[SOLVED] External USB DVD not working

[twodogs]

I'm trying to install a new external ASUS USB DVD player so that I can relocate my hybrid to the basement and still play movies. The problem is that the new external drive is recognized, but not usable. The MCE install seemed to go just fine and the internal DVD (also ASUS) plays movies after installing libdvdcss2. Here are some of my symptoms.

- When I select "Media:Manage Drives" from the user interface I see 2 disk drives
- Hitting "eject" on the first drive opens the door on the external drive (the other eject button opens the door on the internal drive)
- When I insert a movie in the external drive a box appears in the upper left corner that continually alternates between enabling and disabling the device
- The external drive does not mount from the KDE desktop when I insert a data DVD
- The drive also doesn't work on my desktop with Ubuntu 910, but works great on my windows laptop.

John

[ckerkhoff]

Have you tried searching elsewhere to see if this drive works under linux at all?  What is the model number?

[twodogs]

I'm searching like crazy to figure this out. Its an Asus SDRW-08D1S-U that is supposed to be fully supported in Linux. The fact that it appears correctly before media is inserted seems to bear that out.

[twodogs]

Somewhat embarrassing but I connected it incorrectly. The drive has a special usb Y cable in order to supply power from 2 ports to the DVD. I had left this wrapped in its baggy and just used one of my straight usb connectors. In my defense, the instructions are unreadable (printed on small page in 35 different languages).
I'm still not home though. This drive is to be connected through a USB balun and hub. The drive works when connected directly to the computer, and it works when connected to the hub. However, it stutters when connected via the hub and Intelix balun. I'll try upgrading to cat6 cable to see if that helps. Then I suppose I could try a different balun. I have searched and not found any info on a working DVD via usb balun - either no one is trying to do it, or perhaps they know it can't be done. I'll  post results.


John

[twodogs]

I finally got my external DVD player to work at a distance greater than the 16' max limit of a standard USB cable. It seems that a USB balun does not have enough throughput to play a DVD over cat5e at long distances (or short distances for that matter). I was confused because my USB balun advertised compatibility with USB2. When I researched the specifications I learned the following:

- USB2 supports a speed of 480Mbps
- DVD movies need about 160Mbps
- USB Baluns are limited to 12Mbps

So my balun would work with USB2 devices - just not at speeds greater than 12 Mbps! I needed a USB extender, not a balun. The extender I purchased has a 16' cable with a little single port USB hub on the end. I got a USBG-2U16 from USBGear with a chip by Genesis Logic. The chip buffers the information and retransmits it. I can attach another 16' cable to it for a distance of 32'. They can supposedly be daisy chained but I have not tried it.
So, I have a 16' USB extender connected to an 8' USB cable connected to a 4 port USB hub (with external power from a wall wart). My ASUS external DVD uses two of the ports in the hub in order to get the power it needs. Works great. I now have enough distance to put the DVD player upstairs next to the TV and leave the Hybrid in the basement.

John