Firewire DVD changer support...

[briands]

Anyone have any thoughts on support for theSony Firewire DVD changer/burner. It appears to only work with MCE, but seems like it would be a great solution for online access to those lightly used DVDs in the collection.

Couple questions I see about it:
Will it work on clients?

If it will work on clients, will daisy chained units (yes, you can add 4 additional) allow multiple client access if the discs are in different units?

What kind of DRM is tied to it (it is Sony afterall)? Can you actually upscale DVDs beyond standard resolution on analog outputs?

Is MCE REALLY required for it to work? Would it require a custom driver to allow it to work in a 3rd party application?

BTW, Andrew over at TT was polling interest in support for it. That's where I came across it.

[dagar]

Would be nice to know!

[dagar]

Any idea if v6 supports this changer?

[stanger89]

It's not really much cheaper than hard drives. It's basically equivalent to about 1TB of space for somewhere between $300 and $400.

Hard drives are pretty regularly getting down to the $0.40/GB range lately, eg 500GB drives are about $200 now.

Considering (AFAIK):

No, it won't work on clients because it appears as an optical drive.
Yes, it needs a special driver, at least to be able to change discs.
Only supports playing on disc at a time.
Doesn't offer any way to bypass trailers etc (you'd need to run AnyDVD or something)
Dito for upscaling

HDDs seem like a better way to go IMO.

[dagar]

Hehe couldn't resist? While I don't disagree with your take on ripping.

1. Legal ripping of DVDs is at best, limited in scope of available content
2. Convenience factor

Issue 1 above is a serious constraint. 2 is arguable for different reasons than the first.

This old thread (with some familiar names ) discusses this same beaten horse
http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com/arc.../1066#comments

Was forum browsing and ShadyMG's review ... and he made a comment about 'Videos by DVD' and maybe it being for a changer. So I reposted to a dead topic

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by dagar

Hehe couldn't resist? While I don't disagree with your take on ripping.

1. Legal ripping of DVDs is at best, limited in scope of available content

Legalities not withstanding, DVD ripping is widely accepted, and ripped DVDs have very broad support.

2. Convenience factor

IMO ripped DVDs are far more convenient than a changer (instant access, simultaneous random access, easy network support, etc). While dropping a disc is a bit easier, I usually spend about 30 sec inserting my DVD and setting up the rip, and then spend the rest of the rip time importing it into DVD Profiler and scanning the coverart.

Plus that allows me to eliminate all the "crap" that's far to often forced on us by those who author DVDs.

Issue 1 above is a serious constraint.

I disagree, as noted above, ripping DVDs is widely accepted, information is readilly available, for all intents and purposes, ripping DVDs is no different than ripping CDs.

2 is arguable for different reasons than the first.

This old thread (with some familiar names ) discusses this same beaten horse
http://mediacenter.mattgoyer.com/arc.../1066#comments

Except that discusses getting other changers to work in MCE, not getting an MCE compatible changer to work in 3rd party apps.

Was forum browsing and ShadyMG's review ... and he made a comment about 'Videos by DVD' and maybe it being for a changer. So I reposted to a dead topic

Didn't even realize the first posts were that old.

[dagar]

lol

All true. I think the size, reliablility and price of HDDs have killed this. But I wonder if the vendors ever expected much in the way of market penetration? ... hmmmmmmmm.

[nielm]

Originally Posted by stanger89

IMO ripped DVDs are far more convenient than a changer (instant access, simultaneous random access, easy network support, etc).

and almost impossible for a child to damage

[dagar]

Yeah I can see Murphy (TM) living in one of those things

[Thraxius]

I would love to get this to work with Sage. The device is only $200 dollars and that is pretty cheap.

Plus people state HDD is better but space can really be a bear at this time. I have 2 400 GB drives full of the stuff I like to watch. I could unload about 1TB of stuff onto this device. Instead of storing it on my drive. Especially when... HD type stuff is around about 8 Gig of space.

Putting it simple, I would love to offload my DVD stuff to this device leaving me more space on my drive to store HD stuff.

[dagar]

Well, did the deed and got one (got 165 DVDs in it now.) I love it.

Only downside is:
a. Requires MCE (bleh)
b. AnyDVD + MCE + Changer doesn't work
c. DVD43 + MCE + Changer doesn't work
d. DVDIDLE + MCE + CHanger works -- caveat, must be disabled for the Sony changer program to pull down the DVD info (grumble) when u add new DVDs
e. Requires MCE (did I mention bleh?)

Help us Obi Narflex you're our only hope!

[JUC]

Do these support Divx on CD by any chance? I've got a ton of old movies lying around I have been too lazy to upload and this would be great...in addition to all the DVD's I could store. Sage support would be a necessity though.

[dagar]

eh, good question. So I understand, you have CD(s) with some misc dixv files thrown on them? I can try it.

FWIW it will take WMVHD DVDs and handle them okay (well, as okay as MCE does -- which is chunky).

Haven't tried burning or CD (any type) yet.

[dagar]

No love. Shows up as a 'data CD'. Tried mpeg2 (from Sage) and a DIVX file.

[Thraxius]

Looks like I am going to have to buy one. Looks like I will have to start using MCE on my HTPC in my den.

[JUC]

Originally Posted by dagar

No love. Shows up as a 'data CD'. Tried mpeg2 (from Sage) and a DIVX file.

Thanks for trying!

[dagar]

NP m8 ... only bad part is MCE ... what an absolute piece of crap. I think my wife may dislike it more than me lol

[Thraxius]

Well.. I can say.. I don't like MCE... There has to be a way to get this thing to work the way I want it to.

[bcjenkins]

From AVSForum:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...692413&page=21

User MediaDogg has a cli util for managing the changer

B

[Narflex]

Well that's interesting. Now there's a way to control the changer outside of MCE. We've actually got one of these at the office; I know
it'll stream DVDs to the extender if there's no CSS protection on the content. (and you map the changer's driver letter to be an import path in SageTV....same trick you use to stream DVD's from an optical drive to an extender).

You could probably fully integrate it by using the Studio, the tool from MediaDogg and bunch of time and the will to do it.