Possible to watch a DVD over a network?

[MaxDSP]

on a 100 mbps network, would this be possible? The network would be at like 12.5 MB/s at maximum efficiency but under real wolrd conditions, itd be a lot less. would it be enough?

 

[ai42]

Most likely not as DVDs if I'm not mistaken run around 8-12mb a second. And actually hitting your theoretical max speed of your network is pretty much impossible.

 

[ozone13]

Originally posted by: ai42
Most likely not as DVDs if I'm not mistaken run around 8-12mb a second. And actually hitting your theoretical max speed of your network is pretty much impossible.

I take it you mean 8-12MB? Yes, it will more than likely be choppy, unless there is absolutely no other traffic on your network. I watch movies on one computer while the dvd player is on another, but that is because they are connected via firewire (50MB/sec).

 

[Maverick]

if there was some way to buffer it and stream it in you might be able to do it. But I don't think the software exists to do it. The copyright police probably keep something like it from existing.

 

[Budman]

I say it should work,give it a try & let us know.

 

[glugglug]

Bandwidth needed to watch DVD ~= 0.5 MB/s.

So technically you could even do it on a 10Mbps network.

In fact, you can even watch the videos in a terminal services window, rather than transferring the compressed mpegs across.

 

[Pariah]

It will work fine, DVD throughput at its peak is under 1MB/s.

 

[Mavrick007]

I've watched mpegs on an old slow k62 system over a 10megabit network and it came out fine so I'm sure that there wouldn't be any problem with trying to watch a dvd on a different system over a 100Megabit network.

 

[bocamojo]

Bandwidth wise, it is very feasible to watch DVDs, even over a 10MB network. I have done it. In fact, it only used between 15-25% of network bandwidth over this 10MB network. I read a PCWorld article that suggested as much as 4.7MB to 9MB / sec bandwidth would be required to watch DVDs, but with a 100MB pipe, you should not have any problems. The main problem you will run up against is copyright protection on DVDs. I have over 100 DVDs, and the only one I could watch over the network was the original release of Highlander (light brown cover). It was not copy protected. If you really want to do this, you'll probably have to rip the DVD and use a program to remove copyright protection, before sharing out over the network. Also, there is a program out there called Virtual CD 4, that claims it can make images of CD's and DVDs, which can be stored on a network server and accessed from a workstation on the network... There is another program out there for Linux, that can stream DVDs over the network, although I can't remember what it is called.

 

[ozone13]

Originally posted by: bocamojo
Bandwidth wise, it is very feasible to watch DVDs, even over a 10MB network. I have done it. In fact, it only used between 15-25% of network bandwidth over this 10MB network. I read a PCWorld article that suggested as much as 4.7MB to 9MB / sec bandwidth would be required to watch DVDs, but with a 100MB pipe, you should not have any problems. The main problem you will run up against is copyright protection on DVDs. I have over 100 DVDs, and the only one I could watch over the network was the original release of Highlander (light brown cover). It was not copy protected. If you really want to do this, you'll probably have to rip the DVD and use a program to remove copyright protection, before sharing out over the network. Also, there is a program out there called Virtual CD 4, that claims it can make images of CD's and DVDs, which can be stored on a network server and accessed from a workstation on the network... There is another program out there for Linux, that can stream DVDs over the network, although I can't remember what it is called.

First of all, please be careful saying a 10MB or 100MB pipe....its 10mb = 1.25MB/sec & 100mb = 12MB/sec.

Second, yes I have watch DVDs over 100mb connection, but it can be choppy. Saying this, that PCWorld ariticle you read saying 4.7MB to 9MB/sec is 50%-100% of network bandwidth (there is always overhead in ethernet, so you never actually reach 12MB/sec).

 

[bocamojo]

Ok, I found out the name of the product that I was referring to earlier. It's "VideoLAN". It's freeware, and runs on linux/windows, etc. Here's the link:


http://www.videolan.org/

 

[psy44]

It is possible, on the last day of school, we got to watch Spy kids in Spanish at the language lab, there was no choppiness at all it was very smooth, I'm not sure what program was used except that on the screen their was an ATI symbol. Hope that helps