Playing DVDs through a network

[Jorden]

Hi all,

I'm trying to play a DVD through the network. The DVD-player is in a Client machine, and my PC is Server. NICs used in both machines are Ethernet cards mapped at 100Mbps, cable used is CAT6.

Server is a P3-450 with 128Mb RAM, Win98(FE).
Client is a Celeron 333 with 128Mb RAM, Win98(FE).

DVD drive on the client is shared, I've mapped the .vob .ito and .bup files from the DVD to the Matrox DVD-player installed on the server.
I've also mapped the DVD-player through the network to the server.

Upon starting the DVD, the Matrox DVD-player starts up and gives me a black screen. It does give me the sounds though. So I hear music etc.

After about 2 minutes, when it's loading the .vob file (main menu), I get a Windows fault saying the DVD-player crashed in CINMST32.DLL, which stops the sound as well.

Does anyone know how I can get this setup to work? It would be cool

Jord.

[Bixler]

Honestly, Jord, I've never heard of such a thing. DVD requires a HUGE pipeline, and I can't imagine how your connection could pass that much data.

But whaddo I know.

Mebbe someone up on network data rates can offer an opinion, but I'm doubtful. I'll be watching to see how you do.

[fds]

Get Cinemaster 2000, share the whole drive, map it to a drive letter on the client machine and simply open VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO with Cine2000.

You got to have some real fast network for good playback though.

If you don't care for the menus, quick chapter access, subtitles and only need the default sound track, you could also use PowerDVD or WinDVD, queuing the VOB files in a playlist.

Anyway, it seems a silly thing to do, why don't you just copy (descrambling the css encryption if it is a protected movie.. get VobDec) the movie to a hard drive in the client machine and play it from there.

Check out dvdsoft.da.ru

Reading your message another time I'm getting even more confused. Why would you want to watch a DVD with a software decoder on the Celery 333 instead of the Pentium III? The latter is a LOT more suited for the job.

[fds]

Oops, almost forgot to note an important point:

Get Cinemaster 2000, share the whole drive, map it to a drive letter on the client machine and simply open VIDEO_TS\VIDEO_TS.IFO with Cine2000.

This obviously won't work if the movie is css-encrypted! You've got to decrypt it first to your hard drive.

(There are only a handful of dvd titles which weren't encrypted..)

[Jorden]

Thanks fds for the preliminary

To get to your confusion: the DVD is installed in the Celeron 333, and I want to watch DVDs on my P3, through the network.

Btw, tried mapping to the drive and copying the movie to my harddrive, but then it would say "The device doesn't support this" ...

Jord.

[HollyBerri]

My poor Celery is having other problems... I think I'm going to remove a device, so I'll let Jord install the DVD in his machine.

Problem solved (with brute force ), sort of.

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Holly

[fds]

The drive has to be authenticated before you can copy the files off the DVD.

Simply start playing the movie and pause, then you should be able to read the files.

You still have to decrypt them though, so it's a better idea to do the copying with VobDec right away.

[EdSki]

Got some spare cash or ready to sell your house, car and dog? Get a fibre channel switch & some fb cards and cables...you will be poor, but maybe you will be able to play dvd over a network with reasonable performance ;-)

grtz & good luck

[DosFreak]

Geesh guys you must have some pretty crappy networks. DVD doesn't put out that much. 1X dvd is what like a meg? if your networks can'
t handle a meg of steady bandwidth I think you guys had better enter the 90's...better yet enter the mid 80's.

[SteveC]

Yeah I think it is a little over 1Mb a second - a 10mbps ethernet network won't be able to do it (around 7-800KB/sec max) a 16mbps T/R network might, but a 100mbps ehternet jobby will do it fine. I'll give it a go tonight and see if it works at home...

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[RAB]

I can't do it with my home network, but that's because I only have a 10meg set up. Like Steve says, a 100meg network should handle it. You already mapped a drive, but have you installed the entire Matrox DVD player software on both machines? It should only need to be on the machine you are using to watch the DVD, but try installing it on both machines.

RAB

[fds]

I think I've already noted you can't practically do it. Not because of the speed of his network but copy protection.

If the movie is protected with CSS, there's no way you are going to play it directly off the disc through a network share.

First of all player software has to authenticate the DVD-ROM on the disc before it allows reading the protected VOB files.

Another thing the player software has to do is to retrieve the decryption key from the disc using the player's own key.

Neither of these two could be done over a network share, only if the DVD-ROM is in the same computer.

The first can be solved easily, just start the player [on the machine with the DVD-ROM], let it play a few seconds then pause and you have the disc authenticated and ready to read.

It is still going to be encrypted with the other computer on the network having no way of reading the decryption key.

So, either you have an unprotected movie or you have to decrypt it first yourself. The first case is pretty rare, in fact the only unprotected movie I came across was the Region 2 release of The Mask by some little UK studio known as "Entertainment in Video."

In the second case you'll have to share the hard drive you put the decrypted files not the DVD-ROM with the original disc.

The decryption can be done with one of the early tools like DeCSS and DoDSRip, or with VobDec and its derivatives.

The first two did the authentication and key retrieval themselves, using a key reverse engineered from some player software. Neither of them seem to be updated any more yet they are incompatible with newer drives and some nastier now releases.

The real solution is VobDec, which doesn't rely on a reverse engineered key. Instead, it simply guesses the key from the encrypted files using any vulnerable block it finds. Since CSS is especially weak, the 40-bit key can be found in a few seconds.

[Jorden]

One problem with the link you gave, fds. If I try to download stuff from it, it says that I don't share files on their drive, and boots me out

Jord.

[SteveC]

I have Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (The Director's Cut) playing across the network as I type!

This PC I'm on now has the DVD drive in it, shared.

The other PC maps a drive to this PC, loads windvd2000 and opens the files off the dvd share. Plays like a dream!

I have a 100mbps network here at home, and on the hub the 5% utilisation LED is constantly on, and it flickers up to 10% every now and then. (One or two times hit 30%, but that may be other traffic like these pages).

If it makes any difference the dvd did autostart in this PC which may have got round the copy protection doobrey thingummybob. (But I always have DeCSS to hand anyway so I could copy the DVD to my HDD! )

PC With DVD Drive Shared: Win2k, Intel 10/100mbps NIC, PIII-500 @ 625, 256Mb RAM, G400 blah blah

PC Watching the film: Win98SE, Digital no name PoS 10/100mbps NIC, Celery 300a@450, 128Mb RAM, Savage4 blah blah

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[Snake-Eyes]

I'll try to come up with something similar to SteveC's setup tonight (software / configuration, anyway. I only have what hardware I have- BTW, thanks for the info everyone, 'specially you Steve). Then I'll let you know how well my Matrox DVD player does (it might be helpful for you, since my G400 is in the other case from the DVD drive too, Jorden).

L8r all.

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Ace