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Playing a DVD over my network?

G

Gerbil333

Diamond Member
I have four computers on my 10/100mbps LAN: An XP 1600+ desktop, an XP 1700+ desktop, an XP 2000+ desktop, and a crappy laptop.

The XP 1700+ nForce 2 system has a Lite On 16x DVD-ROM, and my other desktops have CD-RW's. All drives on my computers are shared, and the only thing I can't do is watch a DVD in the 1700+ system from another computer. I'm using Windows XP Pro on all computers.

Is it possible?
 
Change the subscriber link to forums.anandtech.com and the link will work.

Also, as has already been stated, you can stream DVDs over a 100Mbit network. I've never done it with a live DVD in the drive, but I have done it with an ISO of a DVD that I made with WinISO. It took around 70Mbps I think but it was a long time ago. I had no problems...This was on a pretty fast P4 with a normal 7200RPM drive.

Does it work but play choppy or does it not work at all?

Gaidin
 
Originally posted by: Gerbil333
The bandwidth isn't the problem. The problem is that it doesn't play at all. Try it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it's the copyprotection coming to bite you in the butt.

Either rip it to HD first, or watch them on the DVD-equipped rig.

- M4H
 
VideoLan has software designed specifically for streaming media across a high-bandwidth network to other clients. I've tried it here and the client software doesn't need a whole lot of power to run properly. Streaming box was a 1.2GHz Thunderbird running Slackware 8.1, client box was an Athlon 950 running Windows XP Pro. I dunno how Windows would handle being the streaming server in this case, but when I tried it in Win98SE, it was crappy and stuttering, which could have been a driver issue or something, but since it worked in Slack, I didn't care at the time. 🙂

Edit: Oh yeah, I streamed Bedazzled and X-Men DVDs across the network.
 
Thanks 🙂 That worked! However, it wasn't smooth....that's pretty sad:

SERVER:
Athlon XP 1700+
MSI K7N2G-L (nForce 2 IGP)
2x Crucial 256mb PC2100 (512mb total in dual channel)
Lite-On 16x DVD-ROM
Integrated 100mbps NIC
Windows XP Pro

CLIENT:
Athlon XP 2000+
MSI K7N2-L (nForce 2)
2x Kingston 256mb HyperX PC3000 (512mb in dual channel)
3Com 10/100mbps NIC
Windows XP Pro

They're on a Netgear RT314 100mbps router/switch. Bandwidth should be no problem.
 
That's really weird, unless perhaps it's a property of VLC's Windows binaries, since my server was running on Linux. Theoretically half the overall hardware streamed it just fine, heh. I wonder if perhaps it's an issue that could be fixed by tweaking Windows, or if it's a network issue. I tried mine both using a cat5e crossover cable, and plugging the two machines into a 10/100mbps hub (hub, not switch) and it was very nice.

Try a crossover and see if that works (if that's practical), and if not, it may just be that VLC runs better on Linux than on Windows.
 
It's not a network issue...I commonly transfer several gb's of data. I copied and pasted my entire collection of MP3's (roughly 3.5gb's) from this computer to the one that was hosting the DVD yesterday, and it only took a few minutes (about 4-7).
 
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