I copied a movie to my xbox with dvd2xbox, now I am wondering, what can I watch the movie with? What app? I have XBMP, and YAMP, and DVD-X2 DongleFree DVD-Player, if those wont work, what can I use?

why do you ask if you have not even tried? xbmp will play them fine

When you say XBMP will play the movie, do you mean it will if you click on the individual .VOB files or that it will play the movie like its supposed to be played? I was under the impression that XBMP can't string the .VOB's together to make one movie, that you have to click on each .VOB file?

you have to click each vob but you can put them in a playlist in the right order and the movie will run like from dvd.

I did what you said, and it worked fine until it got to the third VOB. The screen went all "pixelated" on me and it froze up. I used dvddecrypter to rip "shawshank redemption", then ftp'd the VOB's over to my videos folder. I only did the VOB's, I didn't mess with the IFO file. Should that be in there too? Thanks.

I don't see that the IFO would make a difrence. is there not a feature in xbmp tha will let you stack vob's so that they play as a whole. Like the playlist idea.

Yes, I did add the VOB's to a playlist but it won't go past the third VOB....kinda frustrating!!

You only need the VOB files. I always play mine straight off of my pc hard drive with XBMP. The problem I have is when I get to the 2nd or 3rd VOB file my movie switches languages. I can't change any settings in XBMP to fix the problem. Otherwise, XBMP works fine for me for VOB's.

Ohhh, ok. I'm not interested in playing them off my pc hard drive as my xbox is pretty far away. I have a 250 gb drive in my xbox so I just wanna throw all my movies on there, but as of yet I dont think there is any program to do that.

You got the Xbox to use all 250GB's?

Yea, I got it split between G: and F: Right now I have 83 gigs in each partition, after putting all my games, emus, apps, and 1000's of mp3's on.....and I'd like to fill the rest up with my movies!!!

sounds like a sweet setup, chuddy. i'll let you know if i figure out the vob problem. do you think it might have been dvd2xbox that caused the pixelation problem? maybe the rip didn't go perfect.

does the pixelation thing happen on all movies or just one? try ripping it again or testing other movies to see if the problem may be dvd2xbox and not xbmp. i never had pixelation probs, my issues are audio language. but i think my problem is IFOedit (a program I use to format my movies before burning). so see if you can't isolate the problem to dvd2xbox. good luck!!!

Thats the strange part, I ripped the dvd using dvd decrypter, which most of you know is a top notch program on my computer, then FTP'd the VOB's over to my xbox, I've actually never used dvd2xbox for movies. Your right tho, I should try either ripping it again or trying a different movie....I'll let ya know how it goes.

sounds good. that is strange. i have never used dvd2xbox, either. i sold my xbox awhile back, and i am currently putting one together with a flashed tsop. i already d/l'ed dvd2xbox; just waiting to get my box running. i will try it out next probably. i'd say the best bet is sticking with dvddecrypter, though.

have you tried restarting the xbox and playing the 3rd VOB file (the one that is pixelated) first instead of going through the playlist? and you could ftp that file back to the pc and try to play it in cyberdvd or some other dvd player that will play VOB's. that might help, too. i'm interested in this issue b/c I mainly use my xbox as a media box to play dvd divx files on. instead of burning the movies, i was thinking about just buying huge hd's and putting them in my xbox and my pc. i always have my xbox hooked to the pc. i like having all my movies accessible without putting in a disc.

well, let me know how this works out!!!

Yea, thats the only reason I bought my xbox was to use it as a media machine. I would HIGHLY recommend you get a larger hard drive....its sooooo nice. And they've really come down in price so its not really that big a deal anymore. I've just ripped The Matrix onto my pc hdd, when I get home from class I'll FTP it over to my xbox and see if that works. I'll let ya know.

Well, I just ripped "The Matrix" on my puter and made a playlist out of the VOB's. Video and music works fine, although some VOB's have voices while others don't........Oh how i can't wait for a program made to play dvd's off the hard drive!!!!

I'm not sure that VOB support is 100%. You might post in the XBMP forum here or even better on the forum at the XBMP homepage. Anyway, I use my xbox extensively as a media device - I use it to house media but also stream over my network. Where the xbox really shines is playing divx encoded video (you can keep very high quality and original 5.1 sound while still getting very good video compression - Vob files are just a horribly inefficient use of space but that was Mpeg2 when dvds were launched). I output my videos in 480p onto a 55" HDTV so I am very sensitive to quality loss and have been pleased so far. I also find it more convenient to stream my MP3s since I don't have to rename 29 gigs worth to xbox file name conventions and can share what I like under a custom hierarchy in Relax that gets me to my most played items faster. I'd also recommend the Xir Remote Modification for on/off functionality: http://cheaplpc.com/xir/default.asp

Just some thoughts for you since you are interested in using the box as a media device. I have a Divx tutorial link in my signature. It takes some getting used to but can be run fairly effeciently in batches and like I said before - the compression/quality ratio is astounding.

I will definitely check out your guide. I hate encoding to divx because it takes so long! I've tried using gordian knot but it was a bit complicated for my taste....But I know its one of the best programs out there. I'm not a computer guru by any means, either. I have a 250 gb hard drive in my xbox so space is the last thing on my mind, plus my computer is far away and I dont wanna run wires all over. I guess if I can't get the VOB's to work then I'll have to encode to divx. How long does it take you to encode a dvd to divx? I know with 2 passes it takes my computer like 8 hours.......and its a pretty powerful machine.

Mine is likely slower than yours but GK is optimized to run nicely in the background so I let it run for a few days after I queue some stuff up. GK looks complicated but there are only a few settings you mess with consistently and it allows you to tweak the quality of each encode so higher quality for stuff you like more. As for space 250GB gets eaten up very quickly by DVD in uncompressed format. You should still check the XBMP forums on their site and search for VOB to see if others have the same issue.

ChrisF, excellent tut! I just encoded the Matrix last night to Divx....works like a dream! You said you can do several movies at one time? That'd be cool. I did something different this time, the encoding process only took 2 hours and it actually works! I've tried doin it before and it took like 6 hours and didn't work. Thanks again!

When you are finished with a job it will ask you if you want to encode now. Say no and it will be added to the queue. Go and do another project. I basically run DVD decrypter and then demux the audio with an AVI project - these can run independently of GKnot so I keep doing them until I finish whatever batch. After each project is created I load it in GKnot and edit the settings appropriately, test for quality if I choose and add it to the queue. Obviously I am generally working on something else while all this goes on since you encounter a bunch of small breaks in between work. Once my queue is setup (however many I am choosing to encode - maybe 5 at the most) I choose - Begin encoding and let it run itself out. Just make sure you have some big free HD space.

EDIT: also delete what you encoded last night - we don't use this for copyrighted material.

Yea, I noticed that it creates a ton of files, i'll have to go and delete those. I got 2 100 gigabyte hard drives with RAID, so i'm gonna encode like crazy....plenty of space. Thanks again!