XLOBBY controls both Sony DVP-CX777ES DVD changers!!

by **hjackson** on Fri Mar 03, 2006 2:00 pm

"Ouch... $1300 will buy lots of HD space... Maybe not enough to store 400 movies, but I think I'll have to pass. "

Well as of March 3, 2006, $1300 will buy you 3 500 GB Maxtor external drives ($429 each). If you use DVDShrink and compress your DVDs by 50% (3.75 GB), that will give 400 movies.

hjackson

by **sharp_1** on Sat Mar 04, 2006 12:37 am

I picked my 777 up for $399 + shipping...not $1300. $1300 was for a SDI conversion if desired.

by **galileo2000** on Sun Mar 05, 2006 5:08 pm

hjackson wrote:"It seems like a better way to have movies than to store them on the HD. DVDR's are about $.20 for 4.7G which is about $.04 a gig."

The 777 is a cheaper way to store movies in a one zone media setup, but it is NOT a better way. Some cons: longer load time, player subject to mechanical failure, only one zone can use it at a time, no PC processing

hjackson

hjackson,

I've seen many more HDDs suffering mechanical failure than I've seen DVD changers suffering one. When HDD dies, it takes your ripped DVDs with it. When changer dies, you take out your DVDs and put them into new changer.

With the Slingbox CD changer is a multizone (basically worldwide zone) device, using your own advice about switchbox attached to Slingbox

This setup lives happily in my house.

by **john_m_92627** on Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:29 pm

sharp_1 wrote:I picked my 777 up for $399 + shipping...not $1300. $1300 was for a SDI conversion if desired.

I paid $375 including shipping. $1300 no way.

by **sharp_1** on Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:52 pm

john_m_92627 wrote:
sharp_1 wrote:I picked my 777 up for $399 + shipping...not $1300. $1300 was for a SDI conversion if desired.

I paid $375 including shipping. $1300 no way.

Where did you find that??? Wow!!!

by **sharp_1** on Sat Mar 18, 2006 3:59 am

galileo2000

Have you had any issues with starting DVD's...I have had to modify quite a few from the standard 36 0 0 1 format. Any ideas or are we stuck making changes as the newer DVD's seem to be getting harder to start???

by **sharp_1** on Thu Mar 23, 2006 5:21 pm

Atlas wrote:One suggestion would be to use 1 bat file that takes arguments. You can setup your "Play" button or the "Click Event" for your category to to call the .bat file with an argument of the dvd number. I don't know if that information is in your database but based on your pic I'm guessing it might be "number"?

Your "play" event would then be

<Path>\SonyDiscStart.bat "%yourcategoryname>number%"
You may have to play around with the " above. May or may not need them.

And inside the bat file you would have
<Path>\sony_cx777es.exe COM1 36 %1 0 0 1

%1 would be replaced with whatever %number% is inside of Xlobby (disc number). This way you won't need individual .bat files for each movie and importing another one to Xlobby would just work provided you have the disc number in the DVD Profiler info. Hope this helps! Provided I understood what you are attempting to do!

This works awesomely!!! Thank you Atlas!!! Now I just have to figure out how to get all my DVD's to start on the currect title and chapter. Some movies will not allow the serial control to start the movie from chapter one and will just not play at all. The workaround would be to reauther all the movies that do this with the movie title and chapters only...unless some genuis like Atlas can help???

by **sharp_1** on Thu Mar 23, 2006 5:26 pm

Atlas wrote:And inside the bat file you would have
<Path>\sony_cx777es.exe COM1 36 %1 0 0 1

%1 would be replaced with whatever %number% is inside of Xlobby (disc number). :

What does the "%1" command do that makes it match up to the argument in the execute file command? I'm just trying to get a better understanding of how it works.

by **Atlas** on Thu Mar 23, 2006 10:19 pm

"genuis"? You're way too kind. I don't know how to get around the starting point issue seeing as how I don't own a disc changer. I'm assuming this is a changer/player that hooks to the TV (as opposed to a changer that you hook to your computer and still use a software DVD player). I have all my DVD's on disk and use TheaterTek. TT has a bookmark feature that I bookmark the start of the DVD.

The %1 is a built in variable of .bat files that says to "put the first argument here". With that in mind you can use %2, %3, %4 etc if you have more than one argument. I would assume the other numbers in the sony_cx777es.exe command line would be track# and chapter#. You could put that into your xlobby database and pass in those

<Path>\sony_cx777es.exe COM1 36 %1 %2 %3 1

I'm assuming that is what those positions are for (track,chapter). I don't know...you would have to test that out.

You could then use

<Path>\SonyDiscStart.bat "%yourcategoryname>number%" "%yourcategoryname>starttrk%" "%yourcategoryname>startchap%"

Obviously starttrk and startchap would have to be in your xlobby database.

by **sharp_1** on Thu Mar 23, 2006 11:24 pm

Since every movie start chapter is different and I am trying to make my work load lighter when importing new movies into the movies database from DVD profiler. I think the easiest thing to do would be to rip all my movies with no extras...this will take out the chapter issue all together and since I only have about 20 movies to do right now it the best use of my time. However, if I did want to expore your recomendation I could use the slot number and ID # in profiler as a chapter argument couldn't I?

I see what your saying about the argument strings...that is so cool.

by **Atlas** on Fri Mar 24, 2006 12:26 am

So I'm assuming you mean to reauthor to a DVD-R with just the movie? :-)

Just curious what the DVDs do if you use 1 1 instead of 0 0 on the command line? 0 0 may just tell the changer to start at the beginning of the disc. Most movies I know are track/title 1 chapter 1. Some have trailers at the beginning (ie film company, THX, DTS, etc) that are 3 1, 15 1 and so on but the movie ends up back at 1 1.

I guess you could store whatever you want in any field of dvd profiler and use it to pass to the exe. I don't use dvd profiler so I don't know what the default fields are that get imported to xlobby.

by **sharp_1** on Fri Mar 24, 2006 1:29 am

Thanks for the input. I may try the dvd profiler slot number if I see that its included into the default database. You're right about all movies starting in title 1 chapter 1 but the newer dvd's seem to be forcing teh trailers and other on us.

by **sharp_1** on Thu Mar 30, 2006 4:08 pm

Atlas

Just thought of something. Since for now I only have one 400 disc changer everything seems perfect, but what if I add a second changer...how would I control the second player off of a second RS232c port using your solution? Any ideas?

by **Atlas** on Fri Mar 31, 2006 9:56 pm

That's one of the beauty's of xlobby. You can have the database store whatever you want. I would assume that the second device would be on a different COM port ie COM2. You would need to store that info in the movie database as well. Then it can also be passed to the .bat file as an argument.

by **sharp_1** on Sat Apr 01, 2006 2:53 pm

Atlas wrote:That's one of the beauty's of xlobby. You can have the database store whatever you want. I would assume that the second device would be on a different COM port ie COM2. You would need to store that info in the movie database as well. Then it can also be passed to the .bat file as an argument.

So is this how I would do it?

1) .bat file would look like this:
<Path>\sony_cx777es.exe COM%1 36 %2 0 0 1

2) Argument would look like this:
"%yourcategoryname>comportnumber%" (should there be a space here) "%yourcategoryname>collectionnumber%"

Thanks