Networked DVD Players, Good or Bad?

ageoffri asks: "My 5 year old Pioneer DVD player is starting to act up so I need to replace it soon. A friend of mine mentioned he got a Go Video DVD player. This got me wondering how many more networked DVD players there were and some searches found a few, but almost no reviews on any of them. I'm wondering if any Slashdot readers have used a networked DVD player and if so how well it worked? Is the picture quality the same for playing a DVD in the player or from a PC? I'm only looking for one that either comes with or can accept a wireless connection."

No

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, please.

MythTV Frontend

[crow]

This is much like what people do with MythTV (an opensource PVR project). You can have a spearate back-end system (where you record and store TV shows) from the front-end systems (hooked up to TVs). [Actually, you can have several of each, but that's another discussion.]

Anyway, if you don't have a HTPC (home theater pc), but you want that functionallity, this may be a good approach. If you find a review, pay attention to heat and noise reports--one of the big advantages of moving functionallity to a remote PC is that you also keep the noise out of your living room.

DVD-R/TiVo unit

[tm2b]

I've got an integrated DVD-R/TiVo unit [pioneerelectronics.com] with a 300 GB harddrive (an easily performed hack [ptvupgrade.com], or you can get PTV Upgrade [ptvupgrade.com] to do it). Works very well, uses the TiVo desktop software [tivo.com] to gateway pictures from my Mac's iPhoto database and mp3s from my Mac's iTunes database. The network interface is attached through a USB port on the back of the DVD-R/TiVo unit, and a number of wired and wireless adapters are supported [tivo.com].

My one gripe is that the TiVo doesn't support AAC files yet. TiVo keeps promising that they are working on it, but do not provide a delivery date estimate. This has been the case for over a year.

Other than that gripe, it works great. My only real gripe is that if you transfer a show over the network to this TiVo from another TiVo using the Home Media Option [tivo.com], the TiVo won't burn it to a DVD-R... their notion of DRM.

Oh yeah... and of course, being a TiVo it runs Linux, so all sorts of hacks [saigon.com] are available for it.

you like commercials on your dvds?

[Splork]

do you actually like commercials on your dvds? what good is an integrated burner if it won't help edit out what you don't need to waste time skipping in the future.

tivo could even do a good job of this if they wanted to. if a show has been viewed already, record what the user skipped and use that as the basis for the first round of commercial editing.

Re:you like commercials on your dvds?

[dthree]

Slightly off-topic, I do this now with ReplayTV and a few shareware tools on my G5.

What luck

[dthree]

I was wondering about the exact question today. I was intitially planning on getting something like the squeezebox [slimdevices.com] and a Bravo D2 [vinc.com] but there seemed like so much crossover technolgy there someone must make a device that does both. I found the aforementioned go-video model, a gateway [gateway.com], and a couple producs from some danish company [kiss-technology.com]

Has anyone found others. With DVD-audio, HD, mac-compatibility?

Re:What luck

[FreeForm Response]

I can't speak to the video aspect, but I bought a Squeezebox recently, and I absolutely love it. Best $300 I've ever spent.

I think the main reason I would recommend it over a combination audio- and video-streaming device is that the Squeezebox can be operated entirely via its remote control, without needing to have a television on and tuned to it like a combo-box would. The Squeezebox can also be completely controlled by the web interface to the server software, which is handy if you're too lazy to go out

Slashdot Review

[MikeDawg]

Read the Slashdot review of the Oritron NPD3117 Networked DVD Player [slashdot.org]

Re:Get an Xbox and load Xbox Media Center

[WarForge]

An Xbox hacked with Xbox Media Center will do exactly what you want, very well and more.

Yes, but can a DVD-R drive be made to work in Xbox as more than just a reader drive? I have seen hacks replacing the DVD drive, but I do not recall seeing one where a DVD-R was used and capable of actual recording. If you know of one (I have not looked recently), please let me know as I would love to do this.

This is not a sig.

Well...

[Cyno01]

Linksys released or is releasing an 802.11g enabled networked DVD player. Its probably not out yet as i cant find it on their projects page, there are some press releases about it though. But it seems to be what you want, since its not out yet, obviously no reviews, but linksys makes a decent product. (typing this on a laptop connected by a linksys 802.11g card to my linksys 802.11g wireless router/4 port switch)

How about

[obeythefist]

A modded XBox? They can do amazing things nowadays. Of course in some places in the world, modifying equipment that you have purchased and own yourself can be illegal (see DMCA).

Modded XBoxen can play DVD's, DivX and Xvid (and yes Ogg and Ogm), can connect to your network, and heaps of other stuff. And they're very cheap for what you get. Apparently you can also play games on them, but the games don't compare favourably to the PC equivalents.

Thankfully here in Australia, the trade agreement that is currently being forced on us by the USA hasn't taken place yet so we can still adjust and modify equipment that we own.

Re:How about

[obeythefist]

Make it stop!!!
Make it stop!!!

Gateway networked DVD player

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not get this. It requires a client that only runs on windows and only finds stuff to play from windows media player. I bought it when Gateway still had stores. Asking them about reading off a samba share. The really didn't know what a samba share was, but they told me that if my windows machine could see it, then this thing could play it. Yeah, sort of. The software client is really poorly written and has a terrible interface. It is too bad because I have had good luck with Gateway stuff in the past, but

xbox

[ezelkow1]

Just like the previous post, there is no system out there that for the price can match the performance of a modded xbox. Thats the main reason i bought one, not to play games, but for a home entertainment center. Thats my personal suggestion, you can also check out an article that tomshardware did comparing @5 different dvd players that 'played everything' along with a modded xbox, and according to them, if you can stomach the initial amount of setup, nothing beats it. But the check the article anyway fo

PC as the player. Pros and Cons

[SmallFurryCreature]

There are some obvious disadvanteges. No remote, PC makes a lot of noise or you need long cables from the PC to the TV wich compounds the lack of a remote, tv-out needed wich is not standard, getting the sound out as well. These can however all be worked around.

There are however some major advantages especially if you got a powerfull pc and you watch movies with subs.

VobSub allows you to polygnize the fonts. This turns the ugly standard DVD subs into beautifull high quality fonts. It costs a lot of cpu power but the results are a lot better.

Add a couple of other filters and you can dramatically improve your picture especially if you got a decent tv.

Wether this worth all the effort is up to you. A stand alone player is a lot lot simpler to work with.

Wait a bit

[LazyBoy]

I've been reading about these too. IMO, it's a little early. In 6 or 12 months there will be significantly more of these to choose from. I'm going to make my old DVD player last.

Why don't Cliff's articles show up?

[hoggoth]

Don't mod this down as off-topic until someone answers please...

Why is is that this article, and other articles often by Cliff, doesn't show up on the slashdot front page?
I don't have any setting to ignore Cliff or anything.

I'm really interested in this particular article, as I am in the market for a networked DVD player. I am eagerly awaiting the Linksys, which was suppose to be available months ago, so I can compare it to the Gateway and KISS models.

Network DVD Users:

[Corncob_Say]

Sigma Designs makes the chips for decoding divx, mpeg-4 ,and wmv9 and soon H.264 standard.Sigmas chips feature a scaler for upscaling to hdtv and hdtv support.Sony is a sigma customer if want an idea of the high end quality these chips provide. Pinnacle is comming out with a mpeg-4 tuner/dvd player stream to pc for pvr.Pinnacle(makers of dazzle) use Sigma's chips.Kiss uses Sigma BUT the Kiss players DO NOT Have DVI.DVI is an an output designed for hdtv bandwith.So I would guess the thing to look for in the