Backed up DVDs and playing movies from a fileserver

[zicoz]

Hi there, I was wondering how MP reacts to backed up DVDs. I'm planing to copy all my DVDs to my fileserver, and I want to copy the complete DVDs and not just a divx or Xvid format.

If I use DVD-shrink to back up the DVDs to my fileserver, will MP add these DVDs to the list of movies it can play? And will they launch as a DVD?

And also, I've been watching movies over the LAN from my fileserver, but there is alot of lag, is there any way to prevent this? I'm currently on a 100Mbit network, will upgrading to Gbit network remove the problem, or is it software-related?

[shewless]

hey.. you can enable MP to use "daemon tools" to mount and launch iso files as movies... check out the my movies options in your configuration.

[zicoz]

ok, I also noticed that this has been asked a couple of times before in the "similar treads" at the bottom of the page, and it seems to work.

Men hva med avspilling over nettverk, noen erfaringer på dette området?

[Flerbizky]

Originally Posted by zicoz

ok, I also noticed that this has been asked a couple of times before in the "similar treads" at the bottom of the page, and it seems to work.

Men hva med avspilling over nettverk, noen erfaringer på dette området?

I'd stick to English if I were you... :-) Better response time...

Anyway - Since a DVD is anything up to 6-7Mb pr. second in transfer rate, and a 100Mbit transfers, at best, 8.25Mb pr. second + overhead, you better make sure your network i backed by a decent switch and not some $10 cardboard box. Besides. You'll completely tie up the servers network - so what if someone else wants to see something :-)

Skip the above if you're on a gigaspeed network :-)

[Leon_Gjerland]

Originally Posted by zicoz

Anyway - Since a DVD is anything up to 6-7Mb pr. second in transfer rate, and a 100Mbit transfers, at best, 8.25Mb pr. second + overhead, .......

I do not agree. I would say a 100Mbit network more likely could transfer 8.25 MByte/s(66 Mbit/s, up to 10 times the required bandwidth for playing DVD's over the network).

Even a 54Mbit wireless has the required capacity if we look at average transfer-rates over time. The problem with wireless (and even Gbit ethernet in rare cases) is that speed sometimes goes down to 0 for a second or more, making it less suitable for playing movies.

I use 100Mbit (a cheap D-Link switch) and have normally no problems watching 2 movies (have'nt tested more) at the same time.

[Flerbizky]

Originally Posted by Leon_Gjerland

I do not agree. I would say a 100Mbit network more likely could transfer 8.25 MByte/s(66 Mbit/s, up to 10 times the required bandwidth for playing DVD's over the network).

Even a 54Mbit wireless has the required capacity if we look at average transfer-rates over time. The problem with wireless (and even Gbit ethernet in rare cases) is that speed sometimes goes down to 0 for a second or more, making it less suitable for playing movies.

I use 100Mbit (a cheap D-Link switch) and have normally no problems watching 2 movies (have'nt tested more) at the same time.

You Sir - Are absolutely correct... I don't know why I got my figures turned backwards yesterday, but somehow I did..

The Maximum bitrate for a DVD is 10Mbit pr. Second and not 6-8Mb as I claimed. And hence, you should be able to stream at least 5-6 streams over a 100Mbit network.

I stand corrected (As if that's a new thing :-) )

Cheers,
Steffen

[alexeix]

Originally Posted by shewless

hey.. you can enable MP to use "daemon tools" to mount and launch iso files as movies... check out the my movies options in your configuration.

Hi,

Is Daemon Tools freeware? Also, there are reviews on download.com which say it includes adware.

They do point out that this is an option in the installation, but I was wondering how easy/obvious the opt-out is?

Does anybody have it installed?

It sounds like it's just what I need for playing my backed-up DVDs directly in Media Portal.
Thanks.

[zicoz]

Originally Posted by Flerbizky

I'd stick to English if I were you... :-) Better response time...

Anyway - Since a DVD is anything up to 6-7Mb pr. second in transfer rate, and a 100Mbit transfers, at best, 8.25Mb pr. second + overhead, you better make sure your network i backed by a decent switch and not some $10 cardboard box. Besides. You'll completely tie up the servers network - so what if someone else wants to see something :-)

Skip the above if you're on a gigaspeed network :-)

Oops, sorry bout that, guess I'm working on too many problems at once here :-)

Anyway what it said was the following:

"But what about playing movies over the LAN? Any experiences on this?"

Thanks for the help. I'll try a couple of other LAN-cards and another router and switch and see if it improves.

Alexei:
I have Daemon installed, you'll get a questing during the installation what you wanna install, amongst the choses there is a IE-bar, don't know if that's the only adware, but that's one atleast.

[stryker]

I keep all my DVDs on a file server in my back bedroom. Unfourtunatly the file server is on a seperate switch.... I've got the network configured well (I do it for a living), problem is I've found you have to use quality kit, IE switches and network cards.... Not the absolute best, but not the golden dragon blossom type discount kit either!

I've decided to bring the mountain to mohamed as it were and in future intend to keep my movies on the HTPC instead.

I'm also looking into getting MP to offer to rip a dvd when I insert it. I've seen that on other commercial HTPCs and thought it was a practical and cool feature

[zicoz]

Hmm ok, a local company is having an exhibition on medianetworks at home this weekend, så I'm gonna check them out aswell, and see if they can come up with a good solution.

But with good components, would $200 GB-switches from SMC or 3com do the job combined with GB cards from 3com or Intel?