Matt Goyer: Why Media Center Does Not Stream DVDs
By Alexander Grundner |
October 17th, 2006
Comments (7)
It’s a quick blurb, so I’ll just quote Matt’s whole post.
Once and for all: The Media Center team, the TV team and the Extender team (yes, it would have been a co-ordinated dev effort from all three teams) did not implement streaming of DVDs from PCs or changers for one big reason: Getting core functionality working on Vista was hard enough. And if, like me, you’re running an early build of Vista on you will understand.And without doubt had there been extra time in the schedule there were many features of higher importance ahead of DVD streaming (DVD streaming is actually quite close to the bottom).
I know all you with changers wanted it (though I’m puzzled why you bought the changer in the first place? just get a fat NAS) but there’s not enough of you (and don’t get all chicken and egg on me. you still wouldn’t have bought a changer if we had the feature, you’d get a fat NAS).
What do you guys make of it? There’s already a series of interesting posts in his comments section taking Microsoft’s decision to task. It cracks me up that the solution he and others in the comments section suggest completely violate the DMCA. Rip all your movie DVDs to your PC’s hard drive or NAS for streaming – funny, not to mention completely illegal. I think we all just want legal alternatives when they’re technically possible.
Note: Supposedly Niveus Media’s DVD changer for MCE 2005 supports LAN streaming via a proprietary software add-on, though I don’t currently see this feature listed on its product page.
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I’m not sure it’s against the law to make personal backups. It’s a grey area. It’s against the law to produce software that breaks encryption, but it’s not clear that you are violating any laws by using the software, making backups and viewing them for personal use. If someone can prove me wrong, I’d love to get a definitive answer, but I’ve never seen it clearly documented, and I don’t believe the DMCA or any other governing body has gone after an individual for making personal backups.
The fat NAS concept is where it’s at. This is the best solution, however, getting full DVD menu support isn’t all that easy in a streaming solution.
Maybe this will help:
Exclusive rights in copyrighted works – Section 106:
Fair Use – Section 107:
Nothing about backups there. Backups and stored copies of movies on to your PC is only legal when expressly permitted by the copyright holder (as in the case with AACS).
Infringment – Section 501:
Digital Millennium Copyright Act [PDF file] — Provisions under title 17
To be honest, I just read all of that in detail and it is not very clear, and subject to interpratation. AACS is not subject to the current generation of DVDs, only bluray and hddvd’s as far as I am aware. Not sure what CSS provides for in the current agreement. I do know that the Kalidascape system has somehow gotten around this issue of dvd backups and streaming so there exists a loophole somewhere.
http://www.kaleidescape.com/
A good read of this is located on their FAQ starting here:
http://www.kaleidescape.com/faq/#faq233
So while they claim to have license from CSS to enable their product, they have proven that there exists a way to work within the framework. So I’d argue that my DVDShrink’d archives are no more a threat than the copies made by kaleidescape. I’d probably lose that argument in court though.
You should read this though
http://www.kaleidescape.com/company/legal.html
Thanks for posting that Chris. I’ve followed K’scape for a while, part cause they have an elegant solution and part to see how the whole legal argument pans out. I personally believe that K’scape will ultimatley lose this battle since they are making a commercial product out of the system. At best, it will remain in the courts for a very long time (it’s already been 2 years). Any legalized system of reproduction would put a lot of question on fair use for DVD’s; whereas the current gray status of DVDs keeps up the threat.
I’m actually warming up to the idea that a DVD/Blu-ray/HD-DVD changer in conjuction with a Media Center PC that allows you to stream movies over a LAN is great idea (not sure we’ll ever see a multi-format version). All the next-gen high definition DVDs are MASSIVE (see Click*) and will require a lot of hard drive space to store. The discs contain all the content, why not just keep it there?
* Wikipedia: “The Blu-ray Disc version of the Adam Sandler movie Click was released on October 10, 2006. It is the first ever dual-layer release. Sony’s goal is to use 50 GB dual-layer discs to store up to nine hours of HD video content.”
Cost Comparison:
DVD Changer:
Sony VAIO 200-Disc VGP-XL1B2 Media changer = $399 (Yes, I know this is not Blu-ray compatible — just using it as an example)
vs.
Standard DVD hard drive backups:
200 Discs @ 8GB = 1,600GB of storage required. $0.36 per GB (based on $179.99 500GB WD drive at Newegg) x 1,600 = $576
vs.
Blu-ray movie backups:
200 Discs @ 50GB = 10,000GB of storage required. $0.36 per GB (based on $179.99 500GB WD drive at Newegg) x 10,000 = $3,600
* Note: Some DVD changers let you chain multiple devices together. Also think about how much time you’ll have to spend ripping 200 discs to a hard drive (that’s an ugly thought).
FWIW, I’ve seen HD DVD and BluRay discs on premium HDTVs and the qualityis great. But the dirty little secret that no one seems to talk about is that an upscalled SD-DVD to 1080i (and 1080p) looks really amazing. AFAIAC, it’a going to be a long time before I purchase a next generation dvd drive (unless I accidently buy one via Xbox360 or PS3) since I’m more than pleased with upscalled DVD quality.