Comments on: Building your own DVD changer and applications

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:50:21 +0000

I am a personall hardware ‘hacker’ not a professional developer. I know that most of the folks here seem to be small OEMers, and want to develop a ‘killer app’ for the windows market.

Could I suggest another tactic? Make a ‘network appliance’ that you can drive with DOS or Linux (or some other UNIX clone) and be used by any platform (Windows, Mac, or UNIX in its various flavors – especially with open protocols like SMB or NFS).

Personally I have thought of having a ‘black hole of data’, that has hard drives, and keeps itself backed up to multiple DVD-RW or DVD-RAM media (or combinations of media and other media too). Using a HSM kind of software could make the disk space (I personally like IBMs TSM that could manage a media library and does HSM too. It will even handle non-TSM media, but that is an advanced application.) TSM does work with Windows, Novell, and UNIX of many falavors – no I don’t work for IBM, but I have been a TSM admin for a number of year.

Just a thought.

By: Bill Kearney

Bill Kearney — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 17:54:21 +0000

What’s the IO call for ejecting a disc from a slot out of the device entirely? Not moving it to/from a slot to the drive mechanism, actually popping it out of the changer entirely. I don’t see it at all in the .Net object, so is there something in the window IOCTL? There’s gotta be some way to do it as MCE itself offers the ability to eject a given slot independently of anything current mounted in the active drive.

By: Alex Wetmore is always busy with something...

Alex Wetmore is always busy with something... — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 01:29:11 +0000

Bulk CD Ripping — Part One: Hardware…

This is going to be a multipart blog series on ripping CDs. I had some vacation time to burn and rather…

By: david

david — Tue, 09 May 2006 00:20:08 +0000

I’ve tried to use the MMC API, it completely sucks. It has all sorts of side effects with PowerFile’s changer, including timeouts and single PowerFile support. We developed a PowerFile Audio Ripper and found there’s no tools to just perform basic operations. So we’re finally releasing PowerExplorer, for those of you interested in just the basic functionality. A nice Explore namespace integration tool that makes it easy to load/unload/mount/unmount any of your disks. Check it out. http://www.mammothi.com/index.php?show_aux_page=12

By: Carlton Bale

Carlton Bale — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 10:37:35 +0000

I find it disappointing that Jimbo from Powerfile never responded to Brian Binnerup’s request for firmware support for his PowerFile firewire DVD changes. Looks like the firmware is available, but only if you are a large OEM customer.

By: Chris Lanier's Blog

Chris Lanier's Blog — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 04:51:02 +0000

Smaller OEMs to Get Access To New Media Center Data

More on system
builder information disclosure (Matt Goyer) | Well, it looks like my post
about…

By: The Windows Media Center Show

The Windows Media Center Show — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 12:36:46 +0000

The Windows Media Center Show #44 – CES Roundup

By: ThePodcastNetwork :: The Media Center Show » Blog Archive » The Media Center Show #44 - CES Round Up

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 12:27:15 +0000

[...] 00:50 Coming up this week 01:25 Email – Intelligent Recording 02:53 Audio problems 04:20 Keeping the PC quite 06:14 Play DivX on XBOX 360 07:03 Roll Up 2 issues – from Aaron Stebner 07:28 Microsoft Ignoring small OEMs? Chris’s post, Matt’s reply 08:53 A great guide to Cable Card 09:50 A fix for my RSS reader on the XBOX 360 10:50 Onevoice Media Center Communicator 11:41 Send my your product reviews 12:00 Win mcePhone for Skype (link to the award show) 13:32 Interview with Joe Harris of Digital Deck 15:16 Use a PC as a Server 18:55 Networked DVR 19:41 Thanks to Joe 19:54 A Message from TPN 20:45 Ian interviews Ian! 23:33 What caught my eye 26:10 Ian’s thoughts on Media Center 33:00 What is holding back Media Center 35:50 Get rid of boxes! 39:16 Networked Media 43:00 Was this the year of Media Center at CES? 46:40 Have Apple got it wrong with Frontrow? 47:23 New Vista Media Center remote 49:54 Where were the other Media Center type apps? 52:45 Thanks to Ian 52:57 Coming up next week 53:30 Catch you on XBOX live [...]

By: Jimbo

Jimbo — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:02:09 +0000

Mitch – Sorry you feel that way. As I’m sure you are aware, 2003 SP1 and XP SP2 really do a number on the FIreWire driver regardless of the device that is attached. No guarantees, but we have heard of many having good success with XP2 by using the SIIG 64-bit FireWire adapter listed on the qualified components section of our site. It seems to solve the issue regardless of whether the host is 32 or 64 bit.

I wouldn’t disagree with any of you that DVDs will soon be dead – it would be silly and naive to think otherwise. However, I do think the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD nonsense is going to extend the life a bit. Many people (myself included) are going to hold off for one to become a clear winner or a hybrid drive, whichever comes first assuming the drive is priced right.

Oh and Matt – Go Blu-ray! ;-)

Jim

By: Matt Goyer

Matt Goyer — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:10:09 +0000

Mitch, I completely agree. HD-DVD combined with managed copy and cheap storage is going to obsolete the DVD changer category in a few short years.

And of course, I disagree that Google is going to win in the living room :).