David Brown

The Web Development Guy
posts - 5, comments - 27, trackbacks - 0

My Links

News

View David Brown's profile on LinkedIn

Twitter












Tag Cloud

Archives
Home | DocBook 4.5 Intellisense for Visual Studio >>

Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

I don't like messing with DVDs and their cases when I want to watch a movie, so I went and bought a 250 GB Maxtor OneTouch 4 external hard drive. Over the next few days, I plan to rip my DVD collection to it so I can watch them on Windows Media Center via my Xbox 360. As a test, I ripped "Leon The Professional" to my new drive and attempted to play it in WMC.

The movie showed up in my DVD Library just fine.

However, when trying to play it, I got the following message:

DVD Error:
Windows Media Center cannot play this DVD. Please Restart Windows Media Center and insert the DVD again.

To troubleshoot, I attempted to play one of the VOB files in Windows Media Player. However, I was met with this:

Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because the disc prohibits playback in your region of the world. You must obtain a disc that is intended for your geographic region.

That's odd. It was ripped from an NTSC disk, so I should be able to play it. The solution?

Well, it's not very obvious. First, I removed the drive from my list of watched folders. Then, I shared the external hard drive to the network. I then re-added the drive to WMC, but this time, I referenced it on the network instead of on my local computer, like this:

Viola! "Leon The Professional" plays perfectly now!

  • Share This Post:
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Share on Technorati

Print | posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008 10:11 PM |

Feedback

Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

There is a great add-on for WMC called MyMovice that will index all of your ripped dvd's and allow you to easily play back the files on WMC.
5/12/2008 12:20 AM | Justin
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

Thanks for the suggestion, but fortunately, this functionality is built into Vista's Media Center. My DVDs were indexed just fine, but they would not play if they were referenced on the local file system.
5/12/2008 7:19 AM | David Brown
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

What do you use to rip your DVDs? I want to do the same but the tools I use suck...

My wife and I like to watch series (L&O: SVU, Friday Night Lights, Etc) but when I rip them the episodes are out of order.
5/21/2008 8:35 AM | Bobby Cannon
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

I use a program called DVDFab (http://www.dvdfab.com/). It works very well and also rips DVDs with non-standard menus. My DVD recorder screws up the menu layouts, so some tools weren't able to read the DVDs.
5/21/2008 4:09 PM | David Brown
Gravatar

# Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

Hey guys, like David Brown, I also have used DVDFab; however, I have had better success with the program DVDShrink. The reason for this is because, if your like me, you have alot of movies and at 4-9 Gigs a piece, they really start to add up, but with DVD shrink it gives you the necessary VOB format yet it compresses it to about half of it's original size, giving you alot more room to store movies. Hope this helps!
11/13/2008 11:31 AM | Andrew Williams
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

David You are a savior! I was getting the same exact errors

(DVD Error:
Windows Media Center cannot play this DVD. Please Restart Windows Media Center and insert the DVD again.-
Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because the disc prohibits playback in your region of the world. You must obtain a disc that is intended for your geographic region.)

using a 1.5 TB Free Agent Xtreme drive using usb 2.0, it was driving me crazy!

It works perfectly! Thanks!
2/5/2009 8:10 AM | Eric
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

i have a philips dvp3252 player with USB. i just plug in my Western digital passport external hard drvie and watch shows and movies on my tv straight from HD its great! No burning so save heaps of dollars. want to buy another philips dvp3252 but not having any luck. does anyone else know a player that can do this. Patti
2/15/2009 10:16 PM | patti
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

Hi patti, I dvd has yours and bought a Maxtor 320GB hard drive and try to play movie but not working, screen does not show any files. How did you get this running on your DVD. Please share
3/26/2009 4:36 PM | Josh
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

DAVID!!! Referencing my "DVD Rips" folder (those on my external hard drive) through the network, and not locally, worked perfectly. I can actually watch them now without having to copy them onto my internal drive. As to how that fixes the problem I am completely lost. My problem now, because i use a Laptop, and am in places where I might not be connected to a network, the "DVD Rips" folder not longer exists as a network shared folder. Therefore MediaCenter can no longer see the folder.... Please please help. Why is this happening? I've tried all codecs, and read forum after forum, yours is the only idea that partially worked. Thanks so much
-Chad
3/31/2009 1:00 AM | Chadwick
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

WOW, it works a treat!!!
7/11/2009 6:55 AM | Martin
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

I use to play ripped DVDs from an Ext. Hard Drive on this laptop but had to reinstall the system disc and now the movies won't play. I get the followin "Windows Media Player cannot play the DVD because the disc prohibits playback in your region of the world. You must obtain a disc that is intended for your geographic region." Any solutations?
9/14/2009 2:47 PM | Jonesy
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

hey thanx! this did the job for me!
1/15/2010 12:29 AM | radhika
Gravatar

# re: Playing ripped DVDs from an external hard drive

hi

i have a philips dvd player which easily gets hooked on to my external 500 gb hard disk. now the problem i am facing is that whenever i copy a dvd containing more than one movies to my external harddisk, it saves them in two folders that is Audio and Video and when i click on video it gives me a list of the files on the dvd and copied on the hard disk. my question is how can i play the dvds copied on my external hard disk just like the way i play them on the dvd player. if i play the dvds copied on my external hard disk, it doesnt show the menu and all and you have to manually click on each file which is quite frustrating
4/17/2010 6:20 AM | josh
Post A Comment
Title:
Name:
Email:
Website:
Comment:
Verification:
 
 

Powered by:

Copyright © David Brown