Sony 200 Dvd XL1B3

[DeadPenguin]

Anyone know why the price spiked on Sony XL1B3 units?

I understand basic supply and demand, but what made them go from $99.00 to $300+ so fast?

Any likely hood they will ever get back closer to the $99.00 price?

Regards,
Blair

[colinjones]

They are discontinued, so I guess people are profiting of the rapidly reducing supply side...?

[tschak909]

basically yes.. and this is exacerbated by two things:

(1) the fact that the XL1B3 supply is dwindling fast (I have three of em)
(2) the fact that the closest match still in production, is the Powerfile C200/R200 (which is horrendously expensive new)
(3) the fact that Sony has NOT announced there will even be a replacement. the units weren't hot sellers, and this is the first system i've seen that actually made good use of them (Sony's own software sucked so badly, and don't even get me started on WinMCE's My DVD's!)

oops, I guess I meant three..... dadaist joke?

-Thom

[Thraxius]

I made the mistake of not buying 4 of them when I had the chance.
I have 2 myself and I am really sad to say that I probably won't be getting a new one because there are none out on the market. LinuxMCE uses them well. I was so upset because no matter what system I was looking to use they all wanted to just use them as a Ripping station. Which was upsetting. I use it as a DVD player and I love it. Now I only have 300 dvd's I have to look through and put into my DVD drive.

[tschak909]

I put my box sets in the jukebox, and rip the rest.

-Thom

[colinjones]

Thom - do you know if they were/are multi-regionable? Even if I get one second hand, they were never available in Australia, so it is very unlikely that there are any Region 4 devices....

[tschak909]

I don't see any reason why not, the devices inside are standard Panasonic DVD-RAM drives with a different loader mech.

-Thom

[colinjones]

Alternatively, is it that LMCE understands specifically how to use this particular changer, some generic understanding of changer products or simply the way the changer presents itself to LMCE that allows it to work well with LMCE? Just wondering if any changer product would do as well (really hard to find any decently priced ones at the moment anyway!) or whether each needs to be tested fully first....

[tschak909]

there is support specifically for each type of changer, currently the following ones are supported (if you look at the Powerfile_C200 code)

* Powerfile C200 (very expensive)
* Powerfile R200 (even more expensive)
* Escient (outside of most middle class budgets)
* Sony XL1B series

each one has specific support, and is predicated on a combination of mtx being able to manipulate the changer, and for the embedded drive layout to be programmed into the device driver for each device. The XL1B is especially different because the firmware is very brain-damaged from a typical changer perspective, there is a lot of assumption done by the official Sony software as to how the drive should act, and thus a lot of workarounds had to be implemented in mtx (the status data is completely different than your typical autoloader), etc.

-Thom

[Matthew]

I don't see any reason why not, the devices inside are standard Panasonic DVD-RAM drives with a different loader mech.

Do you know how to replace the internal drive? Faster ripping, DVD-R, or maybe Blu-Ray?

[tschak909]

if you're clever enough, but it's not a straight replacement... take a look inside the case, and you'll see what i mean.

-Thom

[Matthew]

if you're clever enough, but it's not a straight replacement... take a look inside the case, and you'll see what i mean.

I looked inside, and wasn't sure that the drive component was completely removable, or that even removing the internals of a new drive would give me matching SW/plug interfaces and HW mounts. Or that just any new drive would match. It's pretty raw in there.

I examined my PowerFile C200 several years ago, and had the same uncertainty about replacing its even slower CD-only drive.

I'd like to see confirmation by someone actually completing the procedure before trying it.

[DeadPenguin]

I was just curious. Looks like a supply demand thing going on. On ebay the average price skyrocketed from $160 to almost $300+.
I would really like one but I can't justify that purchase right now. If there was a similar compatible drive around  $200ish it would be nice. Anything more than that and its worth ripping .iso's to a decent sized NAS.

Regards,
Blair

[DeadPenguin]

Is the XL1B2 compatible?
whats the difference between the xl1b2 and xl1b3?


Regards,
Blair

[tschak909]

yes,

basically? the drive. the drive in the B3 is a multi-format DVD+-R/RW/RAM/DL drive... the B2 does not do DL or RAM, (or dvd writing for that matter)

-Thom