New Snazio 1350 owner - DVD drive replacement?

[neil_c]

Hi MPC people, its my first post!

My Snazio 1350 was delivered this week, and I've been checking it out over the last couple of days. It's performed well so far, but unfortunately theres a slight crack in the right hand display over the Eject button (It took me a while to realise that they were actually buttons!), but I might just let it slide, as it doesn't seem to have affected anything.

I entered CSS code, so now that the Snazio can play DVDs over DVI/component I can sell my Samsung HD850 upscaler. In comparison to the Samsung the Snazio seems to have a better picture even though the Samsung was connected via HDMI and the Snazio was over component (I'm ordering a DVI-HDMI adaptor for the Snazio).

But theres still one problem left - I intended to use DVD+Rs as my main format, but unfortunately the higher bit rates files won't play properly from the DVD drive - stuttering skipping etc. Most of my files play okay, but I'd rather they ALL played from the drive.

Apparently this problem is due to the slow access speed (2x-4x) of the drive that Snazzi uses. I know that a few of the Linkplayer2 owners have had a few issues with their DVD drives and have found a Lite-On drive that can be used as a replacement, so I would be interested to know if anyone else has been considering the same thing with the 1350.

As an alternative I have been considering buying a USB external 250Gb hard drive which I can use for the biggest/highest bit rate files and simply play the rest from the DVD drive, but still means another £100. I don't want to use a wired network connection as I'd need to hide the cat5, and that wouldn't be easy.

So at the moment I'm pretty happy with the Snazio, although I havn't had a chance to try the wireless network facilities yet, so hopefully everything works and the wireless card is in the right place!

[MorganB]

I'm interested in this mod as well. So who wants to step up and take one for the team? :)

[neil_c]

I'll bite the bullet, I'm sure it won't be that difficult to do. Where can I get a drive that will fit?

[Tank]

Are you very sure that your media is not adding to the problem?
I've tried some discs and they run fine.

Be prepared for some heavy upspinning if you replace the drive with a 16 speed drive, they make as much noise in your pc.

Just try a drive, only the mounting limits your options.

Funny thing is that I once tried this on another player, turned out that connecting the dvd player power supply to a seperate ps did the trick just as good. (These ps are underdimensioned every now and then.)

[Neoworld]

niel use the replacement drive they use for the LP2.

[neil_c]

No it is definately the DVD drive that is causing the problems.

I wired the 1350 to my network and all the media streamed flawlessly from my PC - I've got a spare 20m cat5 so I think I'm just going to bite the bullet and route the cable down the stairs.

I've ordered a Buffalo 250Gb external USB 2.0 drive for connection to my PC, and I've also ordered another box of 100 DVD-Rs for backups of all my files.

So now I'll have backups of all my .ts files and I can have a selection of files available on the network, and everything will play flawlessly.

But on the topic of the DVD drive - I thought that only slimline drives would fit in the 1350, and the LP2 accomodates full size drives, so surely the options for the 1350 are more limited and therefore we can't use the LiteOn?

[Ultim8Fury]

It's more expensive than routing cat5 but ethernet over power is capable of 85Mbps and has lower latency than wiFi.

http://www.devolo.co.uk/uk_EN/produkte/dLAN/mldlanhsstarterkit.html

[neil_c]

Has anyone had any further thoughts/experiments with a new DVD drive?

[guitar_oa]

if i use external DVD DRIVE
(Drive Rack)

how does this work ??



:?:

[PaulX]

http://homepage.mac.com/morgan68/.Pictures/Snazio/P1010154.jpg
Nice to see the inside for the ones who are that brave for not opened it already :D

Let's put that aside:
If you assume the max read speed of the DVD-Rom drive is max. 4 speed,
it is capable of reading data for about 42,3 Mbit per second if I'm not mistaking. (aproxx. 5400KB/s). I think that would be enough for playback of files with a data rate of at most 25Mbps like some .ts files isn't it?

[Ultim8Fury]

It's the seek and access times that are the issue. I found that by fast forwarding and then hitting play the drive would play my highest bitrate films. It just has real trouble starting out. A good drive will lower the seek time and improve playback.