Boxee Bugs, Redux
Not too long ago, I wrote about some problems I was having with trying to watch my collection of DVDs which were ripped onto my hard drives. I wrote about how Boxee didn’t replicate the features I was expecting to find in a DVD player, and how it wasn’t really worth it.
Well, I take it all back.
Sort of.
I was tipped off in the Boxee forums the other day that for some inexplicable reason, Boxee doesn’t play VIDEO_TS folder rips properly, but, if you simply convert those folders into individual ISOs, then suddenly, all will be right with the world.
It seemed silly and rather ridiculous, I mean, why on earth would that be the case? But figuring there could be no harm in trying, I grabbed a copy of ImgTool Classic, picked out my rip of The Shawshank Redemption, and gave it a whirl. A few minutes later, I had a shiny 8 gig ISO sitting on my drive. I made a share for it, went upstairs, and opened up my Movies list on Boxee.
It recognized it, so that was a good start. I hit play, and lo and behold, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was like I was using a completely different piece of software. All the Boxee menus changed, I could suddenly access DVD menus and properly set my audio preferences for the entire film, not just for individual VOBs. Subtitles come on or stay off at my request, not whenever they damn well feel like it. It displays the length of the entire film, not just 25 minute VOB intervals. Chapters even work!
Now, mind you, it’s not perfect. There are one or two small bugs. Changing subtitles during playback is clunky at best, the menu covers 3/4 of the screen, so you can’t discreetly turn them on or off. Speaking of which, the main option for subtitles (the one not in the settings window) takes you to open subtitles, where it attempts to download a set. Why? Why not use the DVD-included titles first? Skipping around is a bit buggy too, sometimes it will display video in slow motion before catching it up, but that could just be a result of the slightly underpowered ATV hardware. And the DVD recognition could use some tweaking too; 12 Monkeys came back as Disney’s 1967 feature, Monkeys Go Home, and despite correcting it, An Inconvenient Truth returns as both that and An Inconvenient Tax, both of which point to the same ISO. Very odd.
So now, the only issue I really have is actually a question. Why? Why on earth would Boxee handle a VIDEO_TS folder differently from an ISO? They’re the exact same contents, Boxee figures out which VOBs to play in which order, so why can’t it just do the same thing for both? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I’m happy to have found a solution, but I shouldn’t need to.
In the meantime, however, I am rapidly encoding all of my VIDEO_TS folders to ISOs, and I’m delighted to say that I am now just a short step away from my goal of having all of my DVD collection available on demand in any television in the house.