Will Asus Ever Have DVD playback without OS?

Hey all.

I was just curious as to if ever Asus notebooks will have DVD playback without booting into the OS. I saw this ad on TV for a HP notebook that has this feature and I was wondering if Asus will ever incorporate anything like this to its future notebooks.

I think it would be a better feature than the audio dj that Asus notebooks right now. I mean, who really uses that thing? If the Asus notebook can do DVD playback without OS then it would be a really cool and expensive portable DVD player! Hahaha..

 

I think if it is posible and some one can figure out how to code the audio dj to integrate the needed codecs it be worth your while cus someone at asus will pay for this trick. But if it was posible i am pretty sure asus would have done this to their audio dj already. Its a good sugestion for fremont to take up with taiwan.

 

Yea, HP and LG has them, that was one gimmick(an awesome one though ) that attracted me to the LW60

It's quite possible, but a contract has to be inked up between the manufacturer(in this case, ASUS) and the OS-less program.

 

I haven't used the AutoDJ implimentation, but I'm sure you could come up with a very thin Linux install that would just display a menu and let you play audio or a DVD out of the drive. In fact, I'm 100% sure such things exist already.

Link:
http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html

I'm sure there are others too. Website says that GeekBox takes up ~6MB. Pretty amazing.

Basically, it's a gimmick. A boot menu and a distribution like this on a tiny HD partition and ANY PC can 'play DVDs without an OS'.

 

There's no such thing as an OS-less mediaplayer for the PC. HP QuickPlay is just a small BSD variant on its own partition.

Set one up for yourself. There are several small BSD and Linux distributions available out there that have Mediacenter-like functionality as their goal ( GeeXboX for example). They work with (at least some) RF and IR remotes (some will let you use a BT phone) and should work fine with keyboard hotkeys so the Audio DJ keys could work. Also: Reading NTFS partitions are pretty robust on both OSes, which means it can share media with Windows.

The obvious downside is that you will have to wipe the drive clean to install a different bootmanager than Windows, install the mediacentre OS on one partition, your normal Windows install on another, and preferably a separate partition for media. Go check out the various HTPC forums for alternatives.

Edit: I obviously spend way too much time from I start writing a reply to the time I submit it. It seems someone always sneaks inbetween stating the same as I was going to say.

 

I set up dual-boot with Gentoo linux and XP without wiping the drive clean. So I imagine the same could be done with any other linux distro, GeeXbox included. I just installed Grub into the boot sector and configured it with menu entries for the OSEs on the Linux and XP partitions. I've done this several times with different PCs. You can even re-size NTFS partitions (shrink and grow) using qparted.

Although I'm not responsible for any data loss that results from trying any of those things and messing it up... Always back up!

Now I have an itching to try to install something like this on my old beater laptop just to see how well it works.. So if I get a new Asus I can put it on from the start...

 

<offtopic>Really. Thanks. I'll have to read up again on setting up a Linux dual boot config on an already partitioned NTFS drive. Could come in handy.</offtopic>

 

doesn't really even matter, i mean its only about 10 or 15 sec longer to boot the dvd os, and then after the movie if you wanna switch to windows you have to boot it again, might as well just boot into windows. my 2 cents

 

Yeah. I can see it as a good gimmick for people who can't keep their Windows boot times low though

 

Agreed.

I think asus will put this feature on their notebooks in the future though - pretty useless if you ask me.

 

Useless? Nah. I think its awesome. It s a cool feature and it helps dealers becuase now when there are problems with codecs we can simply test dvd readability with the audio dj that doesnt use windows codecs. Atleast a few times a month i see phonecalls like my dvd makes my computer freeze or it stutters......I think the audio dj as it is now is pretty useless./

 

Audio DJ would be useful if it could play MP3 CDs or play music from a USB key. (IMHO)

 

I don't see why it shouldn't. BSD has the capability to mount USB mass storage and CDs for sure. Depends on the implimentation Asus chose.

 

I don't think the Asus solution use the computer per se. Thus no OS and the limited functionality. Considering the cost of portable CD players (virtually free) there can't be much extra hardware to enable simple CD play only.

For more advanced functionality (decoding and playback of compressed audio and video media) much more horsepower is needed. I don't see anyone adding a more costly DSP and firmware ROM to enable such playback, so then we're back to booting some form of OS to tap into the computing resources of the computer itself. A BSD variant is the most likely to be chosen by a company due to the unrestrictive license.

PS, and perhaps off topic: For those looking for an easy MCE-like setup Media Portal has promise. Still unfinished, but is shaping up to be a good media frontend.

 

Based on my understanding of AudioDJ, it is just a small BSD partition on the hard drive. If you replace your hard drive you have to load it onto a partition on the new one to keep the feature. It's not a hardware player. I could be wrong though, no having used it.

 

i don't know much about that you guys are talking about, but some laptops do have the Video DJ and the Audio DJ, um if i format the HD, so that i can install a fresh windows XP, will i loose the Video and Audio DJ? or would i just have reinstall windows XP and then the software or something for Video and audio DJ.

Thanks,

MysticGolem

 

Looking around, there is a good chance I'm wrong about that. Best to ignore my rambling since I haven't actually used the thing.

 

hehe, i don't even own a laptop yet, lol so i gots no clue either lol, ohwell, would be nice to know in advance before someone does something to their HD lol.

Thanks,

MysticGolem