WD TV Live and Mezzmo

Have been enquiring in another forum about purchasing a WD TV Live and using it to play back ripped DVD's stored under the VIDEO_TS, vob file scheme (i.e. not iso or mkv), and it looks like the only way to play the DVD rip with the WD is to drill down and play the actual .vob file itself.

Now Mezzmo plays the rip properly by clicking on the movies folder, and so I was wondering if Mezzmo streamed to a WD Live and that played to a proper TV via HDMI, would I be able to use the WD menus to play the ripped DVD folder (like in Mezzmo) without having to play the .vob directly ?

Thanks very much

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Originally Posted by arrbee99

Have been enquiring in another forum about purchasing a WD TV Live and using it to play back ripped DVD's stored under the VIDEO_TS, vob file scheme (i.e. not iso or mkv), and it looks like the only way to play the DVD rip with the WD is to drill down and play the actual .vob file itself.

Now Mezzmo plays the rip properly by clicking on the movies folder, and so I was wondering if Mezzmo streamed to a WD Live and that played to a proper TV via HDMI, would I be able to use the WD menus to play the ripped DVD folder (like in Mezzmo) without having to play the .vob directly ?

Thanks very much

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No, you wouldn't have access to the menus. The .vob file would be displayed and you would just choose that for playback. With Mezzmo, though, you can organize and label the .vob file so that you don't have to worry about the drill down and can rename VTS_01.vob (for example) to something a little more user friendly. An .iso would be better because Mezzmo will break the individual video files out of the .iso automatically and groups them in a folder that you can label and name.

Mezzmo is better than most (all?) other media servers when it comes to handling & streaming ripped DVDs, Blu-rays + ISOs. When you add a folder containing a ripped DVD, Blu-ray or ISO, Mezzmo scans through all the DVD/Blu-ray files and adds video titles for each of the movies or TV shows contained on the DVD or Blu-ray. It does not add a video title for each .vob file since a movie or TV show may be made up of several .vobs. So for a DVD, you may see only 1 or 2 videos in Mezzmo since that's the movie and perhaps a director's cut, etc. (as compared to seeing 10+.vob files in a VIDEO_TS sub-folder). In addition, Mezzmo will collect movie/TV show metadata and artwork for the video titles from online video metadata sites.

Thanks for the info chaps. So, considering that I can already play DVD rips (and other video formats, show photos and play music) on our smart (Sony) TV using Mezzmo just fine, can I ask if I would actually gain anything by basically inserting a WD TV Live between Mezzmo and the TV ?

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Originally Posted by arrbee99

Thanks for the info chaps. So, considering that I can already play DVD rips (and other video formats, show photos and play music) on our smart (Sony) TV using Mezzmo just fine, can I ask if I would actually gain anything by basically inserting a WD TV Live between Mezzmo and the TV ?

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Since Mezzmo transcodes your files to a type that is compatible with your TV, there is really not much advantage if you don't have any issues with transcoding.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arrbee99

Thanks for the info chaps. So, considering that I can already play DVD rips (and other video formats, show photos and play music) on our smart (Sony) TV using Mezzmo just fine, can I ask if I would actually gain anything by basically inserting a WD TV Live between Mezzmo and the TV ?

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Agree with smitbret - if you are happy with streaming your files to your your Sony TV and everything is working OK, there's no reason to add another device to the mix. My only negative comment about Sony TVs is that we've found most models don't support streaming external or embedded subtitles so Mezzmo will burn subtitles into your videos (this is automatically done when transcoding & you have full control over how this is done - see http://forum.conceiva.com/showthread...titling-Basics). Whereas a device like the WD TV Live does support popular external and embedded subtitles, which may mean less transcoding will be required in some cases.

Thanks for the info. I try to avoid transcoding if I can, and don't need subtitles for anything (well not so far anyway), so it looks like a bit of a waste of money. Although that's never stopped me before.....