DVD video streaming with menus from VIDEO_TS folder possible (to a 360)?

[markm75]

I've been contemplating building a dedicated video streaming server,
but the one thing that is holding me back is the inability to stream
DVD content from VIDEO_TS folders or iso's.. I want the content to
stream with menu's and have the dolby ac3 digital surround sound.

I've looked into alternatives to media player extensions onto the 360,
such as Tversity.. but tversity will only play one vob at a time...

Has anyone gotten this to work thus far.. on a 360 better yet?

This is the holy grail preventing me from moving on with this idea
(that plus a 4TB NAS or storage medium to hold home videos and my
dvds, backup protection aside)...

Cheers

 

[Adam Albright]

I've been contemplating building a dedicated video streaming server,
but the one thing that is holding me back is the inability to stream
DVD content from VIDEO_TS folders or iso's.. I want the content to
stream with menu's and have the dolby ac3 digital surround sound.

I've looked into alternatives to media player extensions onto the 360,
such as Tversity.. but tversity will only play one vob at a time...

I've never seen it done. That of course doesn't mean it can't be, but
I would think it would be a tough nut to crack. What's inside a
Video_TS folder is a COLLECTION of VOB files and other supporting
files needed to make some DVD player play the contents of the DVD
using some type of menu system. One VOB file will be the main menu, if
you have them, others will be some sub menu, still others are
individual video files the menu system links to. The concept behind
streaming is to stream a SINGLE file, not a file that controls other
files.

If I was doing this if you intention is to make this available off
some public web site, what I would try would be to mimic the DVD's
control structure in your HTML markup making a link for each video,
then at least you should be able to stream one video from the Video_TS
folder at a time which might serve your purposes.

While that would work if you're intending to do something like this
for general consumption where you have no idea of the capacity of your
typical visitor you're going to run into the problem that many of your
visitors won't have a MPEG-2 decoder on their system, so they won't be
able to see the content you want to stream.

A better solution might be to duplicate what's in the Video_TS folder
and convert to a more user friendly Web format like WMV. Another issue
would be file size. If you're trying to stream a true DVD that's based
on MPEG-2, the files will be huge and nobody is likely to sit around
waiting for them to stream. Even if they did, only a fraction of the
audience would have a fast enough broadband connection to view the
files properly, most would at best get very jerky playback. Then of
course if you did this the consumed resources you ate up if you have
any traffic at all visiting your site you might get a big fat bill
from your provider expecting you to pay for all the extra resources
you ate up.

So several practical things wrong with your idea.

 

[markm75]

I've never seen it done. That of course doesn't mean it can't be, but
I would think it would be a tough nut to crack. What's inside a
Video_TS folder is a COLLECTION of VOB files and other supporting
files needed to make some DVD player play the contents of the DVD
using some type of menu system. One VOB file will be the main menu, if
you have them, others will be some sub menu, still others are
individual video files the menu system links to. The concept behind
streaming is to stream a SINGLE file, not a file that controls other
files.

If I was doing this if you intention is to make this available off
some public web site, what I would try would be to mimic the DVD's
control structure in your HTML markup making a link for each video,
then at least you should be able to stream one video from the Video_TS
folder at a time which might serve your purposes.

While that would work if you're intending to do something like this
for general consumption where you have no idea of the capacity of your
typical visitor you're going to run into the problem that many of your
visitors won't have a MPEG-2 decoder on their system, so they won't be
able to see the content you want to stream.

A better solution might be to duplicate what's in the Video_TS folder
and convert to a more user friendly Web format like WMV. Another issue
would be file size. If you're trying to stream a true DVD that's based
on MPEG-2, the files will be huge and nobody is likely to sit around
waiting for them to stream. Even if they did, only a fraction of the
audience would have a fast enough broadband connection to view the
files properly, most would at best get very jerky playback. Then of
course if you did this the consumed resources you ate up if you have
any traffic at all visiting your site you might get a big fat bill
from your provider expecting you to pay for all the extra resources
you ate up.

So several practical things wrong with your idea.

My main purpose would be to stream through an extender on the xbox
360.. i wouldnt want this ability unless i could maintain the 5.1
digital surround sound though.