Hardware DVD jukeboxes/autoloaders?

[bgowland]

Just musing really. Does anyone know of any DVD 'jukeboxes' for multimedia systems? I'm thinking the equivalent of the multi-disk CD players (my friend has a 300 CD autoloader - Sony, I think).

If I ever get bored with tinkering with my GB-PVR setup, I'd like to start archiving my old VHS tapes either to CD-R in VCD/SVCD format or to DVD so we can get rid of the boxsets on our living room shelves and just play the recordings using my domestic DVD under the telly.

It occured to me it would be cool to have a DVD autoloader/jukebox connected to my media server PC upstairs perhaps with a plug-in to GB-PVR to load and play recordings from the disks. I realise there are issues with playing VCD/SVCD/DVD formats but with a big enough autoloader I could just have raw MPG files on the disks.

Anyway, as I said, just musing but would be interested to hear of any possible ways of doing this.

Cheers,
Brian

[wtg]

Just musing really. Does anyone know of any DVD 'jukeboxes' for multimedia systems? I'm thinking the equivalent of the multi-disk CD players (my friend has a 300 CD autoloader - Sony, I think).

If I ever get bored with tinkering with my GB-PVR setup, I'd like to start archiving my old VHS tapes either to CD-R in VCD/SVCD format or to DVD so we can get rid of the boxsets on our living room shelves and just play the recordings using my domestic DVD under the telly.

It occured to me it would be cool to have a DVD autoloader/jukebox connected to my media server PC upstairs perhaps with a plug-in to GB-PVR to load and play recordings from the disks. I realise there are issues with playing VCD/SVCD/DVD formats but with a big enough autoloader I could just have raw MPG files on the disks.

Anyway, as I said, just musing but would be interested to hear of any possible ways of doing this.

Cheers,
Brian

I really have been puzzled by the derth of DVD jukeboxes. I've wondered if it's some kind of licensing problem or something illogical. There's a million different ones available for CDs, why so few for DVDs? Personally the 5-disc models make no sense unless you're using it to play music too because most everybody has more than 5 dvds so what's the point of having only 5 in a jukebox and having to switch them when you want to watch a movie? But a 400 disc model offers more capacity than all but the most avid movie collector will exceed and makes for one convenient place to store and catalog them.

Sony makes a few different 400 disc DVD jukeboxes that I've been intrigued by but don't have any experience with. I've seen one at Best Buy for $399. I doubt that it has any kind of programmable interface, but since it has a remote if you have external input on your capture card and an IR blaster, it's certainly conceivable that you could programmatically control it. It'd sure be sweet, wouldn't it?

[bgowland]

Sony makes a few different 400 disc DVD jukeboxes that I've been intrigued by but don't have any experience with. I've seen one at Best Buy for $399.

I took a look at the Sony website and found one (DVP-CX985V) - it doesn't seem to be for sale here in the UK though. Oh well, it was an idea for the future anyway.

Cheers,
Brian

[tharvey]

Some SONY jukeboxes (CD & DVD?) have a control a1 connection that supposedly allows external control of the jukebox. If you do a search on the www there are a few folks out there have written apps to control SONY equipment from a PC using this protocol. It all sounds like homebrew stuff but in theory with this connection you could have a plugin control the jukebox and tell it to load and play a dvd etc.

Not sure if that helps,
Tom