[vlc] Re: Dvd playing over a network

[Gildas Bazin]

On Saturday 22 February 2003 04:17, Francisco J. León wrote:
> Is it possible to play a dvd over a network?

Yes, you can use vlc to stream a dvd over the network and you can also use 
vlc as a client to view the stream.

> Even more restrictive, can
> the machine hosting the dvd drive use Windows, and let linux use it?
> 

Well not exactly. You can stream the dvd with vlc from the Windows machine, 
but streaming is a one-way operation. The client doesn't have any control 
over what's streamed, it just receives the data. That means for instance 
that you can't stream the menus included on dvds (well you can stream them 
but the client won't be able to interfact with them).

> The most i have been able to do, is share the dvd drive over samba and
> play yhe .vob files. 
> 

That will only work if the dvd is not encrypted. But streaming with vlc 
might be a better solution because it will also stream encrypted dvds.

If the dvd is not encrypted and you share it via samba, you should also be 
able to use vlc on the client machine to play the whole dvd as if it was 
locally available (select the dvd menu feature in vlc and give it the name 
of the directory where you mounted the shared dvd).

> I have read some info about setting the dvd writer as a raw device, but
> since the drive is not in my machine i dont know if this would work
> 

I honestly doubt this would work (with encrypted dvds) because to decrypt a 
dvd the software needs to talk directly with the drive, which won't be 
possible over a network.

Hope this helps,

--
Gildas
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