Which digital media player plays full ripped DVD's ?

The Asus O!Play media player will work fine with the native DVD format (VOB) files. However, this product still requires some firmware mods to be "smooth".

Right now it will see your network shares just fine and will bring up the DVD and the DVD menu just fine but it doesn't have any way to get back to the menu once you have started playing. Once you start, you either have to watch or fast forward your way thru it - no option to just jump back to the DVD menu.

The other annoyance with this player is that there is no way to create shortcuts to particular folders on a network share. The best you can currently do is to create a shortcut to a "server" and then you have to browse the shares on that server and the folders in that share. They keep promising to fix this but in the last 3 firmware updates, they still haven't managed.

Other than that, it is a simple low powered device, it plays almost everything and the picture quality is very good.

Note: the Popcorn Hour and Tivx players will both also play the ripped DVD's as well but these are a lot more money.

rantech wrote:
.. Note: the Popcorn Hour and Tivx players will both also play the ripped DVD's as well but these are a lot more money.

http://www.popbox.com/#/everything I am going to wait and see how this one goes... only about $130 (expected)

I've setup a test system on my old laptop running XBMC and Windows file sharing while I consider ripping my DVD library and ordering a ReadyNAS Ultra. I've been able to stream full DVD's (one folder with many *.VOB files) in my house over 802.11g to a 1st gen AppleTV running XBMC. The quality is great, and it takes about 7 Mbps of bandwidth. It is slightly cumbersome to navigate to the DVD since I haven't yet gotten the XBMC library to recognize my test DVD's. There is a slight lag (a few seconds) when starting the DVD, but it is much faster than my slow DVD player. Fast forwarding, rewinding, and skipping chapters seems fine.

I also setup Air Video on my wife's new MacBook (the old Windows laptop isn't fast enough) and have streamed .VOB files to my iPhone over WLAN and 3G. The quality at 384 Kbps is quite good. The free iPhone app only shows some files, so I can't evaluate the full DVD functionality. I'm concerned it may not support the menu navigation and special features.

Can I assume from the replies in this thread that DLNA TV's, DVD players, and other simple players may not handle full DVD navigation?

I would like to also get my Wii playing full DVD's and probably buy an XBox too.

Xtreamer (sidewinder)
AC-Ryan-Playon HD (mini)
Asus-o!Play-HDP-R1

http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/260439/x ... l#tab:info
http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/249702/a ... l#tab:info
http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/243292/a ... l#tab:info

atoner wrote:
Can I assume from the replies in this thread that DLNA TV's, DVD players, and other simple players may not handle full DVD navigation?

that is a correct assumption. Very few will play dvd+menus over the network.

I would like to also get my Wii playing full DVD's and probably buy an XBox too.

If your wii is jailbroke, I think there is a few dvd player homebrew apps, but I don't know if any work over the network.

xbox360 does not support playing dvds+menus over the network, from what I have seen.

TeknoJnky wrote:

atoner wrote: Can I assume from the replies in this thread that DLNA TV's, DVD players, and other simple players may not handle full DVD navigation? that is a correct assumption. Very few will play dvd+menus over the network. I would like to also get my Wii playing full DVD's and probably buy an XBox too. If your wii is jailbroke, I think there is a few dvd player homebrew apps, but I don't know if any work over the network. xbox360 does not support playing dvds+menus over the network, from what I have seen.

Thanks for the reply. I have XBMC running on my Apple TV and can play full DVD's with menus - wouldn't XBMC on an XBox behave the same?

on the first gen xbox, yes, I have 2 of them just for that purpose.

on the 360 no.

Have you looked at the WD Live TV?
It wont play a DVD if you point it at the dvd folders (it will only allow you to play the vob files) but if you rip the dvd to a .ISO file it will play that including all the menu navigation.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm looking into this again.

I updated Boxee and XBMC on my 1st generation Apple TV. They at least work well enough now to scan my library and play some movies properly over the network. It is just enough for me to confirm how nice this would be if I could watch all of my movies without using physical media. It is also enough to remind me how frustrating this is. I'm still running into problems with audio and DVD menus.

I'm going to try ISO images instead of VOB files. Hopefully I can get around to this today.

aTV Flash claims they can handle VOB files and DVD menus on the 1st gen Apple TV, however the price is $40. At that point I'm thinking about new hardware since the 1st generation Apple TV seems a bit limited. They $40 is supposedly refundable if I'm not happy. I may give it a shot. It looks like new hardware would run $50-200 depending on model. I know NetGear has a few offerings.

I tried the Wii Homebrew channel and a few media players on it. Little/no success. There's a trend of folks claiming their players can do things, but then I find the implementation and support leaves very much to be desired. I guess that's what I get for $0.

For one room, I'm looking to buy a Blu-Ray player and either use the Apple TV or buy a network receiver. In another room I'm looking to use the Wii or perhaps get new hardware. It'd be great if something like the PS3 could do both functions, but from what I read it seems like there could be some issues with "jailbreaking" and updates from Sony.

xbmc should handle both iso and vob files, you should not ever need to pay for xbmc, and there is no need for atv flash to jailbreak the atv 1.