Unofficial VGP-XL1B2 Thread - Page 2

Chris: "My Movies" will use the changer as a bulk loader for adding DVD's to a storage server and into the "My Movies" database, but it may be a "System Builder only" feature.

Regards,

Brian

Has anyone tried to connect this changer to a Mac running OS X?

I don't think I will ever order anything from Amazon.com again. I ordered this thing a month ago and nothing ever showed up. Atleast they did not charge my credit card. I have gone to their site to try and find a phone number to call and ask what happened but I don't see one.

I got their phone # off google:

1-800-201-7575

They have no record of me ever ordering it. Of course now it is no longer on sale. I'll see if I can find a used one off eBay or something.

its on sale again for 299 after rebate. I'm confused tho- an amazon reviewer says he can view the movies via extender on his 360. is he just talking out of his anus, or are you guys?

You can't access the changer via an Extender.

Chris

Once Transcode360 is integrated into MyMovies2, you "might" be able to stream DVD's from a changer on MCE to the 360. This is coming from the developer of MM2 (binnerup) himself.

Brian - so I am somewhat unclear on the Mymovies and this changer's functionality. Can I plug this changer in and have mymovies rip 200 dvd's to HD without user intervention (after the first disc)?

Has anyone notice how poorly the DVD cover art is not matching up with the actual disc that are being loaded in the Changer? For example I loaded the standard widescreen version of "The Matrix" and what came up on the cover art was "The Matrix - Gold Edition" or I loaded standard widescreen version of "Star Wars - Original Trilogy" and got the cover art for the Full Screen version. I have used DVD Profiler in the past and I'm use to that level of accuracy, The Cover Art issue on the changer is starting to become very annoying. Don't get me started on the issue with the "Lord of the Rings Extended Versions" So far I'm not very happy with the service provided by AMG

I actually returned mine due to problems like this. My biggest issue was that it couldn't differentiate disk 1 from disk 2 in a multi-disk dvd set, so I always had to guess which disk I was playing. I thought the concept of the device was great but the software made it almost useless to me as over half of my dvd collection is box sets.

I have one of these coming from Amazon, pretty much to help me automate ripping ~600 CDs in WMA Lossless format. I figure the $300 is worth it to walk away after its loaded and wake up with 200 discs ripped the next morning. Additional functionality will be a bonus.

Not having 200 DVDs, however, I'm wondering if I could throw Game CDs/DVDs in the changer, use that to access games from the changer which require the disc to be in the PC to initiate gameplay? Has anyone tried this? If so, any success?

I'll be running the HTPC in clone mode, and I'll be curious to see whether that will be a workaround of the streaming issue others are experiencing with this unit.

Either way, Amazon isn't projecting a shipping date until 2 weeks from now.

Any & all feedback appreciated. Thanks in advance.

- KB

kevbrad66, if you had a touch screen monitor that you are using for your clone, it would be a great solution since there is no capability to stream. I currently am running the Changer with a OrigenAE X15e case(touch screen) and the touch screen works great. I haven't tried any CD or DVD ROM's but don't see why it wouldn't work by accessing the ROM thru Windows Explorer. Keep in mind though, that Windows Explorer only sees the disc that is in the Load Position of the Changer. Like I stated earlier, my only complaint is the poor Metadata and Cover Art provided by AMG.

Is there any way to change metadata/cover art providers? Or a way to contact AMG to report errors?

Thanks,
Ken

Ken, hopefully someone has a solution. I would be very interested in an alternative to AMG.

Dwight

I finally found AMG's website. They are All Media Guide www.allmediaguide.com

Not much there, but here is the contact info to call:

All Media Guide
1168 Oak Valley Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
Phone: 734/ 887-5600
Fax: 734/ 827-2492


Ken

Does anyone know if the xl1b2 works with windows Vista?

Dwight2001, thanks for your reply. My situation isn't a touchscreen - it is two indentical 720p screens fed by the pc into two separate rooms, using a bluetooth keyboard. I'm hoping that I can simply swap the primary/clone mapping to the room I'm in, and play discs that way, doing an end around on any macrovision issues. We'll see. Amazon says "shipping soon" and there's no cancelling at this point so hopefully it'll be here sooner rather than later. I'm hopefull that it will read the current ROM in the drive, then I'll just need to cue up the appropriate disc prior to launching a game. I'll figure it all out when it arrives.

Pyro - I'll let you know, as I've been doing a lot of Vista RC2 tweaking. I'd certainly like for it to work, but until I can get RC2 to output over the dual SPDIF outputs on the mobo, I'm going to have issues utilizing this within Vista as I will be able to in XP MCE

kevbrad66,

I'm running an ATI x1600 HDMI, using the latest Catalyst drivers. From what you are describing. If you are going to run in clone mode, you shouldn't have any problem accomplishing what you are trying to do. In Catalyst, you can also set up profiles using Hotkeys to switch mapping. Hopefully, you are running an ATI card and not Nvidia. I'm not suggesting that Nvidia cannot accomplish this, but I have never tested on Nvidia that way. Perhaps other members can confirm or not?

Dwight, ATI fanboy

Kenland,

Noticed on the AMG website, they have a program named Lasso, I haven't tried it but looks a lot like DVDProfiler. It would be nice to integrate this into the XL1B2, like MyMovies uses DVDProfiler. Plus the Lasso program looks more accurate then the metadata that is being defaulted to the changer.

Dwight

By chance does anyone have an extra copy of the software that comes with this unit. I am getting a used one but it does not include the software. Or if anyone can point me in the right direction to get a copy that would be great

Thanks

pyro_

Well, it showed up at 6:30 last night! As with many others, mine is a XL1B - not an XL1B2 but that's what I expected. Everything was in the box I needed, and I got it installed on MCE 2005 easily enough. I got greedy and tried to see if it would install on RC2, and quite frankly it seems to have blown that OS up. It wouldn't install, and it made my DVD+/-RW drive disappear. Could've been me rushing it, but it may just not be ready for Vista. Software didn't hiccup on compatibility issues (i.e.: no "you don't have rollup 2 installed messages", etc.) but when I tried to access it through media center (where "my changer" now appeared) it threw errors trying to access the device.

I've had issues with that Vista install since it went in though (intel D975xbx not very friendly with RC2 - no sound most gallingly), so I'll blow it up and start over this weekend.

At least MCE 2005 works, and I can begin the Lossless ripping of the CD collection tonight.

P.S.: This sucker is LONG. Longer than it is wide! Be warned, as others have said.

FYI, The changer stores a key when MCE looks up all the cover art etc. So when you change to another MCE it gets all the metadata almost instantly.

I switched from my wife's MCE laptop to a dedicated S1 Digital MCE (the mini MCE) and all the discs and metadata were available with a slight delay.

My only problem now is coaxing 1080p out of the onboard graphics.

Ken

In case anyone else needs the software CD for this unit here is the info for ordering it from sony

INSTALLATION CD FOR VGP-XL1B, item# 267576801, $11.95 ea


order from: Sony Direct Accessories & Parts Center web site or call 1-800-488-7669

Well, I reinstalled RC2 from scratch doing a clean install on its own partition, and leaving Vista to its own devices, I now at least have analogue output to the 5.1 jacks on the motherboard. (I'm assuming it's all 5.1 - I've only tested l/r channels to my receiver so far.) The real kicker though is (after using Vista's built-in imaging utility and creating a system restore point) that trying to install the VGP-XL1B killed my Samsung DL DVD+/-RW and refused to see the changer again. I guess I'll post this in the Vista RC2 issues thread too. So at least for me, it doesn't work at this point in time.

kevbrad66,

Did you try plugging the changer in without installing the Sony SW? I know in MCE '05 it just shows up as a PowerFile 200, but maybe Vista has better bundled support?

Chrishet, (or anyone else)

Any luck using MyMovies(2) with the changer?

Ken

But I'm not one hundred percent certain. The initial Vista install was done way too late at night for me to have been reliably following instructions. I think I had left the power on the changer when I rebooted the PC into its Vista install, and Device Manager saw it as a DVD-RAM drive - I'll give that another shot and see what happens, but I think its safe to say that without the Sony software installed, none of the My Changer functionality will exist, so managing the discs will be well nigh impossible.

On top of that, of the 200 discs I put in there to rip last night, it only IDed 199. This might be my fault with a disc I think I may have put in label side "in" not "out." Beyond that however, it only ripped 34 discs and then promptly threw an error. I'll eject the successfully copied ones tonight and restart the ripping process, but I'm growing a little disconcerted at the initial number of errors I'm getting on a perfectly legit MCE 2005 OS. If it keeps being balky, it'll likely go back.

Vista and VGP

When you install the VGP it does something and adds a LOWFILTER Key in the registry.

I don't have the link handy, but it's a simple delete a key in the registry, reboot, and all your drives come back.

I had the VGP working well in an RC-1 Build. But now after a clean install to try to get HD output from the ASUS M2NPV - its become very tempermental.

At the moment, it's got about 50 CD's in it, but says it's empty.

I can't seem to find the "Manage Discs" option.


Dave B

o2 -

That's a good to know trick - I'll give that a shot when I've got a unit that isn't apparently a lemon. "Manage Discs" is only available through the "More programs" part of the MCE interface - non-intuitive, when you think it would be directly under the "My Changer" link next to Play Music and Copy Music.

Initial tinkering with it looked promising within MCE 2005 as I expected it would - but upon its first effort at ripping a 200 disc batch it choked on the R.E.M. "Up" album. A regular CD, no dualdisc or combo CD/DVD... The changer software didn't see the disc loaded in the drive, and so it would choke when trying to load any other discs. But when I accessed the drive as a DVD-RAM drive through "My Computer", Windows Media Player 9.0 detected it as having an "Audio CD" in it, and was able to play it without problems.

Long story short, I had to open the player to retrieve the R.E.M. disc. I then reloaded all the discs that hadn't ripped in that first run, MINUS the R.E.M. disc on the off chance it's thickness was out of tolerance range for the player, and it promptly choked again on a second run, not even re-identifying 26 out of 150 discs before doing so.

I've found firmware updates that purportedly improve it's multi-CD ripping abilities here: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...teType=Updates

However, it says they need to be installed BEFORE the April 2006 Update Rollup. This Install is completely patched and up to date - I'm wondering if they'll work in spite of this.

Has anyone else had this difficulty with one of these changers? If it did as I expected it, I think this would be a worthwhile addition. But if these kinds of headaches can be expected, my time would be better off ripping my CD collection one at a time...

Just wondering how you guys got the sony software to install on vista, i am trying to get it to work but it will not install, even tried to do a compatibility mode for xp sp2 but that would not work. Any sujestions appreciated