Netbooks with DVD
in [UK Linux]
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From: Bruce Stephens on 10 Dec 2008 13:25 Ian Rawlings <news06(a)tarcus.org.uk> writes: [...] > 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. For reading the LG Slim one works fine for me using just a single USB connector. It may need more power for writing (there's another cable intended to plug into USB for this; the other end's the same size as PSP power which offers alternatives). > Basically just watch out for that and make sure it's not going to be > an issue. Yes. I think I agree with other commenters that a dedicated viewer might work out better.
From: rich on 10 Dec 2008 15:01 On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 05:13:41 -0800, 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. > > 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 You spurred me on to give DVD's on a netbook a try. Mind - I had to take a HD enclosure to bits to plug it into an old-ish DVD drive I have in the spares box for this trial. The netbook is an Acer Aspire One as seen in Dixons. OS is linpus aka Fedora 8. memory 8 GB (+ another 8GB card plugged in). The enclosure has its own power supply but I back up the AA1 to a USB powered hdd so I can see no reason why a USB DVD would not work. As someone else suggested, VLC plays a DVD no bother. Once the DVD is mounted, fire up VLC, then its Play disk from the files menu, and select DVD(menus) and thats it. a couple of things to worry about is; Battery life, The AA1 has a tiny battery that is good for about an hour- and-a-half. More expensive models have better batteries. I usually run mine off the mains when I am home. Display, without checking the specs I think the display adapter only has memory for 64k colours but for me its acceptable. -- rich
From: Ian Rawlings on 10 Dec 2008 15:29 On 2008-12-10, rich <rich(a)nohome.com> wrote: > Battery life, The AA1 has a tiny battery that is good for about an hour- > and-a-half. More expensive models have better batteries. I usually run > mine off the mains when I am home. I copied h264 mp4 files onto the internal memory of an Eee 900 (900MHz celeron) and it played a 1.5-hour film without running out of batteries, and carried on for about another 30 minutes before giving up the ghost. It was moaning about the batteries for a good 40 minutes though! The film took up about 500 megs of space, so quite a few will fit on an SD card. Not quite playing DVDs but still good for hotels etc. -- Blast off and strike the evil Bydo empire! http://youtube.com/user/tarcus69 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarcus/sets/
From: Phil Stovell on 11 Dec 2008 06:06 On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:51:01 +0000, Frank Peelo wrote: > Get a standalone DVD player. Argos have a pink one for 90 Euro. I saw a DVD player in Asda for £15.
From: Daniel James on 11 Dec 2008 08:50
In article news:<slrngjvmvs.jhj.news06(a)desktop.tarcus.org.uk>, Ian Rawlings wrote: > 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 have an LG "USB Powered" DVD writer. It came with a power cable to draw power from a second USB port but in practice I have not, so far, found it necessary to use that as the drive seems able to draw sufficient power from the data USB port (of my Asus EEE) ... but I've only been reading disks, not writing them. Another thing to watch out for is that the USB ports of a laptop/netwook may share their power input, so using a second USB port for power may not make any more power available ... but you could always use a powered hub. Somewhat to my surprise the EEE's built-in (Linux) media player (SMPlayer) autoplays video DVDs from the USB drive -- no extra software needed. SMPlayer has "Play DVD from drive" and "Play DVD from folder" options ... presumably "Play DVD from folder" will work with a network share? I haven't got a DVD handy to try ... Cheers, Daniel. |