Slashdot Mirror
Adding a Hard Drive... To Your DVD Player?
El Puerco Loco writes "Area 450 has several guides to adding hardware to the Sampo DVE631CF DVD player. Even if you don't own this model, the firmware for it has been ported to many, many other models (with annoyances like macrovision and region locking removed). This player had built in support for an IDE device (a flash card reader) so a standard IDE drive can be slaved to the dvd drive and the player can read from a FAT32 formatted disk. The player decodes mp3s and VCD files, so it's possible to turn it into a cheap mp3 jukebox, or store movies in vcd format. I hope that when DiVX support becomes more common in DVD players one of them will be able to support a hack like this. It would be really cool to have 100+ movies built in to my dvd player."
Why not just buy a cheap PC to do all of this?
For $199.99 at any old Wal-mart store, you can get the following:
VIA C3 800 MHz processor offers comparable performance to the 800 MHz Celeron processor
133 MHz frontside bus
128 MB SDRAM, expandable to 1 GB
133 MHz memory speed
10 GB Ultra-ATA 100 hard drive, 5400 rpm (total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment)
52x CD-ROM drive
Up to 8 MB shared video memory
Integrated AC '97 CODEC audio
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet connection
Micro ATX tower case (14"D x 7"W x 14"H)
Available drive bays: 5.25-inch external, 3.5-inch external
Available PCI slot
High-speed serial port
Parallel port
2 front and 2 rear USB ports
Game port
104-key keyboard
2-button mouse with wheel
Audio port (line-in, line-out, mic-in)
Stereo speakers
1-year warranty, return to manufacturer
Software includes:
GIMP digital image editor
Word processor, spreadsheet, presentation maker, addressbook, calendar
Contact manager and time management
Digikam digital camera software supporting over 162 digital cameras
Mozilla Web browser and email client
XMMS MP3, Ogg Vorbis, WAV digital music player
Audio CD player
Xine DVD/DiVX player
10 games, including Solitaire, Tetris, Asteroids and Galaga
Desktop/LX update wizard
Adobe Acrobat Reader
RealPlayer
Shockwave Flash
Java Runtime Environment
Kooka digital scanner program
Desktop/LX network browser
Desktop/LX install wizard
Desktop/LX remote access control
Koncd CD burning software
KDict Dictionary Client
Supports over 162 digital cameras and scanners
Full photo-editing suite with over 25 filters and layers
Capable of opening and saving select Photoshop files
Send and view digital faxes
Built-in Web browser
Record digital audio clips and save as WAV files
Burn and rip your own music CDs and back up your data onto CD-R or CD-RW
Maximize your home network by viewing shared files with the network browser
Simple right-click file sharing
Built-in firewall for air-tight Internet security
Data snapshot, backup, and recovery program for configuration changes
Use Desktop Sharing to export your desktop for remote control or demonstrations on the network
Powerful remote assistance included for fixing problems via the Internet
10 games including Tetris, Solitaire, Galaga, and Asteroids
Get full access to the Iris Software Gallery where you can download additional programs at no charge! Iris includes software for multi-track music editing, Web-page authoring, games, a personal money management and more
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
You can (in Europe at least)
http://www.panasonic-europe.com/dvdrecorder/
Check out the BMR-HS2. Records to DVD-RAM or internal HDD.
Retails for £450 Sterling.
I own this DVD player (the 631CF) and it was the smartest electronics purchase I've ever made. I think it cost something like $130 total from Amazon and it looks like they're running a rebate special now. The player plays everything I've thrown at it, SVCD/VCD/MP3/DVD/CD, with no problems. The hard drive mod is as easy as described on area450, and it's totally worth it once you download a movie, play it, and delete it quickly and painlessly. The other major hacks, region-free and de-macrovision, are easily applied via a simple firmware patch and are also very worthwhile. I'd highly recommend this DVD player to just about anyone. Also, I'm completely unaffiliated, just a happy user.
Your question is off topic, but I will be willing to answer your question. You have several options. but before I get into them, I am going to ask you this. Why are all your PCI slots full? Post me what you have installed on the unit.
First lets assume you have an older system (P-166 and below) and your PCI slots are full (as mention and does not have USB ports. You can install yourself a nice ISA IDE or SCSI controller. Depending on which IDE/SCSI controller you get, will depend on how many items you can use. If your sound car is a ISA card, you may consider replacing it with a Sound Blaster Pro or 16 ASP. Those cards came with a standard IDE port which you can connect two additional IDE devices (from the sound card). You can also purchase an external 1 or 2 gig Jaz Drive by Iomega. These units are SCSI but they also came with SCSI to Parrell printer port converter. so this woudl allow you to conenct the device and have it working VIA printer port. Of course you will take a slight performace hit but it will work just fine.
Lets say you have a newer system (P-200 and higher). Cahnces are that you have USB. So you can get an external USB drive. Basically it is an IDE drive installed in a USB case. If you do nto need a large size drive jsut something small/portable get a USB memory stick reader and a big memory stick. It will work faster than a regular hard drive. Some units (NEC, DELL, AST, and Toshiba) have infer-red ports that can be used for this. If you haev one, do soem more research on your own.
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
A chipped XBOX is the coolest thing for this. With the chip you can multi region dvd player for dvd goodness (with RGB out and 5.1 digital sound with appropriate connectors) then stick xboxmediaplayer on it and play all your divxs, vcds, mp3s and loads more, either streaming it from another machine using the built in networking, or dump them on the harddrive (built in ftp server in the evoX bios). Not forgetting that you can put bigger hard drives in it too.
Google cache links for various pages:n kYSi0C: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/connectindex .htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
O Dch-8C: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/harddrive.ht m+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
e :eIK7PXDIR3wC: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/harddrivepre p.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
V CJbkysC: www.area450.com/thesampozone/articles/harddrivepow er.htm+&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Article link:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:xTNcB
Add-a-HDD page:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:EwQdB
Hard Drive Preparation:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cach
Hard Drive Power:
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:yVis
Lots more articles on the page linked in the article, but those are the ones of interest... hmmm... I think maybe the Google cache just got Slashdotted (!!??!!) cause its loading reeeaaal slow here...
i think they've withdrawn this particular model but the firmware runs on a ton of other players, and the support for an extra ide device is built into the firmware. it runs on the ubiquitous apex ad-660, which can be had for under $100. just make sure you get one with a flash rom that's flashable with a cdr.
http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-mac68k/1999/04/
It's an old mailing list message, in which the author (Grant Stockly) says:
However, Google returns no hits for "ethernet ide asic" which is about as general as I could think to make the search term...Anyhow, does anyone have information about this ASIC? If so, it sounds *exactly* like what we want here.
The RCA Scenium DRS7000N is a combination DVR/DVD-R. The DVR uses the old Gemstar GUIDE Plus+ GOLD so you don't have to pay a subscription or have a phone line attched to the unit. The HD can store both video and MP3's. Lastly, you can burn off video to DVD rather than have to hook up a VCR. Last I checked, Circuit City had them.
Of course, it's not as fun as rolling your own.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record (I've posted on this software a few times and even tried to post it to /. as a story but ...oh well.)
Qcast is the media server people are wishing they had in a few dozen posts here. You don't need to add a hard drive to a DVD player...all you need is a PS2.
Qcast is a two-disk installation. Install Disk 1 on your PC, loaded up with movies and tunes (mpeg1,2,4, xvid, divx, svcd, vcd, mp3.) Then load Disk 2 on networked PS2 (cheaper than Sampo DVE631CF and hard drive) and bingo! You have a spiffy Flash interface on the PS2 for all your PC-based content, which then streams over your network on demand.
No taking apart DVD players..if you need more space, add an IDE or Firewire drive to your PC in about five minutes.
And even better...you can use multiple PS2s to stream different content from the same PC all over the house. Not only that but you can point the PS2 to multiple drives. This blows away a HD-equipped DVD player, since the PS2 plays DVDs natively anyway.
Disclaimer: I neither work for, nor have any financial interest in Qcast. I just think it's cool as shit and no one knows about it. Well you do now.
"The pie shall be cut in half and each man shall receive.....death. I'll eat the pie."
If this is so easy to do, why haven't the various consumer electronics manufacturers shipped DVD players with a hard drive on board?
Um, they have. Panasonic and others have made DVD players that can record to either DVD-R or internal hard drives. They also use the hard drives for PVR like functions.
It would certainly be an advantage to be one of the first to market with something like this, not to mention the hordes of geeks (like myself) who would be compelled to go out and get one immediately.
Go get it then.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Actually, it's quite the opposite. DVDs just have image data encoded, not the vertical blank area (which is where Macrovision type 1 is encoded).
:-)
Instead there is just a "Macrovision bit" which tells whether or not the content creator has paid Macrovision their royalties for type 1 Macrovision, or type 1 and type 2 Macrovision. Your DVD player's firmware actually generates the macrovision signal ITSELF, on command. Removing Macrovision simply means adjusting your firmware so it never turns it on.
(For the curious, type 1 Macrovision works by creating flashing bars in the vertical blank area. Your VCR's auto-gain circuit looks there to try to figure out how black black is (so it can record with the greatest dynamic range -- important for a crappy format like VHS) and sees the bars and gets convinced that white is black... If you've ever seen Macrovision at work, where the image fluctuates in brightness, it's flashing in time with the bars in the vertical blank. Those "image stabilizers" you see that remove Macrovision type 1 just strip out the vertical blank and replace it with its own. Macrovision type 2 isn't used as often. It works by mucking up the chroma signal in a composite signal. Avoiding it is as easy as not using the composite output.
dreamcasts can play divx to, without modding to the unit itself http://www.dcemulation.com/soft-dcdivx.htm
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."