sharing DVD-rom drive

byrnenj

Hey there,

this might be more a OS (windows) thing but i'm sure someone will know.

I have a network at home. My pc doesn't have a dvd player but it does have a video out and it is plugged into my tv. I want to use the dvd player on another machine on my pc. I shared the drive but windows only sees it as a network drive and not a dvd-rom drive.

Anybody know a way around this?

po0k

Map the drive under windows so it appears in My Computer as a network drive (I assume you've just been browsing to it so far?
\\ComputerName\DriveShareName is an example.
Do so by right clicking on My Computer icon on the desktop or under the Tools drop-down menu in My Computer.

byrnenj

It is mapped as a drive, but only appears as a network drive. Windows doesn't realise that the drive on the other machine is a dvd-rom drive so doesn't let me use is in that way.

Maybe there's a peice of software that will do it.

Tom Dunne

Have you tried opeining the shared drive from the DVD player software? It should theoretically recognise the files on the disc as being a DVD, irrespective of how the drive appears in Explorer (i.e. network drive).

When you say networked drive, does it have a letter assinged to it? If not, the first step should be assing it a letter (any letter, it shouldn't matter). Then try opening that drive in the DVD player software.

byrnenj

Yes, it has a letter! Which file is supposed to be opened from the dvd?

vibe666

there will be several files with the extension .VOB which are your video files. generally they will be numbered sequentially. the biggest file with the lowest file name (if you get my meaning) will normally be the main movie with the other files being extra features, trailers etc. if you change the file view to 'details' you should be able to find it pretty easily.

not sure how much media player likes VOB's, so you might want to get a decent video player like power dvd or one of the free/shareware titles available on the net.

if you are really interested in doing this on a regular basis you might want to look at http://www.videolan.org/ it's a primarily Linux project at the moment, but they are gradually releasing parts of it for Windows systems. at present it will only give you basic access for playing your DVD under windows, but the Linux end has progressed to the point where you can use a remote DVD drive as if it were local.

this is the eventual plan for videolan at present:



which as you can see is quite a big task. they are getting there though, and it won't be too long before it's fully up and running. it's already looking impressive at this stage, but there is still a long way to go.