to an mpeg yourself using copy /b or some other tool which does it for you or they do down sampling of the video to another format.
I know it's possible to get almost identical quality from a down sampled MPEG2 stream and have it take only 1/4 of the space, but I actually don't care about drive space, I care about the time from the DVD hitting my drive to me being able to watch it on my TV. Thus I look for a simple 1 or 2 click solution which can give me an instantly playable movie in a single file which can be hosted on my home server box.
That is why I love MagicDVDRipper. I'd definately be interested in hearing about other applications which are out there which do the same thing. I searched high and low to find one which did them two simple steps (rip the vobs and automatically join them and rename them back to a single mpeg file). Sounds crazy I know and maybe my search mojo had gone walkabout at the time but I was coming up short on anything which actually DID this, I found plently claiming to do it. However in practice when I ran the applications I found they all took way way longer to do it than MagicDVDRipper which leads me to believe they are NOT simply copying and renaming the file (and often the resulting file size confirmed this).
Cheers
Steve
Ok, I think I understand now, Steve :) I use DVD Decrpyter to do the same thing:
http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/
What I do is use IFO mode, select the main program (PGC), select the audio track I want, select any subtitles I want and hit "rip." Under Tools -> Settings -> IFO Mode I also make sure "file splitting" is set to none.
This rips the DVD into one VOB file with no conversion, no transcoding, etc. You do have to manually rename the single VOB file to MPEG though.