Playing DVD's From Hard Drive

[Orbitz]

Has anyone tried playing DVD's (i.e. that have been ripped using DVD Shrink ) from a 4200rpm hard drive on an X40? I am just curious if there are performance issues playing them this way versus from a dvd drive. Also, what about playing them back on an X40 via a USB 2.0 drive. Any reason this should not also work well?

[beerak]

Has anyone tried playing DVD's (i.e. that have been ripped using DVD Shrink ) from a 4200rpm hard drive on an X40? I am just curious if there are performance issues playing them this way versus from a dvd drive. Also, what about playing them back on an X40 via a USB 2.0 drive. Any reason this should not also work well?

There is no problem, 4200rpm HDD is still fast enough. Much faster than any DVD drive.

[JimMorris]

Has anyone tried playing DVD's (i.e. that have been ripped using DVD Shrink ) from a 4200rpm hard drive on an X40? I am just curious if there are performance issues playing them this way versus from a dvd drive. Also, what about playing them back on an X40 via a USB 2.0 drive. Any reason this should not also work well?

? Just curious---What is "DVD Shrink" ?

Jim

[Orbitz]

DVD Shrink allows you to rip a DVD to your harddrive...it also allows you to strip out certian sections if you like, for example, since I keep copies of all my DVD's on my computer to play back throughout my house (using media extenders) I will usually just copy the main title..this allows me to eliminate all fo the menu items, extra scenes, extra languages etc. This usually will cut down the storage size to about 4 - 5 GB's as opposed to 7ish for most current discs.

In addition, when you copy the portions of the disk you want, you can choose to do so with no compression (this is how I store the main copy on my desk top machine) or with compression....usually for playback on my laptop I can accept about 40% compression or so without it really affecting picture quality toooo much. The advantage, of course, is that copies I put on my laptop to view on the road are only 2.5 - 3 GB's each.

DVD Shrink is very easy to use btw. You can find more information about it at : http://www.dvdshrink.org/what.html or get very detailed info about it and other tools at www.doom9.org (excellent site if you are into DVD type "stuff".)

[taob]

Orbitz,

There is absolutely no issue! I brought along my entire "24" season 2 DVD collection with me to Europe last year while on vacation. The ISO images (mounted via DaemonTools) played without a problem whether they were on the X40's internal drive or on my external USB2 drive.

[Orbitz]

Thanks everyone for the replies...this was my only "little" nagging question about jumping to the X4 series...I think I can tolerate the slowish boot times by making use of hibernate etc. For my activities, I think running DVD's from the HD is about the most HD intensive thing I do on the road.

[taob]

Oh, I just thought of something... depending on how much your video player buffers the data, you may want to turn off Active Protection (the hard drive anti-shock thing) while you are watching the movie. I was watching an episode of "24" while in a moving train, and sometimes there would be enough of a sway to park the drive heads, causing a short interruption in the video.

Of course, if you're just watching a movie in bed or something, then you need not worry about this.

[JHEM]

There's a setting in the Active Protection System that allows it to ignore minor transient jiggles, such as will occor in a car, on a plane or train, etc.

Enabling it smooths out movie playback from HD.

Regards,

James

[taob]

James,

Yeah, I have that enabled on mine, I still find that the more pronounced swaying that a train car randomly experiences might trip the APS anyway. It might only happen once every few minutes, but it is still annoying.