Playing a DVD on the extender

[garyellis]

I know the extender will not play a DVD directly.

So, for unencrypted DVD,

1) one must identify the DVD drive as an import path..

2) then click on Update import files...

3) Wait and click OK

4) then go to imported videos

5) and then to DVD's tab

6) and then press the "blank DVD" picture to start the DVD...

7) and then press "watch"

Question, how do I automate all that into 1 press?...I understand the first step is only a one timer. But the rest are each time. My WAF goes down each time I try to explain that she can not just press the "play DVD" button for unencrypted DVD's.

Has anybody found a different way to do this? Can some sort of Macro be written? I guess I could buy a separate DVD player, but, I already have Sage loaded and no money left after buying 2 HD extenders

Thanks for any input,

Gary Ellis

[gplasky]

I put my DVDs on the hard drive. Populate it with DVD cover and information from DVD Profiler. The wife picks the cover of the movie she wants, reads the info or just plays it. Much simpler.


Gerry

[garyellis]

Simpler, if I was going to leave it on the HDD, but, I already created many DVD's. (a couple of TV series that I burned on multiple DVD's and then erased from HDD's to save the space.)

Thus, its not practical for me to reload it to a HDD, any time sombody wants to watch one show on the DVD.

So, looking for a simple way to play the DVD. I was hoping that Nielm's Dynamic menu would allow for multiple (macro style) commands behind 1 menu item. Then maybe I could stack several of the above commands into 1.

Thanks for the help,

Gary Ellis

[polen]

I bought a DVD player at Sam's Warehouse for $49.99 and it came with an HDMI cable. The wife puts the DVD in the player and presses the Watch Movie button on my Harmony remote and bang the DVD is playing. There's your one button solution.

-Polen

[bastafidli]

That is your solution if you want to have another box in your living room. I removed from my living room everything other than the dish receiver and the hd extender and even the dish receiver might go away once I decide to get a tv tuner. It would be nice if I can just pop the DVD into the file server in the closet and then play it on the extender without copying it to the HDD.

[garyellis]

Exactly.....

Gary Ellis

[CollinR]

I don't know, updating the library programatically is a good idea. Otherwise thise could be done with the Niel's webserver interface. He probably knows how to trigger it, it probably didn't occur to him, that or the searches do it anyway.

[TimmyToo]

Originally Posted by bastafidli

It would be nice if I can just pop the DVD into the file server in the closet and then play it on the extender without copying it to the HDD.

I agree.

I was hoping to get a media extender like the D-Link that has an internal DVD drive. There are times when I just want to watch a rental DVD or one that I don't want to copy to the server. Yes, I could hook a $35 DVD player to the TV.

It would be nice to have the kids could pop a movie into the DVD drive and just play. I'd even go so far as to put a external USB DVD drive close to the TV to keep them away from the computer.

I think Sage has a great product. The HD extender is awesome. Having a DVD drive in it would have been nice but it isn't a deal breaker for me.

Is there a way to play DVD's from an internal drive with Sage that I may have not found yet? I know I could do it on a PC client, but with an MVP and a HDE for viewing I'm done with PC clients.

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by TimmyToo

Is there a way to play DVD's from an internal drive with Sage that I may have not found yet? I know I could do it on a PC client, but with an MVP and a HDE for viewing I'm done with PC clients.

As was mentioned earlier: an extender can play non-encrypted DVDs, such as the home-made DVDs described above, by setting the DVD drive as an import directory and refreshing the library. (I believe he was just looking for a faster/easier way of setting this up.)

What an extender cannot do is play a commercial encrypted DVD in a drive on the server, because it cannot play encrypted content nor are encrypted DVDs allowed to be streamed over the network -- a SageTV PC client must also play a commercial DVD in its own local drive.

- Andy

[Taddeusz]

This can cause lots of network traffic if you have any of your import directories on network shares on different computers other than the server but I'm surprised nobody has suggested to go to Setup -> Detailed Setup -> Customize and enable "Regularly rescan import directories". I'm not sure how often it rescans though.

[sleonard]

I'm waiting for the STX-HD200 that has a built in CD/DVD/HD-DVD/Blu-Ray combo drive!

S

[autoboy]

I broke down and fished out my old DVD player. It works much better for WAF even though it is another box.