[mythtv-users] Play from DVD drive in remote machine

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 18 September 2011 04:52, Erik Jensen <eriksjunk at laurelwoodart.com> wrote:
> I am currently driving my projector from an ION system in a rather
> inaccessible location. I would like to be able to pop a DVD into the
> drive of another computer and play it on the front end with minimal
> fuss. The closest I have gotten is using NBD (network block device),
> but playing a DVD is still rather complicated (insert dvd, play dvd
> locally with mplayer to unlock the drive, connect NBD, play DVD,
> disconnect NBD, eject dvd). What would be ideal would be a way to
> forward raw ATA commands over the network, allowing the front end to
> unlock the drive, eject the disc, etc. Does anyone know of a utility
> that would allow me to accomplish this?
>
> Thanks.
>

There are several options
1) xine has a mode where you can run xine on the ION box, and then a
shim runs on the box with the DVD. I have not used it for a long time
so it might not work any more.
2) Use "dvdbackup" (should be available as a package on most distros,
failing that it is on the dvd.sf.net site cvs/svn repository.), this
makes an image of the DVD on the hard disk. The action of moving it
from the DVD to the HD removes all the DVD specific based encryption
with the help of libdvdcss.
Once on the HD, you can then play if over any normal file share. You
can use nfs, sshfs or samba.
It takes up about 9 Gigs of HD space, but with most movies, once seen,
you never watch them again, so you can just delete it from your HD
once viewed.