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From: C. on 10 Dec 2008 08:13
Hi all,

The screen on my laptop has died. Its now rather long in the tooth, so
getting it repaired is probably not financially viable.

Rather than go out and buy a new laptop, I am rather tempted by the
range of netbooks available - from the point of view of portability
and battery life. The only caveat is that one of the main uses for
this will be for playing DVDs, and possibly for for viewing digital
TV. This is further complicated by the fact that its predominantly my
young daughter who will be watching DVDs.

I suppose I could buy a USB DVD drive or recommission the old laptop
as a media server - but if I go down the latter route, how do I go
about getting the video from the server to the netbook (without the
overhead of ripping the DVD).

Anybody got any experiences in this kind of setup they'd like to
share? Pointers?

TIA

C.
From: Will Kemp on 10 Dec 2008 09:23
C. wrote:

> I suppose I could buy a USB DVD drive or recommission the old laptop
> as a media server - but if I go down the latter route, how do I go
> about getting the video from the server to the netbook (without the
> overhead of ripping the DVD).

DVDs have a normal filesystem on them, you can mount them like a data
DVD or CD and then you could share the mountpoint using samba or NFS.
Samba's probably easier!

It should be fairly trivial to set up so that the DVD auto mounts when
inserted and the samba share comes up on boot.

Getting video player software to play a "soft" DVD can be a bit of a
challenge, depending on which player it is, though. It's a pain with
xine, as far as i can remember, easier with mplayer (everything seems
easier with mplayer!), and possibly easiest with vlc - but it's been a
while since i did it and i haven't got one handy to check, so i can't
say for sure.


--
http://NovemberEchoRomeoDelta.com
From: Theo Markettos on 10 Dec 2008 10:00
C. <colin.mckinnon(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose I could buy a USB DVD drive or recommission the old laptop
> as a media server - but if I go down the latter route, how do I go
> about getting the video from the server to the netbook (without the
> overhead of ripping the DVD).

vlc will do this, and it's not very difficult. You just put a DVD in the
drive on the server, and tell vlc to stream data to the machine you're
watching on (one command, or some clicky options). Though I found it a bit
touch-and-go whether it'll work without breaking up on 10Mbit ethernet, so
you probably ought to make sure your network is up to scratch.

Theo
From: Ian Rawlings on 10 Dec 2008 10:10
On 2008-12-10, C. <colin.mckinnon(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Anybody got any experiences in this kind of setup they'd like to
> share? Pointers?

All I have to mention is that USB DVD writers, at least the ones I've
tried, generally won't accept power from USB or if they do, they want
to be plugged into two USB ports at once, one for data and the other
for extra power. I don't know if that applies to just readers though.
Basically just watch out for that and make sure it's not going to be
an issue.

--
Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire!
http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: Frank Peelo on 10 Dec 2008 11:51
C. wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The screen on my laptop has died. Its now rather long in the tooth, so
> getting it repaired is probably not financially viable.
>
> Rather than go out and buy a new laptop, I am rather tempted by the
> range of netbooks available - from the point of view of portability
> and battery life. The only caveat is that one of the main uses for
> this will be for playing DVDs, and possibly for for viewing digital
> TV. This is further complicated by the fact that its predominantly my
> young daughter who will be watching DVDs.

Get a standalone DVD player. Argos have a pink one for 90 Euro.

I have a young daughter who uses my PC for playing DVDs. It's a
nuisance. I got her one of the Argos machines, and was able to use my PC
again. Until she dropped the DVD player down the stairs. If you let a
young daughter use your netbook, you risk that happening with your
machine too.

Frank
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