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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."
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.
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."