Advantages of firewire changers
I’ve received a lot of feedback on Media Center not supporting serial changers. While I sympathize with those wanting serial control because they’re currently cheaper, I believe that a firewire solution is superior. Why?
- They can store any type of optical disc in the changer (music CD, data DVDs with pictures/videos/music, video game DVDs) and the software that we or third parties build can then browse the changer and play back the DVDs as appropriate.
- No input switching is required when video playback begins
- RS-232 is dead. Many PC manufacturers are dropping support for it.
That said, I hope that the current DVD changer manufacturers work at cost reducing their existing offerings and I hope that more manufacturers enter the space in order to drive cost down through competition.
Comments(4)
Matt, I don’t think any of us disagrees on this, but as I see it DVD changers in general is just as dead compared to harddrive storage that RS-232 is to firewire.
Sure, it may not be legal (and law is still unclear here, and haven’t been tested in court), but as it is now, NAS storage is cheaper pr. disc than these changers and way more accessible.
Prices are too high on these, that is a fact, perhaps a very serious price drop would allow these changers a year or two.
I had plans for third party software for these, and I previously made clear why I have not done that, but it seems to me that other third parties also don’t find these units interesting, properly due to the amount of users having them?
Regards,
Brian Binnerup
I agree. DVD changers are just going to bridge the gap before we get cheap NAS and legal managed copy of DVDs.
According to
http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/Old_news/january06.htm
“…the managed copy feature, they admitted that it’s a feature that has to be explicitly authorized by the content owner and that those could even charge for it. “
Nicholson: I too haven’t been able to fully figure out this managed copy thing, as I understand it, there are differences with how Blue-Ray would do this, and how HD-DVD’s would do it.
Fact is that changers are a big, ugly, slow and not very user friendly:
- It takes some time for them to change the disc.
- They are noisy if they are located in your livingroom.
- If the livingroom is playing a DVD that is in the changer, another room in the house cannot play one of the other 199 DVD’s that are in the changer at the same time.
As I see it, there are only two downsides on harddrives as it is now, and these are:
- Fairly expansive, but at the outragous prices of these DVD changers it is actually cheaper anyway.
- It isen’t legal to copy DVD’s, and how managed copy will work are not clear as I see it. (The law on the ripped DVD’s are also unclear, and haven’t been testet in court).
The ONLY reason that changers even have a life is that Hollywood does not care about their customers, and rather would implement unresonable protection than develop a proper way of doing it. When the continue to do these unresonable protections, then the entire would tries even harder to brake it.
I hope that the Kaleidescape trial will cast some light on this – they did everything they should, paied the license scheme, made a closed system ect., and still their are taken to court. My guess though is that the Hollywood company ends up setteling this, so that we do not get our conclusion.
Regards,
Brian Binnerup