DVD Collection updated for hs 2.0

[Czechmarty]

Try GBpvr, it's easier to setup, has more features, better support and it's free.

Marty,
Would GBpvr be worthy for me if I don't have TVCard in my HTPC? I have DishNetwork so I'm stuck with one modulated channel for all the Satellite channels. I use my HTPC for watching ripped DVDs and BRs (at least for now).

[drozwood90]

Wow! I'm really surprise and puzzled, because one of the main reasons I like ZP was the CODECS. During the installation it asked if I wasn't to install the CODECS and I selected everything. It downloaded them all, installed and that was it. It plays whatever I throw at it. I'll check the version I'm running when I get home.
Marty

Dunno...maybe I have previous codecs that are messing up the installed ones...

In either case, it's not worth my time or money...VLC works very well, solid, AND needs 0 codecs. the quality appears to be about the same, so I'm good with that.

--Dan

[nightwalker]

It all depends on how you get a DVD into it but for general practice it pulls the info from the imdb movie database as opposed to DVD Profiler. I know there was talk about a plug-in to incorporate DVD Profiler but I really don't know if they got finished or just talked about.

You can find all the info you need to see if it fits your needs here

http://gbpvr.com/

Marty,

I'll also take a peek at this to see if it can fill in any other gaps that I'm missing.

Although my goal is to have a zero impact "install" to watch movies. I.e. my brothers sometimes come over to the house, so if they wanted to watch a few movies on their laptops...I'd want them to be able to surf to the HS dvd collections site, grab the zip, extract it to the default locations, then just click a movie to watch.

However, it does NOT preclude me from setting up my HTPC with something much fancier.

Just a quick question...how does GBpver list the movies? Can it use a DVD Profiler XML database?

--Dan

[nightwalker]

Strange HTPC you have there.

Seriously, if you're not going to use a capture/TV card and only use the HTPC at a method to watch content on the HD you won't get a lot of use out of it. If on the other hand you're considering a real working HTPC system IMHO it's the way to go. I use FIOS TV here and have one STB dedicated to GBpvr to record whatever is on that I want to see, rip the commercials out of it and save it for later viewing. I also record a few movies that I save to disk for later viewing. I don't really use it much for ripped DVD's as I use DVD carousels to hold the disks, but I know others keep their DVD collection on disk and assess it from GBpvr. This is all tied into the house video distribution system and can be accessed from any TV or PC in the house. It's pretty much Sage on steroids without being nickle and dimed for every little add on you need, MVP's, PCH's, Client PC's whatever.

Marty,
Would GBpvr be worthy for me if I don't have TVCard in my HTPC? I have DishNetwork so I'm stuck with one modulated channel for all the Satellite channels. I use my HTPC for watching ripped DVDs and BRs (at least for now).

[Czechmarty]

Strange HTPC you have there.

Seriously, if you're not going to use a capture/TV card and only use the HTPC at a method to watch content on the HD you won't get a lot of use out of it. If on the other hand you're considering a real working HTPC system IMHO it's the way to go. I use FIOS TV here and have one STB dedicated to GBpvr to record whatever is on that I want to see, rip the commercials out of it and save it for later viewing. I also record a few movies that I save to disk for later viewing. I don't really use it much for ripped DVD's as I use DVD carousels to hold the disks, but I know others keep their DVD collection on disk and assess it from GBpvr. This is all tied into the house video distribution system and can be accessed from any TV or PC in the house. It's pretty much Sage on steroids without being nickle and dimed for every little add on you need, MVP's, PCH's, Client PC's whatever.

Well, that is the pay back for living in quiet suburb middle of nowhere area. Only one phone provider (Embarq) and Satellite TV. I asked Verizon about FIOS in my area, but apparently there is no hope in near future. My Dish HD DVR does all the recording, pausing etc, so I don't have to mess with it on the PC.

[nightwalker]

Sometimes the middle of nowhere has it's advantages.

While you can certainly feed the Disk signal out of the STB and into a capture card, if you're happy with the DVR there really isn't any point. All you really need is a way to stream ripped content to your TV from the HTPC. Sounds like you already have that going. It's possible to use GBpvr without a tuner/capture card and no EPG but at that point it would only put a pretty face to something you're already doing.

[Czechmarty]

Sometimes the middle of nowhere has it's advantages.

Believe me, I'd not change!

Don,
My ZP is Home MAX 6.00. Just run the "Install Center" and it will tell you what codecs are missing and install them for you automatically.

Marty

[drozwood90]

Marty,

That's what I did. I think I also had to diable the "Smart" Codec thing, and a few other settings. It was just a PAIN.

The other irritating thing, was my Wife's machine had the same symptoms, however, exporting the reg. settings on one machine, then importing them on her machine did NOT fix the problem.

Again, since there is not a simple fix, I've given up. I have a 95% solution that doesn't cost me a dime / or any of my time (which is becoming less and less). So, I'm going to go that direction. I just do not feel it's worth my time to go any further.

Besides that, they continue to get a recurring problem with their playlist index. Do a search for "ZoomPlayer index out of bounds" It's prevelent on Vista (mostly), but occurs in XP and Windows 2000. I've also seen it on every machine that I own (Vista / W2K / XP). So, due to all these "experiences" I'd prefer to drop video quality a bit (defaults for VLC...which I think you can now tweak in 1.01), but increase my happiness (no error messages, no codec problems...things JUST work!).

NOW, if you have it up and running, and running well, my telnet script / modifications to DVD Profiler work great.

Maybe I should post the beta of the webpage and config ini, as well as the telnet script. Give it a whirl...maybe the index out of bounds problem is because of my script...would you want to test it out for me? See if you see the same issue?

--Dan

[drozwood90]

Ok, a request for some help...

I've got another idea, but no time to implement it...

Using the "new" method of loading up DVD Collection, you can get a randome letter of the alphabet. What this allows is having the webpage be able to "parse" down the XML file more effectivly. The problem is, when you have over 1000 movies, the XML from DVD Profiler become unwieldy. As such, the 19MEG file makes the system begin to slow.

My proposal is:
Along with the "Use Big Collection" tag that I added (not released yet) for searching directories, I'd like to add some code to the webpage to essentially do the same thing with the XML. So, if you are looking at movies begining with "p" then the asp page only needs to look at dvdprofiler-p.xml, instead of the WHOLE xml file.

What would be needed:
-Small mod. to the webpages to a make them smart enough to find the right file.
-Small script or autoit program / etc. that would be able to process the dvd profiler xml and create new files, which only contain numbers, then letters a, b, c, etc. All in their OWN file.

Then the asp page only needs to search a smaller subset, making it run MUCH faster!!

Anyone looking to help?

I can bring you up to speed quickly with the same set of files I've been alpha testing with Chezmarty and a few others. Then hopefully this whole thing can be (maybe we can petition HS?) stuck into the updater so they won't get lost!

--Dan

[Czechmarty]

I wish I could help, but unless you convert everything into LabView, I'm useless!

Czechmarty (Or Chezmarty )

[drozwood90]

LabView...? Eww...

:-)

I'll try to get something as an experiment this coming week. Then Take the list of issues and polish everything up.

--Dan

[drozwood90]

Sorry about mis-naming...!

In my head I'm saying CHEZ, not Czech! Oh well, can you blame me? I'm half Polish .

--Dan

[drozwood90]

OK, I'm missing something...
I was able to whip together a little program that actually will break down the collections.xml file and give you one file for each letter (! for numbers).

Modded up a few lines in dvd.asp and dvdpopup.asp

Now my pages load REALLY REALLY fast...it's SO nice...

Everything seems to work except the Z. For some reason, I can't see anything wrong with the collection-z.xml file...but it shows up as NO movies available in the "paired down" version of the xml.

Dunno why...so at the expense of double the HD space, I now have made this thing quite a bit faster. Needs a lot more spit and polish.

Czech, want to try it out?

--Dan

[drozwood90]

Looks like the Z issue is not something I caused. It's just not acting properly (I took out my code and tried it).

Can anyone confirm that if you sort Z, you do not see any movies listed..? You must have movies IN the database to start with.

Thanks!

--Dan

[drozwood90]

I think I fixed it...

I added:

elseif ucase(strLetterStart)="Z" then
strXPath = "[SortTitle >= 'Z']"

after:

elseif ucase(strLetterStart)="ALL" then
strXPath=""

in dvds.asp