I have an XP machine with 6 TB of storage on-line in my home. I have some AVI’s but mostly DVDs. I store them as complete DVDs (minus the menus in most cases). I have other network players (MG-35,Popcorn Hour,Tvix) in my home (one for each TV in the house). I use regular network shares (without username/password access, since it’s a private home network)
I would like to be able to navigate the DVD by chapter/title. The other players I have support chapter navigation. Also the video and audio drops out during VOB playback, as it moves from one VOB to the next in the DVD. It appears that the VIDEO_TS.IFO file is ignored by the player, so it doesn’t support chapter/title navigation, thus the dropout of video/audio during playback of DVDs.
I store the DVDs in seperate folders, one for each disc in a series or one complete movie.
I hope this is addressed in a future firmware release.
Even if it’s not the best solution, you can join the VOBs fairly easily. It takes less than 2 mins to join them into a big fat VOB without any special tools. You just need to do a binary copy from a DOS window, like this:
In a couple minutes you have a single VOB with the whole movie, so it won’t have gaps. Ofc that would break .ifo support for the other devices, so it is basically a tradeoff.
Oh and btw, while not as convenient as selecting a chapter in a menu, the 10 mins skip feature (next button while FFW) allows you to get to any chapter fairly quickly.
My problem with that approach is that the other 3 brands of network media players I have support chapter navigation, which I use regularly. Plus I have more than a 1000 DVDs on my server at the moment and I don’t want to do that to all of them. I’ll just put the WD player aside and wait for the firmware update the adds that feature. Thanks for the suggestion, which would work, sort of.
I do not have an answer, but just want to make WD aware that this Chapter/Title support is a MUST feature to have. This allows users to watch TV show DVD much much much easier because TV show DVDs (i.e. Friends series) consists of espisodes w/ specific name. Without this feature, it is almost impossible to watch these TV show DVDs.
BTW, I just bought the TV Live, but w/o this feature I have to return the unit.
BTW, I just bought the TV Live, but w/o this feature I have to return the unit.
Well now you know how important it is to check product specs prior to purchase. Full DVD support is the most wanted feature since the original WD TV and it’s still not clear if it ever will be implemented. Also, as has been mentioned here for the umpteenth time: there are no pauses during playback if the VOBs/IFOs are stored in a VIDEO_TS folder.
that’s important to me too. I need a media player able to recognize all the standard files resulting from copying a DVD to an HDD directory (VIDEO_TS, VIDEO.IFO etc…) I’d like to navigate those dirs as movies, with the same features I’d have if I was playing the disc.
So you said the Mediagate MG-35 has this feature? Full DVD files support?
(Sorry WD guys, I know it’s your forum, but I need to find this out somehow…)
The MG-35, the Popcorn Hour, and the M-6500 Tvix are the ones I know play DVD’s perfectly, but I’m sure there are many others. I’m sure the WD TV Live will too, eventually. I noticed a post that said it would now, if you put the files in a VIDEO_TS folder. I haven’t tried that yet, but I will. I normally put the files in the root of a folder.
I will say one thing in the WDTVLive’s favor, it works really good as a media server. I connected a drive to it with blu-ray movies and it streamed one perfectly to a Popcorn Hour player, something that I had never had work consistantly over my network. I usually connect blu-ray movies directly to the player, via USB.
I don’t understand your question. This topic is in regard to DVDs, which aren’t HD.
Native Blu-Ray is NOT supported by any of the LIVE products, but all HD MKVs (Assuming they were properly encoded and the bitrate isn’t too high) play just fine.
DVD menu navigation is addressed in the current pre-release version of the firmware. Unfortunately, it is no longer available on the WD site. If you google it, however, you can find it from a reputable source.
Rip the DVD with DVDFAB into an ISO, copy the ISO to your media folder on your server or NAS and the WDTV Live player will think it’s an original DVD complete with Menus and Navigation, no need to rip down to VOBs, also there is a setting depending on what program you’re using to rip that allows you to rip to 1 VOB and not multiple so no need to join anything back up.
Try it this way and I think you’ll get the result you’re looking for.
