Chris Lanier's Blog

I'm tired of the why would you want a changer, nobody else does responce so we don't care. If the question of where dvd streaming is is frustrating people, then maybe more want it. First, if streaming a dvd is just the changer then some pm's (and previous pms) just don't get it). a ripped dvd on a nas with all the bells and whistles that someone wants requires extender support of dvd playback. not everyone only wants the movie. Anyone with kids know they want to the games and other extras so converting is not an option for us. Second, its a timely conversion. Who has that kind of time? third, until recently nas was cheaper. Thats not the case anymore. Why would anyone buy a nas instead of a changer? fourth, users that find a workaround stop asking for features. Some of us don't want to rip the movie. I baught 4 movies today. it took me all of 3 minutes to have them on media center. 3 minutes. you can't rip the movie in 3 minutes. you can't convert it to extender friendly formats. I finished watching those movies for the first time before someone ripping them would have even been able finish the first conversion. Fifth, its only been what 4-6 months now that you could even buy a dvd changer without a computer? 1 brand on the market. its finally affordable. So I'm rather pissed that people in charge of the core features of this product think they can slack off and not finish it. 3 years is enough and I'm tired of it. You can't offer an extender that only works with media cetner, then offer a dvd changer that also only works with media center and then have the balls to say I shouldn't want to use them together. Media center is no longer about the living room. Its mobile, its in the bedroom and living room, its on the web, controls my lights, gets new recordings from my cell phone, pages me when the security system goes off, turns on and off my oven, provides a baby moniter. Shows me who is at the front door. I want to watch the movie in my media center branded hardware on my microsoft branded hardware in the other room. Its simple, make it happen. I don't care why its not being worked on or how many people it takes or why its a low priority. Hire some more people and fix this, its broke.

I second that,

I did buy the DVD changer for the same reasons as the previous owner. I am now switching to mythtv after following MCE since 2004 Edition.

I do own 3 xbox system one of which is a 360.

to me transcode 360 isn't a solution. Also the lack of QAM tuning is rather annoying.

I have been a patient customer but I now am reaching the point of no return. Vista won't stream dvds to xbox or tune QAM... that's fine

I am now switching to mythtv for the following reasons :

QAM tuning.

A regular XBox can be used as "extender" or "frontend" in mythtv terms by using XBMC and mythtv scripts.

Support of XL1B2 changer from sony.

And it can STREAM DVDS !!!!

for the NAS people you can load the iso of the dvd other the network.

Some people will say that Mythtv is hard to setup. I would say that given the fact that I waited about 2 years to stream dvds I would have been able to setup mythtv in that timeframe.