Is it possible to play a DVD movie from a drive on a networked computer?

[RaiderJ]

What I would like to do is have a DVD movie in one computer's DVD drive, and be able to play that movie from another computer on the network. Is this possible? I've tried mapping the drives, but all it does it treat it like a data drive, and none of my program will play the move.

Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[MetroRider]

what program are you using to watch the DVD's with? personally, i use PowerDVD 4.0, and with it, you can open up files which are located on the network, so you may want to give that a shot.

 

[RaiderJ]

That sort of works... but I can't seem to get any of the move .vob files to open up to play. Any other ideas?

 

[mrbass]

of course it works
http://www.doom9.org/mpg/hd-playback.htm

 

[RaiderJ]

mrbass, that works for playing a DVD ripped to a hard drive, but I want to play a DVD movie from a networked DVD drive. This isn't quite what I had in mind

 

[mrbass]

ok sorry didn't read very well. My theory is it will work only on a gigabit ethernet though. I just tried it at work on a 100Mbps/network and was able to get sound and a few still frames to show up with windvd. DVD data rate chokes the pipe. This testing was done with two AMD 1600+ 256MB with brand new liteon dvd drives with a switched network. I used windvd and choose to add all the vob files.

ok not sure why but it works 100% perfect when ripped to the harddrive like you said. I guess this has to do with the fact the hd can pump at data as fast as needed while all DVD-ROMs reading speed (while playing a DVD) are locked at 1X. The liteon I have are 16X and I can usually rip around 8,000-10,000 but while playing back a DVD the speed is locked. IGNORE my stupid theory above.

 

[RaiderJ]

that was my guess as well. The video/audio I did see looked quite garbled, and none too good, even over a direct connection between 2 computers with a cat5 crossover cable. oh well, I appreciate the help! Maybe once I have a gigabit ethernet connection I can give it a shot!

Thanks!

 

[manly]

This question was recently discussed.

 

[mrbass]

gigabit won't help either. Ok I read that thread...that citrix will NOT work ...neither will radmin.com work since neithe of them support hardware accelerated playback. Same reason you can hit print-screen and get a black screen for your video area of you software dvd player.

The only way this will ever happen is if someone firmware hacks the DVD-ROM player to play at a faster rate than 1X which none can currently do. Many can rip at 16X, etc. but that's not the same as in play mode. Bottomline ....have 7GB or so free on the hd and spend the ten minutes or so to rip to the hd. Then play the vobs over the network via the hd as many currently do just fine. It even work over a 10Mbps network I'm sure.