My DVDs and the C200, R200..
I received an email the other day asking about the PowerFile C200 and whether or not it works with My DVDs. In short, I’m fairly certain it doesn’t.
Why? While powerfil.sys, the inbox driver which provides support for PowerFile changers, supports the C200, we never tested the C200 with either powerfil.sys or with My DVDs. Instead, we built the My DVDs feature using custom PowerFile R200DL units. These units had only one drive and by the time we were done development changes had been made to the firmware of not just the changer but also the drive. We in fact had to swap out the drives of the units with different ones. I also don’t know if the final firmware we were testing against has ever been publicly released by PowerFile, so if you have a R200DL, it likely will not work with My DVDs. But back to the drive issue, it’s because we only built and tested against single drive units that it is a known issue that we do not have code that can reliably determine which drive to use in a two drive unit.
It’s also worth pointing out that PowerFile’s software uses a custom driver, and not powerfil.sys, which we use. Which is why the C200 and R200 may appear to work identically when tested against PowerFile’s software, but differ when tested against ours.
For the best My DVDs experience I really recommend purchasing a Sony XL1 system. It has the changer that has the latest firmware for both the changer and drive, and has been thoroughly tested by both Sony and Microsoft.
If I were configuring a system from scratch, I’d take your advice on the XL1. Even a long lag time is better than leaving the couch to find a DVD! $2300 is a darn good price for a decent MCE machine AND a changer.
However, I’ve had a C200 for five years, and it’s given good service. I’m working with Powerfile tech support on exactly this issue now. We’ll see if they can come up with a firmware upgrade that will allow at least one drive to work with MCE. Off the shelf, it doesn’t. I’ll post an update here when I have one.
Interestingly, when I first attached the C200 to my MCE system and inserted a DVD, MCE DID recognize the event, load the disk into Drive 1, and successfully catalog it. Thereafter, while I was able to play that initial disk, MCE couldn’t eject it, and didn’t recognize the insertion of any new disks.
So now I have Return of the King permanently mounted in Drive 1. MCE can play it, since XP sees it as just another DVD drive, but it’s even less functional than the internal DVD tray, since it can’t be removed without opening the box! Not exactly great functionality for a $2000 piece of equipment.
It wouldn’t be so bad, except that SP2 breaks the default changer controller software that Powerfile provided with the C200. Since I upgraded the original system when I put it on the MCE system, I now can’t use it anywhere. I know, should have checked first…
The issue with MCE not supporting older C200 is not the PowerFile’s issue, in fact its MCE. MCE’s version of the PowerFil.sys driver has hardcoded to only work with specific devices. You’ll never be able to get this to work without Microsoft fixing this issue. You could try to use PowerExplorer, i’m not 100% sure it will work, but you can try the demo.
The issue is not an MCE one. MCE will work with any MediumChanger device.
Yes, powerfil.sys only supports a few specific devices: C200, R200, Sony XL1. I’m not an expert on the powerfil.sys code path but from reading through emails the dvd changers that powerfil.sys supports all use the same code path. That said, we (MCE) only have tested with the R200 and Sony XL1. I also know that many changes were required to powerfil.sys to get it to work with those devices (we were sending the wrong commands and had some size errors on structures). There were also changes to the firmware on the device which is why I caution that this won’t work with C200 and R200’s that are out there in the wild. What changes? The changes were primarily around reporting drive capabilities and error handling on incorrectly inserted DVDs. It looks like all the basic funcionality for those devices should work if you have the new powerfil.sys included with Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2, but no promises since we never tested the scenario of old devices with old firmware with MCE.
But with Sony standalone changers at $399 I don’t know why someone with a C200 wouldn’t go buy a supported and tested device :).
I am interested in a media changer to manage and access my cd/dvd archives via my MAC network. For my purposes is there a difference between thc Powerfile C200 and the Sony VGP-XL1B2? What are your recommendations?
Thanks