Hello..

I have several DVD movies in ISO format that I have as backups for my own family movies.

I would like to watch them using an UPnP server, but I haven't found any that can recognize the DVD menu system with sub's and so.

Doers anyone know of any server software?

Many thanks

/Jonas

I personally believe there is a tremendous need for this sort of software.

I know a lot of avid home-theater people who are moving their DVD changers to hard-drive libraries/archives, and of those people the majority prefer the .ISO format (for the obvious reason that it's much simple, cleaner, and easier to manage/catalog, enables easy push back to original disk, preserves the menu structure of the DVD, etc).

While this is the most popular format for watching DVD videos on a Media Gateway, and a uPnP is the most universal method for getting content to a Media Gateway, it goes without saying that *browsing* and *playing* .ISO's should be at the top of the feature list.

Despite that, I have yet to find a uPnP Server that supports DVD .ISO's. I encourage others who stumble on this thread to let us know your comments. Perhaps a uPnP Server author will eventually consider this functionality.

I personally could guarantee at least two dozen licenses, immediately purchased, at $200 per, for a professional product offering this type of functionality in a J. River / Media Jukebox style configuration. Particularly if it integrates MULTI-ZONE capabilityes (being able to pick from/direct to various soundcard outs).

Thanks in advance to others who chime in about this feature!

I agree that the demand is big. I do however beleive that the problem is very difficult to solve.
To just read an ISO file is no problem for a server. A user could probably do a script that mounts all ISO files using daemon tools or similar.

The problem lies in the fact that it is the client that must read and parse the IFO file (The file that contains all info regarding menus, subtitles etc.) and the video streams.

As I understand it a server that would at least handle subtitle selection would have to:
- read the IFO
- somehow present different subtitle choices to the client
- and when a certain VOB/title/etc is requested together with a certain subtitle language it would have to render it into the video stream itself....
Not an easy task.

For audio selection it would have to read the audio stream and then "move it" (?) or reencode it into the video stream....

Anyone who has different or more info and knowledge?

It would most certainly be a nice feature though...
/J

I am also seeking a solution like this, and am very new to the field.

VLC looks like it can do this, but doesn't seem very automated. Like you have to stream the dvd from the server then play it where you want. I pictured more of a browser like winamp that would just grab ISO's and play them.

Mplayer looks like the most promising.

It seems like the easiest way to get this done (I'm a CS major so I'm thinking about this more programmatic then some other people might) is have a browser that just streams the RAW ISO over the network.

You could set up a system where your master server has a DVD drive (yay), you put a disc in and it auto rips the ISO. It also fetches info from imdb.com and adds it along with the filename to a database running on the server.

The client either uses a web interface (php or whatever) or uses something like mythTV (for remote controlled goodness) to browse the database (searchable and everything). Then (assuming the client is a linux box) to play a file you download(web interface)/execute a shell script which mounts the ISO file on the local file system (so mplayer can see it like a DVD (or maybe the mount isn't needed, depending on what kind of faking mplayer needs) ) and mplayer can play it.

The other way around it is to not have ISOs but rip the raw data from the DVD (like a DeCSS) into the VIEDO_TS folders etc. and organize them like:

Blues Brothers
---- VIDEO_TS
---- .....
Ocean's 11
---- etc....

I'm not sure how feasible that is, but I'm planning on building a file server in the fall and I might exercise this idea because it's hard to find solutions like this :/.

Brian


Looks like MythTV can do what we want, but doesn't have menu's/special features support. I'll keep looking though.

http://www.mythtv.org/docs/mythtv-HOWTO-20.html




Yes it can, see this thread:

http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/2005-August/100236.html

I plan on executing that along with streaming live TV to other computers in our apartment. The server will run Gentoo Software RAID 5 with SMB shares, ftp stuff, and other cool gadgets.

Yes, well I thought the whole purpose was to not have a PC as client-viewer, but rather an existing media player, like the ones from Snazio, Tvix, KiSS etc.

Otherwise I beleive there are plenty of already existing solutions. Except for the auto-rip part perhaps....

Sorry, I didn't understand that was the intent. Rusten was talking licenses, so I was thinking software. And since all you have to do is play back an ISO, the clients should be able to be quite thin. That's just my take on it.

Either way by simply adding mythTV to my google searches for this I found the info I wanted for my setup. Now I just need summer to end so I have more time to work on it.

Brian

BTW: XMBC now supports uPNP. It supports streaming ISO's with menu's. I guess the question is can it stream the iso's across UPNP. Sorry I know nothing about upnp as I don't use it.... I'm sure someone else could try this....

Sean

BTW: XMBC now supports uPNP. It supports streaming ISO's with menu's. I guess the question is can it stream the iso's across UPNP. Sorry I know nothing about upnp as I don't use it.... I'm sure someone else could try this....

Sean

Hi,

I read it also yesterday.. But can you install XMBC on a regular XP platform?
And I don't know yet if it supports ISO's across UPNP..

/Jonas

Looks like I need to clarify a bit.

I was referring to being able to consume .ISO's on the server and present them as a standard file format (similar to the manner in which .ZIP compression tools integrate with Windows Explorer shell). The more complex option would be to have a uPnP server stream them, which would then require interpreting the IFO; however, a simple interpretation and sharing of the ISO's contents would be the best practical solution, I believe.

Yes -- there are several solutions, including Myth that consume .ISO's on the client; however, they all use work-arounds like Daemon to mount them. The problem with this, in my experience, is that the real-world application of these is *not* seemless and often has problems. Consider there are about 20 robust software "Media Centers" (if you include the new variants by mainstream software companies such as Creative); however, there isn't a single one that can deal with a .ISO archive. XBMC is the closest which leverages VideoLAN, I believe; however, there is no true PC-equivalent. Now consider there exist at least 50+ hardware endpoints and roughly six support ISO.

If a simple DFS-style or uPnP layer was created to present .ISO's as directories to the client (by the server/NAS), then any client that supports conventional DVD's would support ISO's because they would simply be interpreted as directories on the network share. It's clean and best of all it's true middleware that opens up the feature to every modern Media Center or endpoint. PowerArchiver would be the perfect tool for this -- it already reads every ISO and compressed file format.

Further, if that NAS-style software included some of the new features of media servers (e.g. combining resources, such as multiple drives/shares into one share), it would provide the ultiamte framework to expose the potential of this technology ... and I believe this is a technology set to explode considering the new, very large drives to be shipping over the next year (1+ terabytes will be all over within the next six months now that perpendicular recording technology is shipping).

It's been 6 months and I was wondering if anyone has yet to come up with a solution for this? I have a D-Link DSM 320 that I would like to use to play my DVD collection with (ISO's on the network). I can't believe that this wouldn't be a common feature for any UPNP server.

Rename the .iso files to .mpeg no **** this works.

i have done this and shared all my iso's through windows media player 11 XBMC can now see my iso's obviously XBMC see's them as .mpeg files but plays them just fine but will not work any menu's all i have to do is push up on the digital pad for it to skip past the dvd menu and begin playing the movie.

also when i rename my iso file extensions to .mpeg even windows media player will play them.

For sake of anyone stumbling onto this post, I want to point out that the last post, immediately above my post here, is not related to this topic and renaming files is not a solution to allow people to use DVD .ISO content (thought I would save some people time before they waste it on an unrelated suggestion).

The poster above was talking about XBMC, which natively supports .ISO. By renaming his files to mpeg, he simply was allowing XBMC to see them, which is no different than adding the ISO file extension to the supported list.

However, the fact that this works in XBMC is entirely irrelevant to everything else. ISO's remain unsupported by any UPNP server that I'm aware, although it would be tremendous if one eventually arrived that supports them.

For sake of anyone stumbling onto this post, I want to point out that the last post, immediately above my post here, is not related to this topic and renaming files is not a solution to allow people to use DVD .ISO content (thought I would save some people time before they waste it on an unrelated suggestion).

The poster above was talking about XBMC, which natively supports .ISO. By renaming his files to mpeg, he simply was allowing XBMC to see them, which is no different than adding the ISO file extension to the supported list.

However, the fact that this works in XBMC is entirely irrelevant to everything else. ISO's remain unsupported by any UPNP server that I'm aware, although it would be tremendous if one eventually arrived that supports them.


calm down you pratt.

its not the end of the world just yet.

Hello everyone - It's 2009 and I stumbled on this thread while Google search for upnp+iso

I hope to rekindle the interest in this topic. Thanks. rb.