Client/server setup with Blu-Ray in server? (1 Viewer)

[plind]

I'm planning to setup a media server with all possible media on it and MediaPortal tv server running. I want to access all this media from several client devices in the house. Part of my plan is to build a Blu-Ray drive into the server. From each client device I'm hoping to access this drive remotely so that I can watch Blu-Ray discs anywhere in the house.

I this gonna work with MediaPortal, for example, by simple setting up a network share for the Blu-Ray drive and mapping a drive letter onto it in every client? Of am I overlooking certain obstacles?

Pascal.

 

[MrMech]

I think quite many are heading to these problems - if not yet. The issue is not with sharing, its with privacy protection on bluray disk and overall support for HD-disk playback on PC. There is currently no common tool to navigate with HD menus like used with DVD's, so MP is only able to play HD content directly from file or stream. You could search solutions that use AnyDVD HD to deal with privacy protection, to share disks as files and eventually play streams directly from files. Another solution is to use some external player dealing with bluray disks like PowerDVD.

e.g. PowerDVD can handle bluray disks if your environment is hd ready (use hd advisor). However, PowerDVD does not handle network shares as disks and therefore it cannot deal with privacy protection through normal share. To deal with this, you need a bit more low-level solution for sharing. iSCSI server/client solution supporting SPTI does the job. There are several free software packages (iSCSI Cake, Nimbus MySan etc.. haven't tried) and a lot of commercial ones. If you have Windows Server, you might be able to share with iSCSI using only Microsoft products. So far, i have tried such solution with StarWind/StarPort (15day trial - free license does not include SPTI) which is easy to set up and works great on XP.

So, I suggest to try some working MP/PowerDVD integration at this point. There is quite lot of stuff to do with privacy protection, HD-navigator and HDCP negotiation - so I would be surprised if MP could offer integrated HD disk support any time soon. Maybe if PowerDVD directshow filters could do all these tasks, but I believe that the support is partly on PowerDVD application at the moment.

... and note that it will need bandwidth, forget all wifi-thoughts and use 1Gb-lan

-Teemu

 

[plind]

Hey MrMech/Teemu,

Wow! Thanks for your elaborate answer. This sounds like your average HD nightmare!

Looks like I'm gonna have to dive into more technology (iSCSI, SPTI). Thanks a million for the pointers.

I guess the closest I'm gonna get (at this stage) with integrating Blu-Ray playback in MP is by setting PowerDVD as the external player to be used by MP, right? In that case, will I still have control over the player and the way back to MP through the remote control? Or is this a "mouse-only" zone?

Cheers,

Pascal.

 

[MrMech]

So far I have used PowerDVD separately for watching blurays. But If you have time to figure out some working MP integration, similar pointers would be fine here. Drive-sharing is clearly a separate thing, but the full context of sharing drives for MP usage is interesting. My TV-service runs on semi-passive HTPC with small SSD disks, it records to NAS and timesifts to memdisk. This way HTPC stays silent and recordings are available e.g. for uPNP box on other room also. TV-server power schedules while NAS stays accessible. So currently I use MP frontend just for watching payTV channels, since hd-less uPNP box has DVB-T but not CI. Also pointers to working wake-on-lan configurations would be useful with shared drives.

 

[plind]

Hey MrMech/Teemu,

I don't have a Blu-Ray setup yet, but I tested PowerDVD 8 as an external player for DVD's in MP this morning and it works perfectly. Even the MCE remote control works in PowerDVD 8. The only thing that failed during my short test was the ability to return back to MP. But I consider that a minor issue for now.

Interesting setup you have there. You say you timeshift to memdisk: you mean literally to RAM or do you use a USB stick, for example? And how large is you ramdisk?

Pascal.

 

[MrMech]

Interesting setup you have there. You say you timeshift to memdisk: you mean literally to RAM or do you use a USB stick, for example? And how large is you ramdisk?
Pascal.

Meant virtual disk on RAM - didn't find other options to keep TS data on fast memory with MP. It did a difference compared to SSD disk, but with fast (and spinning) sata drives you might not notice any difference. I don't remember the program I use currently, since I have tried few lately, last one recently advertised that it can handle memory above 4GB area on Windows XP. I just use 1GB out of 4, but I will soon go shopping - since the prog is capable to save/restore ramdisk to image - I'll redirect more perfo-dependent IO in such way and use a small UPS as a backup plan.

 

[kkozma]

This isn't a seamless solution, but it will work.

Install AnyDVD on your server.

Share your BD drive to DRIVE:\bdmv

Open the drive share and then open the largest .m2ts file in mpc-hc.