On 2011-12-17, Stroller <strol...@stellar.eclipse.co.uk> wrote: > > On 17 December 2011, at 20:39, Grant Edwards wrote: >> On 2011-12-17, David Haller <gen...@dhaller.de> wrote: >> >>>> Store these on a Samba share, then use something like the PlayOn HD >>>> Mini or the Western Digital TV Live! to watch them on your big screen >>>> TV. >>>> >>>> These players allow you to treat .iso files on the network just as if >>>> they were actual DVDs and give you full access to the menus and extra >>>> features. >>> >>> At least mplayer, vlc and xine will also happily play a directory, be >>> it a mounted DVD, a mounted image or just a rip as made by dvdbackup >>> and others (e.g. lxdvdrip). >> >> The SageTv set-top box will happily play a DVD directory also (in >> addition to playing TV shows recorded by the SageTv DVR server >> software). > > Practically all players will do this, I think, but I much prefer having the > DVD as a single file, to move and copy and store. > > A directory containing a a VIDEO_TS and a load of files just seems a > lot more fragile to me. Were you to accidentally delete one of the > VOB files, there would be no way to tell the difference from looking > at the outside of the video's folder.
True, but that's never happened. ISO images work fine, but the extra "layer of indirection" is an inefficiency that irritates the engineer in me. >> ? I absolutely dread going to >> back to MythTv with a big, hot, noisy PC sitting next to my TV? > > I bought an eMachines 1401 recently - it's not as perfectly silent as > the PlayOn (which is fanless), but it's *very* close. It's an AMD > atom-equivalent, dual-core, mini desktop PC, about 7" on a side and > maybe 1" thick. Right now, powered on with no load just to judge it > for this conversation, I can hear it if my ear is a foot away from > it, but not 2 or 3 feet away, not against the normal background noise > in my apartment (clock ticking in the kitchen and so on). Right now > its hard-drive is louder than its fan (which is shifting so little > air that I can barely feel it, even putting my hand an inch from the > grille). I think that if you load it up with an emerge then the fan > will ramp up a bit, but I doubt if you'd notice it when watching a > movie. There are some platforms that are getting pretty decent, but they still cost 5X as much as a set-top-box box, draw 10X as much power, and are about 4X larger. They're probably approaching "tolerable", but compared to something like a Roku or SageTv box, they're still an embarassment. I used a Mac Mini for a while as a MythTv frontend, and it was quiet enough that it wasn't noticable unless the room was dead silent. It would have been OK if I had been able to get DVI output working. -- Grant
