Experimenting with playing ISO files Options

[JustSumGuy]

Some people on this board report that they can't play some or any ISO files with their WDTV players. I, personally, haven't yet seen any instance in which the WDTV player won't play an ISO file at all, but several of them don't seem to play correctly. Note that this means some ISO files play perfectly on my WDTV right now (I'm using the latest official firmware that came out at the end of April 2009).

As for those that don't seem to play correctly, here's an experiment I've tried...

(1): I ripped a DVD (let's call it "Movie D" to distinguish it from A, B, and C, which play fine) onto one of my computers' hard drives (most of my machines run Windows XP Pro / SP3). The output was in normal VIDEO_TS/VOB folder format on the hard disk.

(2): I created an ISO copy from that DVD folder using ISOBuster.

(3): I played both the DVD folder and the ISO file using VLC 1.0.1 on my computer. They both played perfectly there.

(4): I copied both the DVD folder and the ISO file to the external disk that I then connected to my WDTV.

(5): The DVD folder version of "Movie D" played fine on the WDTV.

(6): When I played the ISO version however, it began playing properly, but before long it seemed to choke and sputter. The symptoms were much like you'd see if you tried playing a dirty DVD disc in a standalone player or on your computer: unexpected pauses, many dropped frames in a row, audio drop-outs, and other visual and audio artifacts.

I don't know why this occurs, but I don't see how it could possibly be a codec-related issue since the DVD folder format version plays perfectly.

I'll be performing additional experiments in an effort to find out, though. For example, I'm going to try different ISO creators, specifically UltraISO, to see if that makes any difference. I'm also going to explore more deeply to see if I can find some way to distinguish ISO files that play fine and those that don't.

One hypothesis I'll be exploring is whether or not disk fragmentation plays a role. Perhaps the problem I'm experiencing playing "Movie D" in ISO format arises because the NTFS file segments are spaced too far apart on my 1.5 TB disk. I'll test that by performing a Disk Keeper defrag and trying it again (but that takes a long time for a 1.5 TB disk, so I don't know when I'll be able to try that...)

If and when I learn anything useful, I'll report back. If anyone has any ideas or other thoughts to contribute, I welcome them!

[ToJa92]

Have you tried creating the ISO directly from the DVD? Using a program like Alcohol 120% or Ultra ISO to do a 1:1 copy of it, not just copy all the folders. I think it might help, but as I never watch any DVD content, I really don't know. Either way, good luck.