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Hardware

Adding a Hard Drive... To Your DVD Player? 185

Posted by CmdrTaco from the why-the-hell-not dept.
El Puerco Loco writes "Area 450 has several guides to adding hardware to the Sampo DVE631CF DVD player. Even if you don't own this model, the firmware for it has been ported to many, many other models (with annoyances like macrovision and region locking removed). This player had built in support for an IDE device (a flash card reader) so a standard IDE drive can be slaved to the dvd drive and the player can read from a FAT32 formatted disk. The player decodes mp3s and VCD files, so it's possible to turn it into a cheap mp3 jukebox, or store movies in vcd format. I hope that when DiVX support becomes more common in DVD players one of them will be able to support a hack like this. It would be really cool to have 100+ movies built in to my dvd player."
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Adding a Hard Drive... To Your DVD Player? More

Adding a Hard Drive... To Your DVD Player?

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  • Annoyances? (Score:5, Funny)

    by OpenSourced ( 323149 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @08:49AM (#4598907) Journal
    (with annoyances like macrovision and region locking removed)


    Annoyances? I thought they were bugs.

    • Re:Annoyances? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dizzo ( 443720 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @08:54AM (#4598952)
      Annoyances? I thought they were bugs.

      Bugs? I thought they were features.
    • I want to know how you will be able to play DVD's with the macrovision removed.

      IIRC, there needs to be a decoder in the DVD drive - the disks are already encoded.

      • Actually, it's quite the opposite. DVDs just have image data encoded, not the vertical blank area (which is where Macrovision type 1 is encoded).

        Instead there is just a "Macrovision bit" which tells whether or not the content creator has paid Macrovision their royalties for type 1 Macrovision, or type 1 and type 2 Macrovision. Your DVD player's firmware actually generates the macrovision signal ITSELF, on command. Removing Macrovision simply means adjusting your firmware so it never turns it on.

        (For the curious, type 1 Macrovision works by creating flashing bars in the vertical blank area. Your VCR's auto-gain circuit looks there to try to figure out how black black is (so it can record with the greatest dynamic range -- important for a crappy format like VHS) and sees the bars and gets convinced that white is black... If you've ever seen Macrovision at work, where the image fluctuates in brightness, it's flashing in time with the bars in the vertical blank. Those "image stabilizers" you see that remove Macrovision type 1 just strip out the vertical blank and replace it with its own. Macrovision type 2 isn't used as often. It works by mucking up the chroma signal in a composite signal. Avoiding it is as easy as not using the composite output. :-)

  • How about XviD support? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @08:49AM (#4598908)
    Xvid is taking over from divx in the release scene. Hopefully a dvd player will come out that will support xvid, vobsub, ac3, etc.

    BTW your XBoX can be modified to play divx already, and you can hack it to upgrade the hard drive or it can play off your computer's hard drive too.

  • I can see it now... (Score:5, Funny)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @08:50AM (#4598916) Journal
    Columbia House will be selling these things with a hundred movies pre-installed for a penny. All that one needs to do is buy another six over the course of three years (*).

    (*) Movie-of-the-month will automatically be downloaded unless you send back this reader service card indicating that you do not want to receive it. Tax, shipping and handling extra.
    • Columbia House will have the following business plan.

      1. To ensure people will have a reason to purchase new units, every few months, they will use those shitty OEM Maxtor drive and install it in the unit with no fans or any ventalation.

      2. For five months, the customer enjoyed watching a new movie every night until the unit over-heated and died.

      3. Customer wants their conveience and is forced to pay for a new unit. (*)

      4. Go to step 2


      (*) - The price will be determined at the purchase time of the replacement unit. do nto expect the unit to be less than $800 or some unreasonable price.

  • Makes you wonder ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JSkills ( 69686 ) <jskills@@@goofball...com> on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @08:51AM (#4598934) Homepage Journal
    If this is so easy to do, why haven't the various consumer electronics manufacturers shipped DVD players with a hard drive on board?

    It would certainly be an advantage to be one of the first to market with something like this, not to mention the hordes of geeks (like myself) who would be compelled to go out and get one immediately.

    • Re:Makes you wonder ... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You can (in Europe at least)

      http://www.panasonic-europe.com/dvdrecorder/

      Check out the BMR-HS2. Records to DVD-RAM or internal HDD.

      Retails for £450 Sterling.

    • Re:Makes you wonder ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dabadab ( 126782 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:08AM (#4599014)
      "If this is so easy to do, why haven't the various consumer electronics manufacturers shipped DVD players with a hard drive on board?"
      It might be easy to connect a hard drive as a piece of hardware but it may be troublesome to get it integrated into the system - and embedded systems are more costly to develop than applications because of the higher expectations of quality (releasing patches is not an option) and the limitations of the hardware.
      The HDD itself is also expensive - I see DVD players that cost just as much as a 80GB HDD so adding a HDD would dramatically increase the player's price.
      And in the end it is hard to justify these costs - average consumers just could not make any use of the HDD and the geeky kind (e.g. myself :) rather builds his own HTPC.
    • ...but the powers that be would lynch them. Remember, hardware manufacturers license the DVD technology (basically DeCSS), and that license can be revoked. I bet putting a HDD in a DVD player would do it. ;) Even with the combo DVD/VHS players, they make it so you can't simply do a direct record (I'm sure at the insistence of the entertainment industry). Naturally, anyone with intelligence can re-route the audio and video from output back to input, but still...
    • If this is so easy to do, why haven't the various consumer electronics manufacturers shipped DVD players with a hard drive on board?

      Um, they have. Panasonic [panasonic.com] and others have made DVD players that can record to either DVD-R or internal hard drives. They also use the hard drives for PVR like functions.

      It would certainly be an advantage to be one of the first to market with something like this, not to mention the hordes of geeks (like myself) who would be compelled to go out and get one immediately.

      Go get it [bestbuy.com] then.

  • DivX Player (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gaggme ( 594298 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @08:55AM (#4598957) Homepage Journal
    The real question is though, by the time Divx player become common, as in afforable enough for a majority of /.'rs, will blue ray dvd be the next big rave?

    With "potential" *couph vaporware couph* to contain some 15+hours of video, why not just have 10 movie ondemand on one disk. The entire series of Star Trek Movies that you can switch with a single press of a button.

    It is my beleif that we will see less and less of these players that have the capabilites of manipulation as DRM locks down in a deathgrip to hold onto its business model. Sad but true.

    • Re:DivX Player (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Patersmith ( 512340 )
      It is my beleif that we will see less and less of these players that have the capabilites of manipulation as DRM locks down in a deathgrip to hold onto its business model. Sad but true.

      saying it doesn't make it so. Look at the great products out there right now, today. Just a couple of years ago you couldn't get a DVD player that would play discs from outside your region. Today you can get players that will do burned CDs, MP3s, burned VCDs, OGG...hell, there was a review on slashdot a few days ago of a device that has a hard drive and a DVD burner.

      Consumers are telling big tech what they want, and big tech is going to build it no matter what Hollywood says unless the US enacts some strong legislation to the contrary. Want to make a difference? Write your politicians. And, above all, visit your local Sony Store (or other retailer) and tell them what features you want and tell them *why* you will never buy their regional-encoding-encumbered, macrovision-havin, no-burned-cd-playin, no-fast-forwarding-thru-the-intro player.

    • Re:DivX Player (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lumpy ( 12016 )
      why not just have 10 movie ondemand on one disk. The entire series of Star Trek Movies that you can switch with a single press of a button.

      because the movie studios will NEVER do that. right now you should be able to get 6-8 episodes of a tv series on a DVD instead we get 2... what the HELL is that? simple.... you get to pay more by buying more.. and that will never EVER change....

      they have greater profit from selling 12 single movie discs at $12.95 each instead of selling 1 discs with 12 episodes for >$120.00

      because they will never give you a deal just because it's on one disc and saved them $1.95 each movie... they want all that cash per episide/movie..

      unless you are making them yourself.. (Hell DVD burning is unreliable and flaky right now,, this "blu-ray" will be as horrible for the first 3 years also.) you will never ever see your desired all movies on one disc from any legitimate company.

      rpofits and how much money they can bilk out of you is important... why do you think SA-CD came about? another reason to make you spend all you money replacing all your audio CD's again for a small quality increase.

      • right now you should be able to get 6-8 episodes of a tv series on a DVD instead we get 2

        Bull-fucking-shit. If you are talking about half-hour (broadcast time) episodes, you almost always get at least 3 episodes on a disc, if not 4 or 5. If you are talking about hour long (again, broadcast time) there is no way in hell you are going to get 6 episodes on a single disc, let alone 8. Hell, you'd barely be able to get 8 half-hour episodes onto a disc, and if you tried, the quality would surely suffer.

    • The entire series of Star Trek Movies that you can switch with a single press of a button.

      Good thing, too, because only the even-numbered ST movies are any good.

    • Re:DivX Player (Score:3, Insightful)

      by handorf ( 29768 )
      IMHO, the true potential of Blu-Ray isn't 15+ hours of video... as others have said, there are economic reasons that won't happen.

      But 2-4 hours of full 1080p HDTV resolution at 30 fps? THAT'S a decision I can live with!

    • Re:DivX Player (Score:3, Insightful)

      by merlin_jim ( 302773 )
      I don't think we'll ever see a 10-album-on-one-disc release.

      Why? Cause I currently see companies that try to make as many discs as possible for a series, because customers equate discs to value.

      Example 1: Blue Sub No. 6. 4 22-minute episodes. It could've easily fit on 1 disc. But it was released as 4 discs, each only 22 minutes long. At $30/disc (I know you can get it cheaper; I was satisfying my impulse-shopping drive at the time) it was not cheap. As a matter of fact, I can't remember the last time I spent more than $1 / minute for any for of entertainment. Possible exception being on the phone last night. (j/k)

      You see this kind of thing all the time in anime; a series that could be compressed and sold on less discs is instead spaced out as much as possible in order to increase revenue. While, for instance, all the star treks or all the Aliens on one disc (or even an entire season of B5) would be awesome, I don't think we'll see it...
      • Example 1: Blue Sub No. 6. 4 22-minute episodes. It could've easily fit on 1 disc. But it was released as 4 discs, each only 22 minutes long.

        What? I have Blue Sub No 6. all on one disc. I've never seen it sold any other way.

        • What? I have Blue Sub No 6. all on one disc. I've never seen it sold any other way.

          Are you talking about the movie or the series? How much did you pay for that disc? Can you look up the publisher? Was this before or after Toonami paid to have the translation redone

          A quick search on Amazon shows the four discs, each one episode, currently on sale for $17.95, and "Blue Submarine No. 6: The Movie (Edited Version)" on sale for the same amount.
          • It was the "movie" but thats the same thing as the series. The movie was just the Toonami translation of the series. All four episodes are there.
      • 30$ per disc? It's SRP is 19.98, and I paid perhaps some 14$ per disc (plus 14$ for the movie).
        It was cheap for a disc, expensive per minute of content. I'm used to paying about 24$ per disc, nowadays often with 3 episodes (of ~23 minutes each). Used to be four episodes, even six, per disc, and the price per disc certainly hasn't come down..

  • Oh my god... (Score:3, Funny)

    by MagicFab ( 7234 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:03AM (#4598993) Homepage
    ...another way to get 4096 free AOL hours!

  • What kind of business could come of this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Custard ( 587661 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:05AM (#4598998) Homepage Journal
    Ok, so the RIAA/MPAA doesn't like when new technology takes away from their business, but over the decades most recording technologies actually turn out to be profitable for the music/movie industry.

    What kind of business models might be derived from DVD+LargeHardDisk players? And not just for the geeks --- this has to be useful to your average joe-can't-set-his-vcr-clock. How can we utilize this technology, so customers get cooler services, the industry still makes money, and we all get a better movie experience?

    • Re:What kind of business could come of this? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:10AM (#4599028) Homepage Journal
      The business model that comes is this. First you connect the dvd player to the internet. Then you sell movies for a resonable price. Cable TV's Pay-Per-View seems to be reasonable enough that people use it. The only difference is that when someone pays to view they save the movie and can watch it as many times as they want. DivX format would probably be optimal for this kind of service. It uses the least bandwith to transfer the file and more of them can be stored on the drive. And since it is lower quality than an actual DVD people will still go out and buy their favorite movies on optical media.

      This would be especially awesome if they have a large database of old movies that are relatively cheaper to download and if they also provide newer movies that were just in theatres, even at a slightly higher price, so you don't have to wait for DVDs to come out (even though the waiting time has greatly decreased).

      I see many people spending a dollar a day watching all the movies they always wanted to see and never did.

  • Proud owner (Score:4, Informative)

    by greatsasuke ( 315751 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:11AM (#4599031)
    I own this DVD player (the 631CF) and it was the smartest electronics purchase I've ever made. I think it cost something like $130 total from Amazon [amazon.com] and it looks like they're running a rebate special now. The player plays everything I've thrown at it, SVCD/VCD/MP3/DVD/CD, with no problems. The hard drive mod is as easy as described on area450, and it's totally worth it once you download a movie, play it, and delete it quickly and painlessly. The other major hacks, region-free and de-macrovision, are easily applied via a simple firmware patch and are also very worthwhile. I'd highly recommend this DVD player to just about anyone. Also, I'm completely unaffiliated, just a happy user.

  • nice, but where's my media server? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by splateagle ( 557203 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:14AM (#4599045)
    much like the various TiVo mods and hacks out there this seems like another step toward tape/disc-less video archiving - hurrah say I!

    Music's already gone this way, and since digital media came to video (DVD) later than to music (Audio CD) it makes sense that video is lagging somewhat in this next evoloutionary step.

    Of course the really neat thing will be when these puppies start being able to be plugged into a home network enabling centralised mhome media archives...

    incidentally I think those posters asserting that these devices can only be intended for pirates are forgetting the phenomenal amount of physical space that a decent movie collection currently occupies, not to mention the headache of keeping track of them! - my housemate's a movie buff and her room is piled to the rafters with (legit) cassettes and discs - the selection is great but it takes almost as long to find the film you want to see as it does to watch! digitising the collection when it's possible will solve both the storage and retreval headaches in one!

    personally I can't wait.
    • Of course, the MPAA believes that your housemate's solution would be to just buy all DVD's to replace her cassettes. $$$$$
    • A media server would be sweet. I'm starting to plan my server and network to do some of that sort of thing, probably just with music at first.

      But you probably won't see a commercial product soon, and when it does, it'll probably be "Designed for Microsoft Palladium(R)(TM)(c)."

  • DivX support? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:15AM (#4599053)
    This basically goes for all players, but for DivX support i surely hope they will have an easy way to upgrade the codecs. Seeing how many different ones there are now.. divx 3.x, 4 5, divx with AC3 sound codec, now the XviD stuff. DivX isnt exactly "one standard" anymore.

  • IDE. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 13Echo ( 209846 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:21AM (#4599092) Homepage Journal
    A lot of these inexpensive DVD players have standard IDE drives inside. I could pull the drive from my Apex AD-660 for instance, and pop it right into my PC if I desired to.

    These are some of the most flexible and hackable DVD players on the market, and their price point is pretty low. I love my region-free AD-660.

  • DIY (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rekulator ( 582156 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:33AM (#4599143)
    Why wait for DVD-player's to get features you need? We're building a DVD player with my friend which can do DVD, VCD, DIVX, OGG, MP3.. actually everything xine can. And it has 132X64 graphical lcd, custom joystick for buttons, remote control, hard drive, possibly net access for cddb and streaming video and audio. Most of you probably say "nay, this bloke's just another troll or something", well go check out pics [www.hut.fi]

  • Cheap Media Player (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NetJunkie ( 56134 ) <jason DOT nash AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:35AM (#4599156)
    Another good device for this is an XBox. Just chip it and put in a 120GB hard drive. You can play almost any media with the XBox Media Player software off the HD or streaming from a networked PC. It works really well and is easy to do.
    • Hey, that looks like the one my grandma was making the other day... ;)

      That's a large motherboard. Any particular reason why you're making it so big? Why not a small motherboard [viavpsd.com]? Are there certain features that warrant it? Even if you did have to use better graphics (ala video card) there are baby ATX boards out there, or smaller boards with one PCI slot.

      Can't say much more without you listing the components you're using. I'm interested in the software you'll be using (probably writing). Pop up a web page about the parts, with the pictures, and the source, and I'd bet you'd have a popular site. There might be webrings out there of other people doing the same thing, I know that the homemade car-mp3 players had a large community....

      I myself want to make a cheap laptop alternative with a small motherboard like the one I linked above. Something small that would fit in a backpack, with firewire hard drive and firewire CDR. And a large LCD built into the backpack. --all for ripping/encoding CD's while at the library.

  • DVD player, Hard Drive and Network capabilities (Score:3, Interesting)

    by McFly69 ( 603543 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:38AM (#4599175) Homepage
    I have no seen anyoen yet talk about this kind of hack in the responses. Has anyone heard of such a hack? Why you may ask I wish to have Network capabilties? So the DVD player could rip the movies directly on my network server (or HD to transfer later) and play them back from that server. Would be a sweet utility program.

    Yes I am aware that some computer PVR's already do this, but the problem is with the fact it is a computer. I take time for bootup, and the OS has the abiltiy to crash. The bootup sequence so not only be immediate but also on a more perm state; a eprom.

    Any hacks or maybe devices like this, I would be interested to hear about.

  • Xbox (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jagen ( 30952 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:40AM (#4599190) Homepage
    A chipped XBOX is the coolest thing for this. With the chip you can multi region dvd player for dvd goodness (with RGB out and 5.1 digital sound with appropriate connectors) then stick xboxmediaplayer on it and play all your divxs, vcds, mp3s and loads more, either streaming it from another machine using the built in networking, or dump them on the harddrive (built in ftp server in the evoX bios). Not forgetting that you can put bigger hard drives in it too.
  • ... is if there is something like an IDE adapter for 10/100 ethernet. I've been looking for a space-saving solution to play the videos stored on my fileserver w/o the need of a dedicated PC. Has anyone hacked something like this yet?
    • Found this link:
      http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-mac68k/1999/04/0 8/0013.html [netbsd.org]

      It's an old mailing list message, in which the author (Grant Stockly) says:

      I've already created an IDE to Ethernet AISC for a mini www server, and thought it would be fun to see if I could use the base of it as a cheap way of throwing drives onto a system.
      However, Google returns no hits for "ethernet ide asic" which is about as general as I could think to make the search term...

      Anyhow, does anyone have information about this ASIC? If so, it sounds *exactly* like what we want here.

    • is if there is something like an IDE adapter for 10/100 ethernet

      Hrm, I believe PCMCIA has a very similar--if not identical--pinout and function to ATA/IDE. But I don't know enough about it to know if you could rig a PC Card network atapter to an IDE cable or how to go about making it work if you did. A curious developer might peruse the pcmcia-core source code in the Linux kernel.

  • Google Cache (Score:4, Informative)

    by pro-mpd ( 412123 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:47AM (#4599238) Homepage
    Google cache links for various pages:
    Article link:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:xTNcBn kYSi0C: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/connectindex .htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    Add-a-HDD page:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:EwQdBO Dch-8C: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/harddrive.ht m+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    Hard Drive Preparation:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache :eIK7PXDIR3wC: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/harddrivepre p.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    Hard Drive Power:
    http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:yVisV CJbkysC: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/harddrivepow er.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

    Lots more articles on the page linked in the article, but those are the ones of interest... hmmm... I think maybe the Google cache just got Slashdotted (!!??!!) cause its loading reeeaaal slow here...

  • dvd player that plays divx encoded cd's (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ozzy_cow ( 453986 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @09:52AM (#4599273)
    what about my collection of divx CD-Rs?

    check this out: http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/021022/047810.html [yahoo.com]

    i think ill be getting one of those :-)

  • Some of the Apex DVD players use DVD-ROM drives by design. I wonder if this technique of adding/replacing the DVD-ROM drive with a hard drive will work on those also?

    If the DVD-ROM drive goes bad, just replace it with a large capacity HD with your favorite music/videos and use it as a jukebox.
  • Anyone have a source for these devices? It looks like something I'd enjoy hacking around a bit on.
  • My computer is my MP3/all-in-one player. I don't see why I care to have any additional player with hacks for such things. It can be an interesting pasttime, but I would still keep my MP3 CDs and DVDs around
  • Right now, these systems, such as Samsung's combo DVD/VCR with Memory stick (and IDE-like configuration) can only read from such devices. They lab tells me that early next year you will be able to write as well. Think about that....
  • "It would be really cool to have 100+ movies built in to my dvd player."

    Translates to:

    "I am cheap, and I would really like to borrow my friends movies and rip permanent copies without actually compensating the people who made the movie."

    Just a note to the /. editors: As long as you keep posting lines from assholes like this one, the MPAA will never have a hard time convincing anyone that they need legal protection from media piracy.

    • Re:What he really means... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by MyHair ( 589485 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @11:40AM (#4600044) Journal
      "It would be really cool to have 100+ movies built in to my dvd player."

      Translates to:

      "I am cheap, and I would really like to borrow my friends movies and rip permanent copies without actually compensating the people who made the movie."

      Do you use your remote control, or do you always go to the TV to adjust the channel and volume?

      Do you own a CD changer? Isn't it nice to have your favorite CDs at the ready?

      Have you used a DirectTV-style schedule/menu to watch TV?

      Well, now with hard drives we can have even better convenience and menu selection with our movies and music. Plus it's cool to do it this way. Why do you assume this is about piracy?
      • "Well, now with hard drives we can have even better convenience and menu selection with our movies and music. Plus it's cool to do it this way. Why do you assume this is about piracy?"

        Because I have heard the same story from people about using the Xbox modchip to store games on large hard disks; but everyone I know with a modified XBox uses it to copy rented games to the hard disk without buying the games.

    • Re:What he really means... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by cmj ( 34859 )
      Not necessarily... it could translate to "I have 100 movies on DVD and want to make the media room neater". Or how about "I have 100 movies I've taped off HBO that I'd rather not have on VHS tapes". Or maybe "I have all my home movies I'd like to put in one convenient place so I can watch them whenever I want without shuffling phyical media". In short there are any number of completely legit reasons to want this sort of device... and yes, some not so legit uses.

      The belief that everyone that wants their media in some form OTHER than what the media companies want to provide is an evil hacker is really annoying.

      I have over 100 movies on DVD, a TiVo, a huge projection TV and all the other goodies you want in a home theater. I have spent a considerable amount of money on devices and content in order to make that room what it is. When friends come over there's always a movie someone wants to see and we don't have to go to BlockBuster and deal with lines and picking through their limited selection. If I find this cool (and I do) and useful (ditto) then there are almost certainly others that would want this for legitimate uses.

      I for one will be adding one of these DVD players to my xmas list this year.

      Chris

  • RCA Makes Something Link this. (Score:3, Informative)

    by borkus ( 179118 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @11:03AM (#4599720) Homepage
    The RCA Scenium DRS7000N [thomsonscenium.com] is a combination DVR/DVD-R. The DVR uses the old Gemstar GUIDE Plus+ GOLD so you don't have to pay a subscription or have a phone line attched to the unit. The HD can store both video and MP3's. Lastly, you can burn off video to DVD rather than have to hook up a VCR. Last I checked, Circuit City had them.

    Of course, it's not as fun as rolling your own.

  • Qcast Qcast Qcast..don't bother with DVD HD (Score:5, Informative)

    by droopus ( 33472 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2002 @11:08AM (#4599760)
    At the risk of sounding like a broken record (I've posted on this software a few times and even tried to post it to /. as a story but ...oh well.)

    Qcast [broadq.com] is the media server people are wishing they had in a few dozen posts here. You don't need to add a hard drive to a DVD player...all you need is a PS2.

    Qcast is a two-disk installation. Install Disk 1 on your PC, loaded up with movies and tunes (mpeg1,2,4, xvid, divx, svcd, vcd, mp3.) Then load Disk 2 on networked PS2 (cheaper than Sampo DVE631CF and hard drive) and bingo! You have a spiffy Flash interface on the PS2 for all your PC-based content, which then streams over your network on demand.

    No taking apart DVD players..if you need more space, add an IDE or Firewire drive to your PC in about five minutes.

    And even better...you can use multiple PS2s to stream different content from the same PC all over the house. Not only that but you can point the PS2 to multiple drives. This blows away a HD-equipped DVD player, since the PS2 plays DVDs natively anyway.

    Disclaimer: I neither work for, nor have any financial interest in Qcast. I just think it's cool as shit and no one knows about it. Well you do now.
  • What I really really want to see is a hack to make the component video outputs VGA compatible. When this is possible I can upgrade my old Samsung which has this feature, but otherwise is very buggy and slow. I use it with an Electrohome projector and a wonderful electronic switcher that handles SVGA, NTSC, RGB (including VGA from a PC so I can play back movie files or watch XawTV) but not that wacko YCbCr stuff. Why can't they just use RGB for TVs anyway, it's much more natural, one channel for each electron gun in a conventional CRT...

  • Why ??? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I did it a month ago.

    Why?

    Already had the Apex AD-600 from that CC thing back on Jan. 2000.

    Had an extra 20gb.

    $25 and a little solder to upgrade my EPROM to a Flash ROM.

    Now I have all my CD's (ripped @ 160) and all jpegs from my digital camera (about 5000), at my fingertips.

    Same remote control I use for the TV, VCR and cable + instant boot.

    I highly recommend this to everyone with minimal electronics skills; this is by far the best toy I've got on my living room (don't have a PVR).

    Many of you might have a HD lying around and you might be able to find a firmware compatible DVD player for cheap (Under $80).
  • Dont they already make these? They are called "COMPUTERS" and they can watch dvd's and save divx to HD and play games also. If you want to watch on a big screen tv, I would recommend a Radeon 8500 All in wonder Pro with TV In/Out along with something from Creative Labs to hook into your stereo system. Works wonders for parties.

    Now just to hit previwe..

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