Gateway Connected DVD hacking

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Gateway Connected DVD hacking

Gateway Connected DVD player

After looking through the comments in the Gateway Connected DVD player review and my first post when I discovered it, There is a wealth of information for owners looking to extend their use of it. Here's a short list of highlights from the valuable comments that have all come in (thanks to everyone that posted and shared their info, by the way):

- How to allow >3Mbps movie streams
- Linksys 802.11g cards are supported with the newest firmware
- How to let it index and use files on mapped network drives in XP
- How to go about hacking in streaming radio support
- How DivX streaming is done and what is required for it (latest software + fast processor on your PC)
- full list of 802.11b cards that are supported
- Where to download the latest firmware and desktop server

Now, if someone could figure out how to change all the gateway graphics with personalized graphic files, I think we'd have pretty much every major feature request covered on the unit.

by Matt Haughey January 1, 2004 in Products

Comments

Sorry, Matt, I guess I wasn't clear enough in my post (rambling as usual, I guess). I could not get the Linksys card to work. I was having a problem getting the DVD player to connect and stay connected, and when I applied the latest firmware update to the DVD player, I was able to use the Gateway card without a hitch.

Without the update, the player would disconnect randomly and wouldn't play video at all, so I tried the Linksys card out of curiosity. It didn't work, but putting in the firmware update on the DVD player itself made all the difference in the world.

Sorry that wasn't clearer in my post, but I can't imagine that Gateway would not work on developing G compatibility into the device soon.

Posted by: adampsyche at Jan 2, 2004 10:30:07 AM

Does the software support streaming AAC files?

Posted by: Some Guy at Jan 2, 2004 2:01:44 PM

Some great stuff there. Now if only Gateway would add Windows Media video formats to their media server, we'd be golden.

Posted by: Joost Schuur at Jan 2, 2004 5:20:55 PM

Does the software support streaming AAC files?

Without any means of quicktime support, I don't think AAC would be possible.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Jan 2, 2004 7:55:05 PM

Has anybody been able to connect the GW Connected DVD player with an Apple Airport using WEP? Its works fine without WEP. I have other devices that connect fine but I can't even ping the DVD player. I have also tried using a static ip address. When I choose the right SSID and set the WEP hex password is says it connected fine but I get nothing. I notice that even if I type the wrong password it says it connected fine. Any ideas?

Posted by: Eddy Cue at Jan 3, 2004 5:10:11 PM

AAC is not specific to Quicktime. It's an MPEG standard licensable by anyone:

http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4aac/standard.html

The AAC files you buy from iTunes, however, are protected and require Apple software to play.

There is one media adapter out there that supports normal AAC by transcoding (realtime) on your PC. I'm hoping more will be supporting it in the future.

Posted by: Some Guy at Jan 4, 2004 1:38:02 PM

I wish someone would right a linux version of the server for this thing. Anyone know if one is in the works?

Posted by: Ward at Jan 5, 2004 10:27:42 AM

right = write. gees!

Posted by: Ward at Jan 5, 2004 10:39:43 AM

so no G support yet?

Posted by: juc at Jan 7, 2004 1:06:49 PM

I haven't purchased my Gateway Connected DVD player yet, but probably will be pulling the trigger over the weekend. Someone had posted asking for screenshots of the software. While I can't show actual screenshots in use, I was able to dig up the .pdf of Gateway's User Guide for this device. You can find it at http://support.gateway.com/s/Manuals/HomeTheater/2519945/8509283.pdf, and it includes several screenshots.

Posted by: AJRitz at Jan 8, 2004 7:06:33 AM

Just got mine yesterday. I'm having trouble getting my DIVX files to be picked up by the server. AVI is enabled, but the scan won't pick a file up. Still working on that one. Otherwise, MPG and MP3 files have played nicely. As long as I don't have a problem managing playlists on my computer (which I don't), then I think the menus are fine.

I just realized that this player is the same as the Oritron Networked DVD Player NPD3117 (http://www.dvdrhelp.com/forum/archive/t168339.html, http://www.onmediadvd.com/onmediadvd/NetworkedDVD.html). They are both Digital 5 players, and it looks like info applying to one should apply to both. I think we can get a lot of information from their sites.

Posted by: Jay Miller at Jan 8, 2004 11:05:44 AM

I found the AVI problem at OnMedia's web site:

"To summarize, this includes Divx 3-5, XVID, and certain other related MPEG 4 codecs. If the video stream does not indicate one of these FOURCC codes, the file will be filtered out. AVI files must have an index chunk; otherwise they will be filtered out. The index chunk is used for fast forward and rewind. The most common reason that an index chunk would be missing is if the file had not finished downloading and is incomplete (the index chunk resides at the very end of the file). AVI files containing WMA audio tracks are filtered out."

Posted by: Jay Miller at Jan 8, 2004 11:15:46 AM

Please Help: Over 1000 of my MP3's are getting filtered out and are not being included in the database---they are all 128bit--any thoughts.
Are there any other help forums out there?
thanks
juc

Posted by: Juc at Jan 9, 2004 2:59:25 PM

I have several mp3 files with names that contain foreign characters, like for example ä. This is a standard ANSI charcater but when a word in a mp3 file name contains this character, the whole word is scrambled and the title unreadable. It seems like the Gatewat Connected DVD player supports onle the original non-standard PC ASCI character set. Talked to Gateway support about it, but the only answer I got was 'that is the way it is'. Anybody else seen the problem or have a solution to it?

Posted by: Ken Axelsson at Jan 10, 2004 8:08:14 AM

Just an update--I reinstalled the software without implementing the bitrate hack and it recognized all of my mp3's. I then used the hack and it was all good---Somehow I must have messed up the filter.cfg

Posted by: Juc at Jan 10, 2004 10:34:16 AM

Greetings,

Has anyone had any success playing MPEG2 files across the network? The problem is that even low bitrate (<3000 Mbps) files are being misidentified by the server software as being high bitrate files.

BTW, I checked my filter.cfg file, and by default for "WIRED" networks it is already set to play files up to 5 Mbps.

Posted by: MeGotNo Spam at Jan 13, 2004 12:23:14 PM

Just open the filter.cfg file into notepad and change the 5 Mbps to a higher number (theoretically anything) and that should let you play the MPEG2s. However, I don't know why they are being misidentified in the first place. Maybe try reinstalling the software.

Posted by: Juc at Jan 14, 2004 6:15:50 AM

Could anyone who has gotten the any 802.11g adapter to work in the Gateway Connected DVD Player post the model # of the card. After upgrading to the latest firmare I cannot get the Linksys 802.11g (WPC54G) to work in the unit. It says No Card when I try to configure it. Thanks for any help in this matter....

Posted by: JoeShmoe at Jan 14, 2004 7:30:38 PM

Has anyone gotten the "Transcoding CPU Speed" addition to the filters.cfg file to work? I have added it like this:

[MPEG]
Transcoding CPU Speed > 750

But this has no effect...the "AVI" and "Enable Transcoding" checkboxes are still disabled. I have a 1GHz AMD Duron processor. I think it should be able to keep up, or I would at least like to give it a try.

Thanks,
J

Posted by: Jay at Jan 17, 2004 9:08:24 AM

I was in the wrong place...this is in the netplay.cfg file.

Transcoding CPU Speed=1200

Still, though, I changed it to 750 and restarted my Media Server, with no effect. Any insight on this matter would be appreciated.

Posted by: Jay Miller at Jan 17, 2004 9:13:25 AM

My bad, that did work...and sure enough, it streams fine.

Posted by: Jay Miller at Jan 17, 2004 9:30:49 AM

I keep seeing references that this player transcodes Divx to MPEG-2 before streaming.

Is this only for Divx3? Or do all MPEG-4 files (Xvid, Divx5 etc.) have to be Transcoded & Streamed?

Is there a noticable loss in quality after conversion? Also, any idea on how much of a bit rate change there is? ie. does the 900Kb Divx video eat up 3Mb of bandwidth after it's transcoded?

Thanks!

Posted by: Rob at Jan 19, 2004 1:33:14 PM

The Gateway D5 Steaming Media Server will transcode all non MPEG-2 material (ie Xvid, Divx5, ect). I have not noticed any loss of quality as long as the tanscode setting is set to the highest setting which on my AMD 2700+ XP uses very little resources (5% of so of cpu time).

Great product, I now have over 100+ 700MB DIVX movie files on my computer and no longer have to change DVD's to view them. I usually convert 2 of my DVD's a day to DIVX just because of this player.

Posted by: Rick at Jan 29, 2004 10:21:03 AM

With regards to your other question on the amount of bandwidth used during transcoding I performed a test with a DIVX of Monster Inc.

The Divx bitrate was around 950kbs. The highest bandwidth I noticed while transcoding was around 2Mb/sec.

Hope this information helps you decide to pick up one.

Posted by: Rick at Jan 29, 2004 10:36:54 AM

I don't know if anyone realized yet, but on the server software where you specify how your DVD player is connected, you can specify wireless or wired. Well, I found that this setting just tells the software which bitrate filter settings to use, and the server has no way of verifying how the player is really connected. So a quicker and easier way to increase the limits of the wireless files is to just tell the software your player is connected wired instead of wireless.

Also, I was having an issue with choppy and studdering in some of the divx movies, and it was because my wireless was not getting a good enough signal. So I just added an external antenna to the wireless card and it streams perfectly now:

Directional Antenna

Since you will not be roaming with your dvd player like you would with a laptop, the best reception will be with a directional antenna (not an omni that will just radiate the signal where it is not needed). A decent 6-8dbi directional runs $20-$30 or you can build a proper waveguide cantenna (not the pringles yagi junk) for $5 (plus pigtail).

Of course this is only possible if your wireless card supports an external antenna. The list of Orinoco card and clones I posted all have an external antenna jack (mccard connector), but if your card does not you can add an external atennna to most wireless cards.

Here are instructions for the Dlink 650:

http://www.guerrilla.net/reference/80211_mod/dwl-650_ext_antenna/index.html

the NetGear MA401:

http://www.packetattack.com/mirrored_pages/ma401/ma401-mirror.html

and the SMC 2632:

http://www.guerrilla.net/reference/80211_mod/SMC2632_antenna_mod/index.html

Most of the PRISM-based cards are similar - here at work I added an external antenna to a generic Phoebe wireless card that was Prism 2 and internally it looked nearly identical to the dlink 650 and netgear 401. If you read the intersil prism specifications on intersil's site it outlines the speficiations and schematics which makes modifying the PRISM cards easy since they all have to implement the specification the same.

But if you start with an Orinoco or Orinoco clone, you don't have to mod anything - just plug an antenna and go.

- Slater

P.S. - I also found something of interest pertaining to adding your own background image. If you look at the gateway firmware upgrade, there are 2 files - boxedcow.thumb and Puma2-Gateway-DVD.img. Well, boxedcow.thumb is just a jpg file that has been renamed (change the extension from .thumb to .jpg and you will see the image just fine.) That means you can take any picture (the size must be 192x128x16M) and rename it boxedcow.thumb and reapply the firmware. I have not tried it, but I will and post the results. If that doesn't work the only option is to figure out how to hack the img firware file, since it should have the background image as well as the screen saver image.

Posted by: Slater at Feb 2, 2004 10:41:01 AM

OK, I found out what the thumb file is - it's just a thumbnail for when you select the firmware upgrade version. In other words, when you boot from the CD and scroll down and select the firmware upgrade, the thumbnail picture appears at the bottom. Pretty useless but whatever.

Anyways, the interesting thing is that when you boot from the firmware upgrade CD, the title of the screen says "Skin Update or Firmware Upgrade". So obviously this unit was built to be easily user-skinable, and either Gateway or one of the sister hardware companies (OnMedia, GoVideo, etc) may release different skins and/or the skin tool to create your own.

- Slater

Posted by: Slater at Feb 5, 2004 6:52:22 PM

Gateway now has a 16 bit wirelss g card that works with the connected player for sale on their site for $50.

now if we could just change those graphics....

Posted by: Getsome at Feb 11, 2004 12:43:54 AM

Hi all,

I'm considering the Gateway Connected DVD player, but I had a couple questions. I want to use it mainly to stream music, but I have a
*lot* of MP3s, well in excess of 1000 albums worth, and I'm worried that the interface will make browsing for albums a nightmare. My first preference would be that the DVD player would let me browse via the file structure on my server PC, and play entire directories of
MP3s, however I suspect that's not possible with the Gateway product. It looks like it only lets you browse by Album, Title, or Artist ID3 tags, so my question is: when you're browsing by Artist, will it let you select a particular album by that artist, or will it just list all the songs from that artist in one big list?

Posted by: al at Feb 12, 2004 8:51:44 PM

Where is the firmware that supposedly supports the Linksys Wireless G card? I have the model that is listed for the 1.22a ver. of the firmware and I applied it and tried a Linksys Wireless G card but no dice. The guy I spoke to at Gateway had never heard of a possible firmware update.

Thanks.

Posted by: Jason at Feb 21, 2004 9:58:35 AM

Jason,

It turns out you can't get a linksys g card to work with the existing firmware. Gateway has started selling their own wireless g cards for the gateway dvd player. I just got mine and it did come with a disc that had new firmware, though it doesn't appear to be available on their site at all.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Feb 21, 2004 10:04:42 AM

You've got to be kidding - they're only providing the firmware to people who buy their cards? What a surprise. You know, I would be inclined to buy the card if I hadn't had to call to get them to replace the POS 802.11b card that they sold me with the player. After using it for a couple of weeks, video started breaking up and then eventually locking the player up so hard that I had to restart it manually. I bought the compatible Netgear card and, voila, problem solved. Of course, I still have the low quality video to contend with due to not having enough bandwidth available which would be solved by making the player G compatible. Pretty sad showing. They won't be selling this player anymore in 6-9 months if they don't get with the program with so many other companies getting ready to release better media players. Thanks for the info Matt.

Posted by: Jason at Feb 21, 2004 5:39:48 PM

I just recieved my Gateway Connected DVD Player today. I had read this forum and a few others. Downloaded, and burned to a cd the Firmware update (1.22a) Dropped in my Linksys 802.11G Wireless card, and turned on the unit. It indicates "NO NETWORK CARD" I even tried a wired card on the compatability list and it says "NOT A COMPATABLE CARD" or something like that. Any suggestions, I know someone had d\said that it does not support Cardbus cards...??

Thansk all for your help.

John
Las Vegas

Posted by: JohnQ at Feb 27, 2004 10:26:16 AM

John, just buy the new wireless g card from Gateway and it will definitely work for you.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Feb 27, 2004 10:34:09 AM

I actually got the nearest GW Country Store to exchange my replacement B card for a G card. Has anyone else run into trouble streaming video - I can start playing a MPG-2 file and fast forward or rewind but I can't start playing the video again after using FF and RW. Very strange behavior. The player also locks up once in a while. It seems very much like buggy firmware. Anyone else?

Posted by: Jason at Mar 3, 2004 8:47:23 PM

Divx Question:
I just started using the program Showshifter to record TV (It is an excellent program for PVR and incorporates TitanTV as well). However, If I use their standard settings to record to DivX and/or DivX Pro, it won't play on the player. But, the software will recognize it and incorporate it into the playlists. It will start and then either get really choppy with poppy audio or not play at all. Both setting use Microsoft's ADPCM audio codecs and DivX Pro 5.05 video codecs. The bitrates are well below my settings. Next, after fiddling with the setting on showshifter, I was able to get the files to work if I use the DivX 3 codecs with same audio settings as above. My question---if the software is transcoding the files to MPEG prior to sending it to the player, why is this not working with the DivX 5.05 codecs. Are they not fully supported? Why are they even showing up in the software?
-Note--the files work fine in Media Player, Divx player, and the showshifter player.
-A lot of info, but I wanted to lay it all down
thanks
JUC

Posted by: JUC at Mar 4, 2004 7:32:11 AM

I have a simulair problem. I was using the Hawpauge winTV card to capture video via SnapStream BeyondTV which worked great but with poor "mono" sound quality... (it's only a $69 capture device).

I then purchased VideOh! and it is awsome on the PC with beyondTV. The problem is; When the Gateway connected DVD player plays it, it is now blocky and has no sound at all! All the bit rates are within the players default range... Any idea's?

When will there be another update for this software and firmware?

-Patrick

Posted by: nadeaup at Mar 5, 2004 6:52:15 AM

Okay, I am having another problem as well. And I appologize that I am posting a more general question in the 'hacks' section but it seems that this one is the most current. Anyway, when I initially scan all of my files using the musicmatch plugin, I am able to search by artist, and then it gives me a list of albums by that artist (this is on the player itself). However, I just realized that recently, when I search by artist, all of the songs appear in alphabetical order-- as opposed to letting me select which album I want. Any thoughts?
thanks
JUC

Posted by: Juc at Mar 5, 2004 3:36:53 PM

Matt,

Thanks for the advice on the G-Card Installed it and things generally seem to be running much better. However, I am having the same issue as you. The Gateway will lock up while playing a recorded TV show. I have the Linksys 802.11G Router, with the Newest firmware update (2.02.2) The Video & Sound quality is great, then it just lockes up. Never at the same point. I have edited the FILTERS.CFG file a few times, but that does'nt help. Also looked at the NETPLAY.CFG files and edited the
"Transcoding CPU Speed=1200" line but all to no avail.

Any suggestions...Anyone.

Posted by: JohnQ at Mar 7, 2004 8:47:29 AM

Okay, I just received the G card in the mail. However, I really haven't seen any improvements over the B card. I really wasn't expecting any though because all my videos were playing back fine with B. However, as I said in an earlier post the shows I recorded using the DivXpro codecs were all choppy---and were choppy with the G card too. Oh well. Another thing that is bothering me is that with the firmware upgrade came some changes that the rest of the Connected DVD player users out there (those that did not upgrade) could find usefull. Most importantly is the time bar on the bottom and the fact that you can scan ahead in 2X, 4X, 10X 20X and 100X (maybe others too, I am doing this from memory). This feature is HUGE. I have often been stopped mid way through a movie due to a phone call and then have to FF through the movie while holding the FF button. No longer. Anyway, the point that I am making is that it is unacceptable for Gateway to only offer these upgrades to people that buy their new card. Oh yea, I also tried the Linksys G card but no luck. But I haven't tried other 16bit G cards and I think the Linksys is 32bit. So, I am returning the G card from Gateway because I think I really don't need it yet (but at least I can take advantage of the new firmware!!)

Posted by: JUC at Mar 8, 2004 10:27:09 AM

Question for you JUC.....
How is your performance with the 'G' firmware +'B' network card? Is it smooth or choppy when playing video? I just returned my 'G' card to Gateway, but flashed my DVD player back to the 'B' firmware. It didn't occur to me to try the 'G'firmware with the 'B'card. BTW, the new 'G' server software did not recogonize my DIVX movies anymore. Did anybody else experience this? Gateway technical support thought I was nutz and wanted me to reinstall windows on my pc....haha

Posted by: Darkstar999 at Mar 12, 2004 11:02:10 AM

Darkstar999, When I initially started using the G firmware with the B card I was having trouble connecting and would lose the server often. After getting really frustrated, I reinstalled the software and it has been working as good as the older version firmware with no real issues--no problems getting DivX to work either.
JUC

Posted by: JUC at Mar 12, 2004 3:57:22 PM

I absolutely love this machine. Using wired version on 100mb network and no choppiness whatsoever with an AMD 2900+ server. Anyway, I have looked thru this blog and cant find the answer to how to stream internet radio. Can it be done and how exactly if so.?

Oh.. and for those of you that didnt figure it out... Just delete the line in the config file that says:

Transcoding CPU Speed > 1200

and save and you will have the transcoding option and then the .AVI option for scanning.

Posted by: Jammer29 at Mar 15, 2004 4:30:49 PM

I finally resolved the problem that I had with not being able to resume playing video after FF or RW, after upgrading the firmware on my player for 802.11g support. After flashing the player back but still having the problem, I flashed it forward again and back revved the streaming media server software - problem solved. Now that it works, I do like being able to FF and RW in greater than 10 sec intervals. This player hasn't worked out like I hoped but it's a good DVD player and the streaming works well enough. This BLOG has been a big help. I hope that this post helps someone else.

Jason

Posted by: Jason at Mar 20, 2004 5:47:39 PM

I'm running server 2.1 B07-08, and firmware 1.22a on a wired version of the connected DVD player. I'm serving it with a 1.2GHz Duron with 750M running Win2k (SP4).

I'm having problems with choppy audio. After playing a few MP3s (192k) there's a chance the next one played will have rapid stuttering and digital noise. Pausing and resuming clears it up, but not always for very long. Selecting a different song and returning to the stuttering one seems to work better. Has anyone else seen this?

Everything else (except FF in a transcoded XviD) works fine. I've watched a couple movies on it (on DVD) with no trace of any audio (or any other) problem.

Gateway support has been useless for this so far. Their script says clean your cables with alcohol and keep your cables 10 feet from your TV. I suppose if I did that I wouldn't have the problem, but I'd also never get the signal into my TV. Clearly the same cables play DVD audio just fine.

I already had a progressive scan DVD player (decent ones are so cheap now), but replaced it with this because of the networked MP3 capability. It turns out this is cheaper than a piece of furniture with doors to contain all our CDs and keep the baby out of them. It's quite a bit cheaper than a SlimP3, and makes for a net zero change in remote control count.

Needless to say, this audio problem is a showstopper if I can't address it. I haven't tried swapping it for a different unit (since not one person has mentioned this problem, maybe I just have a flaky unit). I also haven't tried running the server software on a different PC (since all my PCs are either identical to this one, or much slower, I'm not hopeful about that).

My video problem sounds like one from a previous post, with a twist. When I FF in a transcoded video file, the DVD player skips to the next video file (another movie, in my case) when I let go of the button. Oddly, I don't recall seeing this problem when I transcoded at "best" quality. My machine isn't fast enough for that quality level, though, so I can't use it. Does anyone else see a correlatuon between FF problems in video files and the transcoding quality level?

A previous poster said he resolved his FF in video problem by switching software versions, but I wasn't clear what versions he ended up with. Anyone know?

Now that I've reflashed my player to 1.22a, how do I go back? I don't see any otehr firmware tarballs on the Gateway site.

One previous poster asked if you can see albums by a selected artist, and the answer is yes. When I select an artist, I get one option per album, plus an "all" option.

While I'm here, a wish list:

A "shuffle" button on the remote that applied to any selection. To get shuffle you have to make a playlist, and it only shuffles when the list is selected on the player (or so it seems). What I want is a winapm-like fast-morphing endless shuffle/repeat, with a guarantee to never play the same song twice in a row.

Music behind a slideshow.

A better scanner in the media server. After scanning my drive a couple of times, I had several songs, images, and movies in the database multiple (2-4) times (for the same path/file).

It also needs to be smarter about playlists. If it discovers a song via a playlist, and the same song via a directory scan, that's still only one song. This thing seems to add these twice. I had several directories with winamp playlists in them. After scanning once, each song showed up twice on the DVD player.

Do internationalization. I have a set of Segovia CDs ripped by iTunes. They have lots of non-english letters in the artist and track names. The DVD player removes these. Worse, it considers these files unplayable when it sees them on a CDROM (in the DVD tray). I don't know if that's the character set, or the cover art I added with iTunes (which shows up as a large hexadecimal comment tag).

Display track info when in screen saver mode. It would be nice to see the song info (briefly) even after the player has entered screen saver mode. As it is, you have to press a "safe" button ("play" seems to do it) to wake up the display whie it's playing if you don't want to interrupt the song.

Page up/down. When not playing, track forw/rev scrolls the song list. Once you're playing, those go back to track forw/reverse functions, and you have no page up/down.

Display cover art. Both in thumbnails (when selected) and in the track info. That is, assuming there's some kind of standard for the way this is added to the MP3 (e.g. by iTunes).

Scan after directory change notification. The media server only works on local filesystems, so why not subsribe to DCN on the ones it's told to scan. That way, newly imported songs and tree reorganization could be detected automatically. Obviously, it should remove items from the database for which the file has been removed.

Posted by: sdp at Mar 22, 2004 11:16:32 AM

I originally ran server 2.1 B07-08, and firmware 1.22a on a wireless unit. I purchased Gateway's G card which came with a disk that contained the firmware upgrade/driver upgrade for the player so that it would recognize the G card and a newer version of the media server software. I mistakenly thought that the firmware was the cause of my FF and RW problems (and, yes, in addition to not being able to resume playing after FF or RW, sometimes it would just skip ahead to the next video file instead) so I flashed the player back to the 1.22a firmware and tossed the G card in favor of a wired connection to a wireless G bridge. When I still had the problem it occurred to me to backrev the server software to 2.1 B07-08. Doing so resolved my FF and RW issue so I flashed the player back to the newer firmware and left the server software at 2.1 B07-08.

Gateway doesn't have a clue how to support this player so figuring this out for myself was necessary. Tbey're also screwing over their customers by not releasing the firmware for people other than those who buy their G card. Like I said, it's a pretty good DVD player and the streaming works OK so I'll keep it in my HT until something better comes along which shouldn't be long. I'll probably continue to use it as a DVD player and use something else for streaming media files.

Posted by: Jason at Mar 22, 2004 9:09:50 PM

Gateway has posted the proper Firmware for the Connected DVD player to accept the Gateway Wireless G card. Have been reading your comments, and am a big fan of the Connected DVD player.

http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=19740&uid=44963367

Posted by: Raef at Mar 25, 2004 7:03:26 PM

After upgrading D5 Media Server to S3.0.14 (latest version), I can no longer import many of my DivX .avi files. The Scan Details windows show the error "Unsupported AVI file variant. Playback Disabled." I was able to import and play these same files with the previous version of the D5 Media Server. Has anyone else had this problem? I'm guessing it is due to what codec was used during the creation. AVIs that I created with AutoGK (XviD) and my ATI All-In-Wonder card (DivX 4) still import and play. AVIs that I created with Dr. DivX (DivX 5.0) won't import.

Posted by: TWS at Mar 29, 2004 10:27:32 AM

TWS, I too have been having the same problem. I haven't had time to run Gspot on the files to see if there is a compatability issue yet. Gateway said they added support for windows MCE files but I don't see why they would take away any--especially since the files were properly imported before. Additionally, the new software keeps crashing on me. It got to the point where I could not even open it up. I reinstalled it about 4 times with the same result...so, I went back to the old software. Is anyone else having issues with the sofware crashing?
JUC

Posted by: JUC at Apr 1, 2004 9:23:58 AM

I just took delivery on my connected DVD bundled with the wireless G card. After setting it up and upgrading to the latest firmware, it was able to see my wireless network, but could not obtain an IP address through the DHCP on my Linksys G router. I turned off WEP and MAC filtering and still had no luck. After spending 40 minutes on the phone with Gateway’s wireless tech support, the tech (who seemed very knowledgeable) informed me that I most likely had a bad wireless card and that I could swap it out with Gateway. Long story short, after hanging up, I began making a few configuration changes on my router when it suddenly hit me. Change the channel. I began switching through the channels and that did the trick. I played around with the channels until I found the one that gave me the most reliable connectivity. Best I can figure is that I was getting interference from either my cordless phones or some other electronic device. Seems odd though since I always get excellent signal strength on my laptop in my living room. Anyway, I thought I’d share this tip here with the hope that it could help someone else.

For the most part, I like the unit. My biggest gripe is that when you select albums by artist, it lists the tracks in alphabetical order. I fail to see how anybody would prefer such behavior. Gateway informed me that this is the way the software works. I’m tempted to contact the folks at D5Services to see if they have any thoughts on the matter. Has anyone else had any luck with this?

Posted by: Greg at Apr 1, 2004 7:20:22 PM

I bought this DVD player, but haven't been able to get it to recognize the 802.11g card I got with it. I'm guessing the salesman grabbed the wrong card. Does anybody know if this card (WGC-220) works with the DVD player?

Posted by: hootch at Apr 1, 2004 9:08:38 PM

I called Gateway and got the answer to my own question. The WGC-220 card is NOT compatible. The WGM-230 is.

Posted by: hootch at Apr 2, 2004 7:27:48 AM

Video and Audio is out of sync on some divx,xvid movies. I cannot figure this out. At first I thought it might be AC3 audio but some files play fine with Ac3. I encoded the movies to Lame mp3 with virtualdub and the delay is still there. In my computer they all play fine. I could encode them to mpeg2 but that is a lot of space. Gateway costumer support doesnt even have a forum to go to. Any ideas?

Posted by: Dan at Apr 2, 2004 2:15:02 PM

For the record, my choppy audio problems disappeared when I installed the server software on a different PC (one much too slow to transcode divx, unfortunately).

I'll probably end up using the slow machine for audio and the fast machine for video, at least until I can find the problem with the faster machine (and/or my LAN).

Posted by: sdp at Apr 2, 2004 6:52:29 PM

Couple general questions I couldn't find answers to. I know the new server software will convert Divx, but will it do Xvid? What is a good video conversion program? So i can convert quicktime videos to Divx or any other formate that will work.

Another thing, I want to Mac filter my network to keep it secure...how do you find the mac address of the connected dvd player?

Thanks for any help.

Posted by: Rob at Apr 4, 2004 9:59:20 AM

Rob -

The MAC address is located on the wireless card. On mine it is at the bottom, right below the bar code with the words MAC in front of it. You will have to remove the wireless card from the DVD player in order to see it. I'm using MAC filtering and it seems to work fine. If you are not already, I would also recommend using WEP. I was using 128 Bit, but was having trouble getting that to work with the player. I switched to 64 bit and that works fine.

Posted by: Greg at Apr 4, 2004 4:18:50 PM

- Greg

Thanks for the help. I will look at the card and get the address. I don't plan on using WEP because im not concerned about the data potential snoopers will be looking at (heck, if they want to enjoy my movies as i stream them to my player i hope they enjoy). Besides, WEP slows a wireless connection down and any snooper with the proper free software can crack WEP in no time. Thanks for the help though.

Posted by: Rob at Apr 4, 2004 4:44:53 PM

JUC, Thanks the response. At least it's not just me having the problem. I too reverted back to the v2.1 server software, and everything is back to normal. I kept the firmware update. It seems to be okay. If you figure it out, please post. I'll do the same.

Posted by: TWS at Apr 5, 2004 2:56:13 PM

In case anyone is interested, this Gateway ADC-220 DVD Player is on clearance at your nearest Gateway Country store - they are closing all the stores down by Friday and they are selling these units at 86.99. I bought one and got the free G PC Card with it - unfortunately the 220 and not the 230 so I connected it wired via a Linksys ethernet card. Pretty sweet deal...

Thanks for all the posts - it has helped me tremendously. By the way since I am new, I'll post a perhaps obvious question: Is there a way to either play or convert ripped VOB files on this unit? I have ripped all of the music videos from my collection of DVD movies and want to play them randomly in a video list on the Gateway, but while I can change them to MPG extensions (and WinDVD will still play them) the D5MediaServer will not recognize the files. The filters.cfg file seems to be large enough at BITRATE-WIRED > 8388608. I would guess the suggestion will be to convert them to Divx, but I thought I would ask.

Thanks!
Tony

Posted by: TonyR at Apr 5, 2004 10:25:49 PM

Has anyone figured out a good way to get network shares indexed in Windows 2000 Professional? mountvol and linkd (from the resource kit) don't do the trick.

Posted by: Keith at Apr 6, 2004 7:06:46 PM

Has anyone come up with a workaround to get the server software to not reject divx files with .wma soundtracks? It seems that, since the files play fine in WiMP, they ought to be able to be transcoded.

Posted by: AJRitz at Apr 6, 2004 9:04:12 PM

I actually have a question dealing with the DVD aspect of the Gateway. I hope this is not a stupid question, but here goes. I have a 16:9 widescreen tv, so I am wondering what the best setting is picture size. I do not know the difference between letterbox, 16:9 and full I think is the last one. I currently have it on 16:9, but began to wonder what the other ones were. Thanks in advance.

Posted by: Walt at Apr 7, 2004 7:06:25 AM

Another question. My Gateway unit came with the wireless g card, but I have a D-link b router/firewall (WEP not enabled), and also running Zone Alarm. I did not have a lot of time to do much more than set it up last night, but so far it does not appear to be connecting to the server. Anyone know if I need to make any special settings in either or both firewalls? Thanks so much for any help.

Posted by: Walt at Apr 7, 2004 7:18:09 AM

Walt, I would try disabling everything--all firewalls etc.---until you are sure you have a good connection to the server. Then, add them back one by one. Also, as noted in earlier posts, try different channels on the router to see if that helps connectivity--ch11 seems to work best for most poeple.
later
JUC

Posted by: JUC at Apr 7, 2004 9:37:11 AM

Is there no way to get the player to serve up files from a Mac?

Posted by: brett at Apr 7, 2004 10:39:59 AM

For those interested in indexing files on a network drive, you can open up the NetPlay.cfg file and modify the "HDD Scanner Paths=" line. You can put mapped network drives and removable drives in the line. They wont show up in the application, but if you hit "scan", the app will index them.

I had a lot of directories on a couple different network drives so I found modifying the cfg file cumbersome. So, I created the
Streaming Media Network File Importer
to make it a bit easier. Check it out and leave me a comment if you find it useful.

Posted by: Dustin Mihalik at Apr 7, 2004 6:19:07 PM

I have been using the Gateway Connected DVD player since jan 2004 and have been very pleased with it. I am considering upgrading to the latest firmware (ver D3.10.11B8.8.0), and was wondering if anyone has any input on it.

Posted by: Veetrik at Apr 7, 2004 8:54:04 PM

JUC - Thanks much for the suggestion to start by disabling Zone Alarm. It worked at first (for about 15 minutes), but then I created two playlists, and it could not connect to the server. I am baffled. It says getting IP address, connecting to server, then searching, and then nothing, it stops. I don't see any of the "My" folders or anything. I even tried turning off 4x mode on D-link server (I couldn't believe the g card worked with 4x enabled), but that does not help. Any suggestions?

Posted by: Walt at Apr 8, 2004 3:03:34 AM

P.S. I forgot to say I switched to channel 11 and then got the 15 minutes of it working.

Posted by: Walt at Apr 8, 2004 3:05:31 AM

Walt, you probably tried this already, but I remembered before I started switching channels on my router, everytime I got a phone call the player would disconnect--and not be able to reconnect to the server without manually shutting down the player and turning it back on. Not until I did this was I able to connect back to the server. That may help in the short term but really isn't a good fix until you get a stable connection configured.
Good luck
JUC

Posted by: JUC at Apr 8, 2004 6:23:54 AM

Walt,

I was having issues similar to the ones you describe here. The first thing I did when I took delivery of the player was to run the firmware upgrade that I downloaded from Gateway's website (version D3.10.11B8.8.0 dated 3/25/2004). I started up the player and it had no problem seeing my network, but could not obtain an IP address through the DHCP on my Linksys G router (see my April 1 post above for details). Changing the channel helped a little. I was able to get an IP, but the connection was very sporadic. I tried all of the channels, I even tried adding the extended range antennas you can get for the Linksys router from Radio Shack. These helped a little, but the connection was still unreliable. Sometimes it would fail to get an IP, sometimes it would get an IP but would take several tries to find the server, sometimes it would lose connection in the middle of play. Long story short, I downgraded the firmware to the version that shipped with the gateway Wireless G card (dated 10/2003) and all of these problems went away. It now gets an IP address every time; it finds the server almost immediately; and it has yet to lose a connection even after a couple of hours of continuous play (the longest I’ve hade the unit on for since I made the change a couple of days ago).

I’m not sure this will resolve your problem, but I hope it helps.

Posted by: Greg at Apr 8, 2004 8:15:13 AM

I looked around for a configuration variable covering this, but couldn't find one. What about getting beyond what seems to be an ~6000 file limit?

Posted by: Keith at Apr 9, 2004 4:58:53 AM

JUC - Thanks! Stupid as it sounds, I didn't realize you could even manually turn it off. That button looks like an LED. I was only turning it off with remote. That did clear it up, sort of. Now the only thing I am having trouble with is 30 frames/sec. video. I am thinking I need a G base to serve it up fast enough. Has anyone else gotten such video to work well with B? My cfg file was already set to almost 9 mbps, so I cannot imagine setting it higher would do much good on B base. Let me know if anyone thinks otherwise.

Posted by: Walt at Apr 9, 2004 5:56:48 AM

I bought a Gateway Connected DVD wireless G card by mistake for $23 thinking I could make it work on my laptop. No luck so far. Anyone interested in this card please email me. Actual price + actual shipping.

Posted by: Brent at Apr 12, 2004 4:23:36 PM

To Keith - I have over 12000 files in my library with no problems (9700 MP3s and the rest are JPGs). What kind of limit are you hitting?

On a different topic - I see awhile ago someone was looking for a page-up/page-down function. With the latest firmware, you can cursor over to the right of the scrolling list (albums, artists, songs in a playlist, whatever) to highlight the scrollbar - from there, hitting the up/down cursor keys will page up and down. This works when music is playing as well.

-OG

Posted by: ottguy at Apr 14, 2004 7:36:11 PM

I'm having some trouble with my ADC-220. I like to watch anime, and most of my anime has hard-coded subtitles. When I play my anime on the ADC-220, there's an issue with aspect ratio or something and the very top and bottom of the movie is cut off. It's not a huge cut, but it makes my subtitles unreadable. I had a similar problem on a Lite-On LVD-2001, but Lite-On included image adjustment functions to stretch or squish the image any way you wanted. Does the Gateway have anything similar, or any other solution to this problem?

Posted by: Tom at Apr 15, 2004 2:08:25 PM

Three things that bug me to no end about the machine. Would love to know if Version 3 takes care of any of these issues or if anyone has a workaround:

1: The damned noise every time you hit a button on the remote. That "DOODOO" is aggravating as heck!

2: The fact that when you scroll down using the page down function, you can't just hold it and have it go down. You have to continually press the button for each jump (which is aggravating enough when you have 1600 CD's in your library), but adds more opportunities to hear the dreaded "DOODOO".

3: When you play an album and it finishes,it automatically repeats! Sometimes I like to go to sleep to an album...apparently that isn't possible.

OH! a 4th issue: The second break between songs on a record. My Audiotron didn't do that, but the Gateway does...really annoying.

Okay, any and all help is appreciated!!! Thanks!!

- jason

Posted by: Jason Singer at Apr 15, 2004 8:22:20 PM

Well, I broke down an purchased a G router so it could serve the videos up fast enough. Now I cannot get the server (yes, I have the latest) to recognize my AVI's. It says they are an unsupported variant. They are vids of my kids from my fuji camera, so I think they might actually be MJPEGs? My problem is I cannot figure out exactly what "variant" is required, or what to use (preferably free) to convert my variant AVIs to whatever the server software will recognize. I tried Bink (Rad Video Tools), but neither DivX nor XviD seem to work. I am at wits end with this. Help!

Posted by: Walt at Apr 16, 2004 10:34:44 AM

Does anyone have an idea why the audio and video on my video files aren't timed right? The videos play fine on my computer but for some reason when i play them on the connected dvd player both the audo and video play fine there just not timed right. I did play with the settings in the .cfg file. What could i have done there to make this problem? Can anyone tell me the exact settings they have that work with the G router and G card. Thanks.

Posted by: Rob at Apr 18, 2004 11:29:52 AM

The Streaming Media Server software doesn't appear to support VBR audio tracks on AVIs. If your AVI file has a VBR audio track, it will show up as an unsupported AVI variant. Technically AVI isn't supposed to have a VBR MP3 track, but it's very commonly done and the Streaming Media Server's inability (or unwillingness) to stream it to the ADC-220 is irritating. I'm also still bothered by the issue I described above (chopping off the top and bottom of my movies) and Gateway refuses to talk to me about it because I bought a display model. I hope Gateway eventually provides server software to stream anything your desktop can play (including alternate file types like OGM and MKV).

Posted by: Tom at Apr 26, 2004 2:26:52 PM

It appears that I posted my above comment too soon. The Streaming Media Server does accept and stream AVIs with VBR audio tracks. However, many AVIs with small problems (which play just fine in Windows) are rejected by the Streaming Media Server. I've fixed many files by just opening them with VirtualDubMod and saving them with video unchanged (the original VDub doesn't support VBR audio, so use VDubMod, available here: http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net/). Here's the procedure:

1. Download and unzip VirtualDubMod. Run the program.
2. Open the video file that Streaming Media Server won't accept.
3. If VDubMod says that the file has a VBR audio track and asks if you want to rewrite the header, SAY NO. Saying yes will screw up your audio/video synch.
4. In the Video menu, select Direct Stream Copy.
5. In the File Menu, select Save As and choose where you want the repaired video to go. Select Save.

That's it! VirtualDubMod will create a copy of the video file with a proper AVI header and index. This will fix many problems where a video file works fine but Streaming Media Server would not recognize it.

Posted by: Tom at Apr 26, 2004 3:04:36 PM

Tom - thanks much for the info about the AVIs. Unfortunately, I am also having the problem that videos (in this case, MPEGs) the server software will accept, will not play consistently on the Gateway Connected. It just cannot seem to handle the stream. The rate in cfg file seams fine, and I have a G network. For me, this product just isn't there yet. Thankfully, I am still in the return period for both the Gateway and the G equipment I bought. I'll return to my B network that works fine for everything else I need. Maybe the next iteration. Until then, I have ordered the Bravo D1 as a consolation prize (uses DVI connection and upsamples to 1080i, supposedly great picture). Thanks to all for the help along the way.

Posted by: Walt at Apr 27, 2004 2:36:30 PM

Tom, thanks for the info on unsupported variants. I haven't had too much trouble, but I do have a few movies that wouldn't scan correctly and this fixed it! I always knew about virtualdub but have never really used it before. Thanks for the easy tutorial.
later
JUC

-Walt, sorry to hear you jumped ship--keep us posted if you find any good alternatives.

Posted by: JUC at Apr 28, 2004 5:00:14 AM

Does anyone know where to get a cheap replacement remote? Or would be willing to let me send them a learning remote to "learn" the codes off a original gateway remote. I was messing around with my GoVideo Connected DVD player (basicly the same as the GW unit) and flashed in the GW firmware. It boots normaly, but I can only assume the gateware remote codes are different than the GoVideo ones, thus I am locked out of the unit :(

Any help would be greatly appricated.

Ron McAdams

Posted by: Ron McAdams at Apr 28, 2004 8:51:17 PM

After reading the review and comments here, I bought one of these bundled with the 802.11g card. I mostly want to stream low bit-rate TV recorded off the air with an ATI All-in-wonder.

I found it only plays about 5 minutes of a VCD-quality video before degrading and breaking up. Then even if I start another video or MP3 file, the problem is immediate. Although 802.11b should be OK for 1.1 Mbps, I upgraded my 802.11b router to 802.11g, disabled WEP, tried many channels, killed all other processes on the PC and still have the problem. I also tried both the 1.3 and 3.0.17 versions of the D5 software.

The problem seems to be on the PC, as I can restart the D5 software to clear the problem. Restarting the player doesn't help. Now, it's an old P3 CPU at 733 MHz but it meets the min specs of 700. I am surprised what a heavy CPU load the D5 server places on it.

Does anyone have a success story on a slow PC like this? Any other suggestions? If I have to buy a new PC too, the WAF (Wife Approval Factor) goes way down. "Should've just bought Tivo like Chrissy."

Posted by: Eric at Apr 30, 2004 9:10:53 PM

Eric, glad to see you jumped on board. It seems like you have paid attention and are working on a fix. The only thing else I have to suggest would be to try sofware 2.1. When I initially upgraded to the G card, firmware, and version 3 software I was having similar issues. It kept disconnecting and I couldn't get it to reconnect as well as the media cutting out all the time. So, I downgraded the software to 2.1 (I obviously wanted to keep the G firmware) and it solved my problems. Hopefully that will help. If not, it seems like you have tried most other fixes. One more thing--do you have any other wireless-B clients on your network--they will bring down the speed of the entire network so be warry when mixing speeds.
Later
JUC

Posted by: JUC at May 3, 2004 6:36:16 AM

Thanks for the tip, JUC. I tried software version 2.1 now too, and it didn't help. Also, no B clients on the net (or any other clients period). Good news, though: I installed the software on an old Celeron 466 MHz PC with fresh WinME install, and it works fine! So it's not CPU capacity. It's probably a software or hardware conflict with my PIII machine.

I've learned a bit more. Hope this helps someone:
- The problem described above is best described as choppiness in video, whereas mild bandwidth problems show up as pixelization
- 802.11b at 50 feet and Celeron host are sufficient to stream VCD-quality MPEG1 files

Posted by: Eric at May 3, 2004 8:23:02 PM

"then I called gateway again and this time a lady said how fast is your machine. I have real nice rig with Athlon 64 3200 and a gig of ddr400 and a nice SATA drive. so there is no way it is cause of a slow machine. Then she says tat could be a problem. High end machines was showing the same symptoms in their test lab."

That's odd. My server machine is very similar to the one that gave you problems - A64 3200+ with a gig of ddr400 RAM and a 10k Raptor hard drive. But I'm not having any streaming problems. Most of my media content is on an external firewire drive though. I wonder if the issue is somehow related to the data transfer rate of a high-RPM SATA drive overwhelming the transcoding software's buffer?

Posted by: AJRitz at May 6, 2004 12:00:32 PM

Boy, gateway support stinks. My "connected" adr-220 stopped reading all cds and dvds and heres how Gateway support tried to help:

ME -"could you tell me how to find out if my adc-220 is covered under warranty? It will not read any dvd or cd media, comming up with a BAD DISC error on the display. The dvd drive spins up a few times but cant seem to read. I have tried lens cleaner also. its serial number is 10g0303889bn with a date of july 10, 2003 on the back. If it is not covered, can you tell me how to buy replacement parts such as the DVD drive for it? thanks!

GATEWAY: Hello Dan, Thank you for using Gateway's Online E-mail Support. I gather from your e-mail that your ADC 220 DVD player gives 'Bad Disc'error message and fails to read any CDs or DVDs. I appreciate that you have tried the lens cleaner, However the issue persists.I would like to inform you that your DVD player is outside our service
warranty. It appears that your warranty expired in April 20, 2000. I recommend you to buy a new DVD player to resolve the issue as we do not provide any replacement parts for your unit.From the description you have provided in your e-mail, it appears you would be interested in purchasing a DVD player. Are you aware that Gateway can provide you with the hardware, and we can also train you on how to use it?

ME: How can my gateway connected dvd player be out of warrenty in April 2000 if it wasn't made until July 10, 2003????? Instead of trying to sell me
something (especially your BS) why don't you try to be helpful otherwise I will not order anoter product and I was just thinking about ordering a
laptop for my wife... so if you can not assist me will you get a support person to contact me that knows what DVD player I have then when I get this resolved I will give you the sale for the laptop, I am going to purchase.Thank You.

GATEWAY: Hello Dan,Thank you for using Gateway's Online E-mail Support.I apologize for providing incorrect information in our previous e-mail
response. According to our records, your system was not shipped with a DVD player. I request you to please provide the order number through which you bought the DVD player. This information will help us to isolate the exact model number of the DVD player shipped to you and provide the necessary steps.

ME: My previous emails were about the gateway connected dvd player model adc-220, not a computer. Do the gateway connected have warrantys?

GATEWAY: Dan, from your email I understand that the DVD player is not able to read the DVD disks as well as CD's. I appreciate your concern and thank you for the confidence that you have displayed by considering us for assistance. Dan there are multiple reasons due to which the drive may not read the disks such as either the drive is not getting recognized or is not being getting initialized properly or the media which is used for reading might not be supported by the drive or probably the media might have gone bad. In case of bad media you get the error message of "Bad disk" or similar kind of error messages. Hence I would like you to try reading different disks also try reading the same disks in other drive and check if they are read in the other drive as well. However in order to troubleshoot the issue with the DVD drive I would like you to perform following troubleshooting steps.
1. Run Gateway GoBack if available.
2. Verify that the CD-ROM drive is assigned a drive letter in My Computer or Windows Explorer.
3. Check the Device Manager.....and they go on a full page of how to reinstall the pc software..... BUT ITS NOT A PC!!! ITS A GATEWAY CONNECTED!!!!! ARRRRGGHHH! FAGITABOUTUIT!I'll buy a new Oritron Networked DVD Player NPD3117, at least I know they have bad support

Posted by: Dan at May 11, 2004 6:16:29 AM

I wanted to play files from a network drive, but I couldn't get the instructions linked in the article to work. They seem to apply to CD-ROM drives, not network drives. I came up with the following alternative:

Make sure the server is not running, open D5MediaServer.exe in a hex editor and search for: 83 F8 03 74 05 83 F8 06. Change the last byte from 06 to 04, then restart the server. Any network mapped drives should now show up in the Media Import tab, and from there you can import whatever you like.

Posted by: jnz at May 11, 2004 8:35:07 PM

Jnz,

How on earth did you find that out? It seems so random!

I'd really like to access my network drives, and am thinking of giving this a try as nothing else has worked. You can for sure map external drives, but not network ones.

Cheers,

Jonathan.

Posted by: Jonathan at May 12, 2004 5:46:47 PM

Jnz,

Well, that bit change did indeed work, so I could import from a shared file to the play list. But, I still could not stream the files. Same problem as before. The player sees them and knows how long they are, but it barfs on playing them.
There was another work around that got me this far too. It involved manually editing the config file that lists the source directories of the playlists.
It beats me why it can't stream though. So does it work for you okay?
Incidentally, after an edit of the executable, I later had problems connecting to the server. So I had to revert to original executable after a bit.

thanks!

Jonathan.

Posted by: Jonathan at May 13, 2004 9:19:30 AM

I just upgraded to the latest firmware on the Gateway Connected DVD player and there are definately a lot of improvements here. First, the interface for the network files is much more user friendly. There is a scrollbar that allows faster access through files or folders using the remote. To me it seems to also load servers much quicker. One big improvement is the fact that the software allows you to view pictures and listen to music at the same time; however, I haven't been able to figure out how to stop the pictures without stopping the music as well. The firmware I'm using is the latest firmware available (3/25/04).

Posted by: enddogg at May 13, 2004 10:10:36 AM

Jonathan,

It seems less random if you have a disassembler handy. :)

I've been poking around some more and I've found a couple places that can be patched. I'll describe them here.

1)
Effect: Lets you drag and drop network files from Explorer
Search for: 83 F8 03 75 77
Change the last two bytes to: 90 90

2)
Effect: Makes network drives show up in the media import tab
Search for: 83 F8 03 74 05 83 F8 06
Change the last byte to: 04

3)
Effect: Unknown
Search for: 83 FF 03 75 E9
Change the last two bytes to: 90 90

I'm not quite sure what #3 does. It seems to be some sort of sanity check on requested files. If you can add files but can't play them, you might try #3 and see if it helps. I have mine working without having to use #3 though.

Posted by: jnz at May 13, 2004 8:38:27 PM

I purchased an ADC-220 a couple months back and have no significant problems to report. However, last week I installed the latest version of the firmware on the box, along with the “upgraded” version of the server-side software. Since then, my music files are sorted alphabetically rather than by track #. WTF…who would want to do this??? I called Gateway support and the CSR said this was the first time he had heard of the problem. Anyone else experiencing this? Is there a work-around? Can I modify some configuration file somewhere to change the sort order? Any help would be appreciated.

- Sean

Posted by: Sean at May 16, 2004 10:56:25 AM

For those interested in streaming Shoutcast streams to their connected DVD player, I put up a post describing how I did it last night. I think there's going to be a lot of possibilties created by the fact that V3 of the firware supports UPnP music servers.

Posted by: Dustin Mihalik at May 18, 2004 6:46:44 AM

Dustin that was some good info about being about to stream shoutcast streams to your connected dvd player. I was wondering if you or anyone else coupld give some more info about being able to connected your gateway connected dvd player to rhapsody. I was able to get the dvd player to see rhapsody but when I would go through and try to play a song it wouldn't play. I went through and made sure the the UPnp in rhapsody was enabled. Like I said I could see the artist, playlist, and songs form rhapsody but when I would try to play them it wouldn't play. This would be so cool if I could get this to work iff anyone has any ideas that would be great. Streaimg shoutcast radio through winamp like Dustin mentioned worked great. I believe the new version of firmware for the Go Video networked DVD player that was just released supports all of them but will the Go video player mess up the GAteway connected DVD player if you try to install it on there? Currently of running the lasted firmware from gateway, does anyone know if they are coming out with a update anytime soon. I hope some of this makes sense.

Lawrence

Posted by: Lawrence at May 18, 2004 4:20:45 PM

Dustin,

Thanks for the update...works great. Also, I fixed my sorting problem. Uninstalled the latest server software, then installed the prior version. Sorting is correct!

Posted by: Sean at May 20, 2004 9:56:40 AM

I have the Gateway DVD with a g card. I had a b router and found that the video was blocky after about 30 seconds regardless of the video bitrate. I bought a 'g' router to try to fix it but I see no change whatsoever. It makes no difference what the video file is (.mpg, .avi, etc.) or bitrate. video is completely unwatchable. Mp3s work fine, and the player plays just about any disc I give it. Seems to me that the problem is in the server software, not the network link. I killed everything on my system but no change at all. Anyone solve such a problem? By the way, I can run a laptop over the network with no problem at all.

Posted by: David Lynch at May 21, 2004 10:39:45 AM

Posted by: David Lynch at May 21, 2004 10:41:02 AM

Jnz,

That's very good information! Many thanks for improving the product!

Cheers,

Jonathan.

Posted by: Jonathan at May 21, 2004 12:23:27 PM

ARGH!

I think I just ruined my connected DVD player. I have the Oritron NPD3117 connected DVD player, which SEEMS to be the same as the Gateway ADC-220. I thought I would check out some of the new features of the new firmware, so I downloaded it from Gateway's site and flashed my unit... The flash seemed to go just fine.

But now, it doesn't work. It will boot up, but none of the front panel controls nor the remote control work.

WARNING! If you have an Oritron Networked DVD Player, DO NOT FLASH THE FIRMWARE WITH A FIRMWARE FROM GATEWAY!!!

Now I think I have a boat anchor. I thought maybe I would try flashing it with the older firmware available on Gateway's site... but I can't even try that because after I boot from the CD-R, I need to arrow down to be able to select the firmware file to write.

I opened the unit up (since it's out of warranty), but it doesn't look like the flash is socketed, so I won't be able to replace it.

So, I'm posting this mostly as a warning to others, but if anyone has any thoughts on trying to make mine work again, I'd love to hear them!

-Bob DeVivo

Posted by: Bob DeVivo at May 22, 2004 6:32:13 PM

don't give up. I did a similar thing by flashing the go video firmware onto the gateway. The remote for the gateway will now control your machine. I bought a universal remote oneforall brand urc8910 that can be programmed for oritron, gateway, and go video.... when flashing to the other firmware you need to use a remote for the other brand. However the buttons on the front of the dvd player are also mapped so you need to use the remote!

Posted by: evan at May 28, 2004 4:37:09 PM

MP3 Issue:
Has anyone had any trouble streaming secure WMA files? Every time I try to import a file that I've paid for and downloaded from Napster or MusicMatch it gets rejected.

So basically - any files that I downloaded for free I can stream. Any files I've paid for and downloaded (in secure WMA format) I cannot stream.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Posted by: Michael at May 31, 2004 12:49:18 PM

Evan - Thanks for the information! I'm glad to hear there might be a glimmer of hope (regarding my Oritron with the wrong firmware--see above post). I have a question on the universal remote oneforall brand urc8910 that you mention. Does it specifically say it will control a Gateway DVD player? I have an RCA Universal Custom 8 remote control and tried every DVD Code available, but it wouldn't control it. I also have an older One For All brand Universal that didn't work either.

Thanks again for the information.

Bob

Posted by: Bob DeVivo at Jun 2, 2004 4:05:56 PM

Following up to my original problem described on April 30...

Upgraded my PIII PC from WinME to WinXP and problems with choppy video went away. It could have been any root cause, including the OS. I uninstalled some risky software before upgrading the OS, e.g., ATI video drivers and other old drivers, Norton Utilities, etc.

Also, the Media Center (3.0.17) no longer crashes while importing files. I hope it's all permanently fixed and I'm not just getting lucky.

Posted by: Eric at Jun 2, 2004 7:25:55 PM

Bob: many of the latest one for all remotes (http://www.ofausa.com)
control everything.(They guarantee and they are upgradeable if they don't!) Although it did not say that it controls the gateway dvd, I find that codes 0711 work for the Go Video software and 0715 works for Gateway (or the other way around).

Posted by: Evan at Jun 4, 2004 5:04:15 PM

Fixed my problem with the adc-220 giving a bad disc error, after cleaning the lens I still had no luck. Then I found that the dvd loader inside is basically a standard IDE dvd-rom, i hooked up the dvd drive from my PC and voula, it worked, but it wouldnt fit inside (the circuit board was too large! I found the DVD loader inside my adc-220 was a FUSS AUDIO DV9929B, and that a DVS model DSL710a is a direct swap. Found one on Ebay for 10$ and works great now! The DSL710a is also the standard loader in many APEX dvd players if anyone needs to find one.

Posted by: dan at Jun 9, 2004 5:55:53 AM

JNZ

I saw your comments about changing some hex codes in D5. I'm running version 3.0.17R08.1.0 and only #2 is found. I did make the change and the folders do show up and it does scan the media files in but does not stream to the TV. The list is there and it looks like it plays but just no sound or picture when a photo is selected.

Any Ideas? What version are you running?

Thanks
Mike

Posted by: Mike at Jun 9, 2004 10:22:22 AM

Eric,

Glad you posted the OFA codes. Neither of the Go Video codes work with my D2730. 0711 did the trick though. Do you know if there is an advanced code to replicate the network button?

Bob

Posted by: Bob Foglesong at Jun 10, 2004 6:01:33 PM

Mike,

I have the exit same problem whatever way I slice it. I still cannot stream from mapped network drives. Would really like to, but no luck yet with either the hack or the editing utility some kind gentleman created.

Cheers,

Jonathan.

Posted by: Jonathan at Jun 11, 2004 12:48:49 PM

Sorry, I should have mentioned that I was using the GoVideo version of the software. Reports itself as "Version 2.0 Build 01-09-06". For the Gateway "S 3.0.17R08.1.0", you can try these (warning: untested):

Enable Drag and drop from network drives
Search for: 83 F8 03 75 74
Change the last two bytes to: 90 90

Make network drives show up in the media import tab
Search for: 83 F8 03 74 05 83 F8 06
Change the last byte to: 04

Let you add network files via the "+" button on the media files tab
Search for: 83 F8 03 74 62
Change the 74 to EB

If you already have the files indexed, I don't think any of this is really going to help you. You can try and see though. If it still doesn't work, I'm not sure what the problem might be. You don't get any error messages, do you?

Posted by: jnz at Jun 11, 2004 9:40:07 PM

I'm looking to buy one of these players, but have a couple of concerns. First is how many
mp3's are indexable (( have ~20,000 from my
1000+ CD collection that I've ripped) and
how easy is it to navigate when you have
this many.

TIA,
satori

Posted by: satori at Jun 12, 2004 1:52:03 AM

Oops... forgot to ask my second question...

Is there any difference in the 220 and the 320
model? Gateway doesn't have model numbers
on their site anymore for this item (it just
says CDVDethernet or CDVDwireless) so I'm not
even sure which model I'm getting if I order
from them. I looked around on auction sites
and see that people with the 320 model say
"many feature enhancements" or typical sales
crap like that, but I can't find any hard
feature list that tells the exact differences.

Also, how close are the Oritron and GoVideo
models to the Gateway?

Thanks again!!
satori

Posted by: satori at Jun 12, 2004 2:14:28 AM

Hey all - need some help. Have had this since last Christmas or so - been running fine (relatively) for the first 6 months or so then hit problems. Audio still streams fine. Video is ok as long as they're cartoons (i've taped a bunch for my son...) regular tv shows though (ironically same mpg recording format as the animated shows) skip and jump and are jarbled. These same shows previously played fine on Gateway dvd... and still play fine if played direct on pc. 6 hours of Gateway support was useless - tried to give me every excuse they could that it could be anything BUT the player, i.e. WEP must have been hacked on home network, etc. Originally the server box had 128mb of ram - since then doubled it but still having the same problem.

Posted by: nuromancer at Jun 28, 2004 9:29:41 AM

Nuromancer:
I would check to see if you recently added any new wireless devices to your home. (i.e. a new 2.4 GHz wireless phone). If you have access to another wireless channel you may want to give that a try. You also may want to ask for help at www.media-severs.com. They are whole bunch of gateway connected dvd player users there.

Posted by: faradhim at Jul 15, 2004 6:25:34 AM

I just got a used 220. Like some of the other users I keep all my audio/video files on my linux box. I'm thinking about trying to run the server using wine. Has anyone tried this yet? curently im using the older 2.1 gateway software because I could not get the network drive hex hack to work with the ver 3 software. I have the D3.10.11B8.8.0 firmware on the player.

Posted by: edoom at Jul 15, 2004 8:51:13 AM

Help - Since upgrading firmware, I cannot Fast Forward. When I do, it jumps to the next recorded show. I am running the latest firmware and streaming media server software. I'd rather not back rev b/c I like some of the enhancements made in the latest firmware.

Posted by: Jason at Jul 18, 2004 9:27:11 AM

Am using a Govideo D2730 with latest Gateway Server and firmware and wireless G card. The wireless G card works fine in B mode but freezes up in G mode.

One for All remote 8910 upgraded over the phone by ofa with codes 1073, 1077, 1158, 1194 works perfectly.

Now if I could only get the Gateway G card to work in G mode!

Posted by: Ron at Jul 25, 2004 8:50:30 AM

How exactly do they upgrade the remote over the phone??

Posted by: Dave Joyce at Jul 28, 2004 4:02:51 PM

Jason-
I have also tried to 'upgrade' my D2730 with the Gateway firmware and am stuck without a remote. I own the ofa 8910 and would be REALLY interested in learning how I could set those new code you mentioned. Please let me know how you did it, or give me the number for ofa since I can't find it one their web site. Thanks!

Posted by: Peter at Aug 24, 2004 3:27:05 PM

Posted by: George at Sep 2, 2004 1:50:59 PM

Eric posted in June "that codes 0711 work for the Go Video software and 0715 works for Gateway (or the other way around)." If someone knows of a specific OFA remote that this holds true for, could they please post what model it is? Thanks in advance.

Posted by: Kevin at Sep 7, 2004 9:19:16 AM

To answer my own question, I purchased a One For All URC8910 remote, and while neither the 0711 or 0715 codes controlled my GoVideo D2730 w/ the Gateway Connected DVD firmware installed, a call to OFA customer service allowed the remote to control the player. After telling the rep what player I wanted the code for, I was told to hold the remote to the earpiece of my phone and the code was then sent to the remote. The call was long distance, but the code was otherwise free and the remote only cost $30/delivered from buy.com, so I'm happy with thw whole process.

Posted by: Kevin at Sep 15, 2004 10:24:46 AM

Posted by: sabrina at Sep 17, 2004 8:22:39 AM

I have had the Gateway 220 with an 802.11b card and the old firmware since January. I only use it for music and it work pretty well, but not perfect by any means. I tried to install the new firmware and I like the improvements to the interface. The scroll bar, etc. Unfortunately the music now skips from track to track and is basically worthless. Please note that this is was a problem with both the old and the new D5 server software running on my PC. Does it matter that I am still using the 802.11b card with the new firmware? I ordered the 802.11g card upgrade from Gateway and am going to see if that makes a difference tonight. Anyone have any thoughts on this scenario? What do you guys recommend?

Thank you in advance.

Posted by: Mike at Sep 21, 2004 1:39:34 PM

I couldn't figure out for sure from this blog, but does the Gateway ADC-320 support Rhapsody music files. I am interested in purchasing the unit, but won't do so unless I can use Rhapsody. Rhapsody does not list it as a compatible product on their website.

Thanks.

Posted by: Steve at Sep 25, 2004 1:31:22 PM

If anyone finds a way to change the screen saver or the hard coded time I would pay money! J/K I recently installed Windows XP SP2, which installs and enables a firewall, and many problems. After following instruction on the Gateway support site I was able to get my WMA's, MP3's, etc. to play, but only for exactly 42 seconds! Although all of the port exceptions have been put in place I was still unable to get a song to play properly. The only solution I have found so far is to completely turn off the Windows firewall. Any ideas on what may be causing this?

Posted by: Chris at Sep 28, 2004 6:31:39 PM

I have the same problem after installing SP2. The music files play for less than a minute (I didn't time it) and then go to the next song. I'm interested in a solution too.

brent

Posted by: bc at Oct 3, 2004 5:37:36 AM

Here are my SP2 firewall symptoms in case it's helpful to someone:

I installed my new ADC-320 along with an existing WinXP Home SP2 machine. I was able to connect to the 802.11G network and was able to see a listing of all media files on my PC. I was not, however, able to play any of the media files for any period of time until I turned off the SP2 firewall.

Posted by: Johnny at Oct 3, 2004 8:30:02 AM

I have been trying to get Gateway support to answer the firewall problem. If you disable the XP firewall then streaming works. Enable it then the streams are short and then the next is started.

Posted by: Woody Archer at Oct 3, 2004 10:00:05 AM

I've got the same problem with the music files playing for 41 seconds and the movie files just a few seconds each before skipping to the next. I was going crazy trying to figure out what was wrong. I found when I went back to version 2. of the server software the problem went away. Thanks for the tip about disabling the firewall. If you find a solution to this issue that doesn't involve turning off the firewall - I'd be pleased to hear about it.

Posted by: Dan at Oct 6, 2004 1:10:09 AM

Dan, Gateway posted a fix for the 41 sec problem that allows you to use the Windows firewall. http://support.gateway.com/s/issues/2-1734298301.shtml I found that any changes you make should be tested by starting playback on a mp3 file (ie don't assume that the change you made while a song was playing will take effect, start a new mp3 to test). I also had a problem with continuous play of albums. Instead of starting play over, the player would loose connection with my pc. This was fixed by reinstalling the D5 Streaming Media server. Now I can't get McAfee Personal Firewall Plus to work without the 41 sec problem. If anyone has any suggestions . .

Posted by: Joe at Oct 9, 2004 3:53:58 PM

Just installed the latest upgrade to my DVD player (ADC-220). Unfortunately the songs on an album are now sorted alphabetically. When purchased the machine it originally did this. The first upgrade I did changed to sort by song order. The last update now has them sorted alphabetically again. Why would anyone want this?? Anyone have suggestions how to fix??

Posted by: LPBram at Oct 12, 2004 3:55:50 PM

I know that this sounds stupid to some of you, but i have no idea how to open up .exe files in a hex editor. I really need some beginner help here. anyone willing to provide step by step explaination for making this thing play files from networked drives would be greatly appreciated.

Posted by: Tim at Oct 15, 2004 6:51:53 PM

Posted by: Andrew at Oct 24, 2004 1:55:17 PM

Howdy folks!

This was a great resource to find, you all answered about a million questions I had - thank you! One thing that I'm having trouble with though and didn't see addressed anywhere.

I have the Gateway Connected DVD player (the 220 model I believe). The player's firmware is the most current, and I'm running the D5 Streaming software (latest version) on a P4 2.0ghz 1gb ram WinXP SP2 PC. There is a router (D-Link 4 port hub) between the DVD player and the PC.

Here is the problem - I am able to add all my mp3s into the D5 library, and when I go to 'My Music' on the DVD player it correctly reports the number of folders (450). So, I scroll down through the library and can play any of the mp3s I come across. However, at some point near the middle (varies, but usually around folder 211, in the "L"s) the list 'repeats' itself. That is, it scrolls from (for example) Les Miserables to Abba, instead of from Les Miserables to Limp Bizkit, the way it should. So basically I can only play mp3s that fall alphabetically before the letter "L".

Has anyone else had this problem, or have any suggestions for how to resolve it? Thanks! :D

Posted by: Mook at Nov 2, 2004 9:00:08 PM

I finally got the 320 model from Gateway ... but have ran into a strange problem mentioned below. Can you please help:

I have succesfully set it up and configured it on my network. It finds the access point, gets assigned a valid ip address, and can browse the media on my pc. When I try to play a song, it shows the play symbol at the bottom of the screen, but no sound comes out. If I try to view a picture slideshow, the screen goes blank, but then comes back. Its as if its playing the track, but just not outputting the sound. Running the slideshow, just not outputting the image. I know the palyer is hooked up to the stereo ok enough for me to watch a DVD. I get sound and video with no problems on that.

Posted by: rts at Nov 4, 2004 10:44:04 PM

I just got my 320 model from gateway yesterday and ran into the same problem that rts has described. The unit sees my computer fine, it connects and lists the files cataloged by the server software. But when I try to play, it just shows the play symbol and a blank screen. This all happened after I upgraded the server software with he latest version from the Gateway website. last night when I installed it with the original CD from gateway, all seemed to be fine. Is there some sort of bug in this upgrade perhaps?

Posted by: Zik at Nov 5, 2004 7:21:12 PM

Zik,

I finally solved my problem. Had to uninstall McAffee firewaal as well as completely turn-off Windows firewall. Then ran a media server application on netgear website (it simply opens your router ports to grant access).

However, I would recommend govideo's mediaserver from their website (alongwith their service pack 2 patch). The gateway software used to hang all the time .. Eversince I changed it to govideo .. things are pretty smooth. Also on some other media-server forums, many folks pointed out that govideo program (though almost same) is better optimized for streaming ...

Posted by: rts at Nov 8, 2004 2:43:54 PM

Hello All,
Picked up a remanufactured ADC220 for $99.... now I am trying to figure which ethernet cards will work with the unit.
Anyone have a list of the supported ethernet (not wireless) cards?
Info on these units seems to be disappearing from the Gateway site and I don't see the units for sale anymore...
Please help.
Ross

Posted by: Ross at Nov 9, 2004 5:07:27 PM

Ross,

If you get the updated download of the D5 media server either from Gateway or GoVideo, extract the files and then go to the Help file an search on "network" - it tells you what the supported cards are in latest release. Per what I can see, supported non-wireless cards are:

D-Link DFE-670TXD
Linksys PCM 100 ver.2
NetGear FA411

I picked up FA411 on Ebay 2 days ago for under $20 shipped.

I heard it is a good thing to have the network card in the DVD player when you do the firmware update.

Posted by: bigboy at Nov 9, 2004 5:32:19 PM

I'm trying to install Gateway's D5 Streaming Media Server. Each time that I run it, when it tries to input jpg files, it crashes. Any thoughts? Can I use the GoVideo software here:
http://www.govideo.com/Index.asp?GV=D2730V3

Posted by: Mark at Nov 10, 2004 3:48:12 PM

I recently purchased a Gateway Connected DVD player and have it up and running. I downloaded and installed the most recent version of the server software and upgraded the firmware on the player.

My issue now is that when I try to play videos recorded on my XP Media Edition PC it skips ... a lot. The file type is .DVR-MS which is supported by the system and apparently works for some people, but I just can't seem to get it to work right. MP3's and images work great, just can't figure out those videos.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Posted by: Schwanny at Nov 11, 2004 1:24:51 PM

Anyone get the mapped network drives to work with the Gateway D5 Server Version S 3.0.17R08.10???

I had it working at one point with an older version but can not longer seem to get the software to search the network drives...

Please help.

Posted by: theclam at Nov 15, 2004 6:55:14 PM

I bought a refurb gateway 220 on friday & upgraded its firmware from 1.22a to the latest 3.x version. I have 2 pc's on my network, one wired one (hall) & one wireless. I installed the D5 server software downloaded from the gateway site on the wired pc first w/o any problems. Using an SMC wireless pc card i was able to connect it to the wireless network. I then tried to connect to the D5 server but the player just wouldn't find it. I tried rebooting both player & server but still nothing.
Now the strange part, when i installed the D5 server on the wireless pc, the gateway 220 is able to connect to the server & play all media from it. I have tried just about everything, including disabling the WEP settings. I even tried the Govideo D5 server software.
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get it to work? Problem is the wireless pc is an old p3-533mhz which is no use for transcoding. The wired one is a p4 2.4GHz which i am hoping is good enough to transcode divx/xvid files.

Posted by: nivas at Nov 16, 2004 9:07:56 AM

I was just wandering if anyone could tell me what parts of the board inside the dvd drive tell the dvd player when a cd is in or out and which parts of the board tells it to eject and things like that... i plan to change this dvd drive with my xbox drive but before i can do that i have to know what parts of the board do what. If anyone could help me that would be great.
Thx alot

Posted by: Todd at Dec 12, 2004 3:22:28 PM

Hello All,
Finally got the wired (ethernet) setup running OK. My Media server is an OK mackine at 1.8 gig AMD Athlon but the video quality coming through from transcoded divx files is questionable.

Again this is unexpected since I'm running a wired setup.

Which adjustments to improve the output/speed should I be looking at making and in which files can they be updated?

Any and all help is much appreciated.

Ross

Posted by: Ross Johansson at Dec 18, 2004 9:16:05 PM

Hello,

I have been using the Gateway ADC-320 Connected DVD Player for quite sometime now. Just recently, I decided to use the Karaoke functionality. Now it has two mic inputs. I inserted a microphone plug in it, and played a CD. However, I'm not able to have my voice mix with the CD. I only hear the CD. It seems, as if the mic input does not work. The Gateway DVD player is connected to my receiver via an optical audio cable.

Am I missing something? Can you please suggest a reason/cure?

Thanks!!

Posted by: rts at Dec 19, 2004 9:10:40 PM

Okay, just fixed some major issue I was having with Divx/Xvid videos where the video races past the audio. It got really annoying and up until now I had to re-encode the whole thing and remove the Packed Bitstream [originally suggested by PaulDriver from media-servers.com].

I have no found a tool that lets you remove the packed bitstream from videos downloaded from the net without having to re-encode the whole thing. It takes literally like 10-20 seconds!!

1) Make sure you have Microsoft .NET v1.1
2) Go to http://www.moitah.net and download MPEG4 Modifier
3) Load the Xvid file you're having problems with and click on Unpack and then save to a different filename or location.
4) It'll take 20 seconds or so but I have tested it with 2 shows I was having the out of sync problem (where the video was much faster than the audio) and it works FULLY!!!

Give it a go, it should help you too.

Posted by: David at Dec 29, 2004 3:40:08 PM

I have the gateway dvd player with an xp sp2 machine. i know the player is fine because it works on my win 2000 machine. i opened the ports 3640, 3641, file and printer sharing, and Digital 5 Streaming Media app like gateway suggested. i can view the files on the dvd player but when i try to play them it just takes a long pause and craps out. any suggestions?

Posted by: jg at Jan 9, 2005 9:41:24 PM

I too am having problems with XP SP2.

I have recently encountered a problem where I cannot view the server screens on my XP SP2 machine. The server will run (as evidenced by the XP task manager), but the icon does not appear in the taskbar and I cannot access the server through the gui. At the same time, the player no longer connects to the server (just searches, but never finds the server). I have done all of the recommended port fixes. I have also reinstalled the server software several times, tried running with the firewall turned off entirely, and tried giving a good whack to the side of my machine. Nothing seems to work. Gateway tells me that they can't help me because I bought the machine two years ago. So much for being an early adopter! You'd think Gateway would have some sympathy for us old timers. Anyone... please help

Posted by: so at Jan 10, 2005 7:02:56 AM

I can get my ADC-320 to connect to the MusicMatch uPnP server. The name shows up as some random string but it does connect.

However, it will not play some tunes and constantly complains about a dropped server connection.

I have the latest firmware upgrade. Works fine with the D5 server.

Thanks.
Z.

Posted by: Zahir at Jan 10, 2005 8:58:40 PM

ok i have the dvd player running now, no thanks to gateway support. i found that if you have sp2 first turn off the dvd player, then disable the firewall on xp, and then unplug your router and then restart your machine, plug the router back in while booting up and then turn on your player. now the files will continually play without stopping. now i just have freezing problems when i try to fast forward or rewind. i flashed the dvd player with the latest available, but also have the latest software. may try reverting back to the older ds software as suggested earlier.

Posted by: jg at Jan 11, 2005 9:26:03 AM

OK... I too have resolved my problems, at least some of them.

Norton Clean Sweep proved the magic bullet to the difficulty with the server software. I needed to wipe my hard-drive clean of anything related to the D5 server to get it running.

My next problem was music and video skipping on the player. I had originally thought this was due to my player sitting on the opposite side of the house from the router (have have not been very impressed with the DLINK wireless router I bought 3 years ago). As it turns out, it now seems related to the firmware, perhaps because I have a really old 220 machine. It actually sounded like the player was trying to play the music slightly fast, but then it would screech and skip a lot. Absolutely unacceptable behavior.

So, I read some advice from above and tried the GO-Video software. This installed fine on the DVD, but unfortunately remapped all of the buttons on the remote. I think fast forward became eject (that took me a while). So I found an old disk that had the Gateware V1.22 firmware. This installed fine and seems to work ok with the V3 server. If anyone knows how to install the GOVideo firmware without remapping th controls, I'd be interested in giving it a shot.

I now have problems with the server scan of the hard disk. It has crashed a few times, and I'm not sure why. That should teach me to upgrade software!

Posted by: so at Jan 12, 2005 10:00:45 AM

Okay, since these things are supposed to play MPEG video, will they play a DVD that's ripped to the hard drive, since they are .vob files???

In other words, can I 'rip' a movie to my hard drive, then watch it through this gateway player?

Posted by: Rise at Jan 13, 2005 12:26:35 AM

I don't think I've seen this issue yet. I have about 6,000 songs in my directory. If I chose songs, its lists all of them. If I chose Album, its lists all of them. If I chose Artists, when I scroll down, it only goes down to the "G" artists. No Van Morrison, for example. The songs and album are there but I usually select by Artist so this is an issue. Anyone else have this issue and/or any suggestions? I have the latest software/firmware so I don't think its that.

By the way, I had the 41 second issue and I can't believe how easy the solution was. What a waste of hours. Thank God for this forum.

Posted by: KAS at Jan 16, 2005 6:59:57 AM

I see my issue is not alone. Mook actually has the same issue that he posted in November. Anyone else only being able to partially scroll their "Artist" list? Gateway wants me to send in the player but I can't imagine that will help.

Posted by: kas at Jan 17, 2005 9:07:21 AM

OK, need some help. I have a Gateway 220. Every once in a while it locks up while playing dvds, or while streaming any form of media. I have my amp sitting ontop of the play. Is this an issue? Anyone experienced something similar? I need to get this resolved. I have come to rely on this unit for all of my media needs, however I want to throw it out the window at least once a week. Any help would be appreciated.....

Posted by: Sean at Feb 11, 2005 11:10:13 PM

Hey guys, CHUCK the gateway D5 software and replace it with this. Make sure you use the add/uninstall utility in your control panel section to get rid of the GATEWAY SHIT first. REstart then down load this http://www.govideo.com/Index.asp?GV=D2730V3#8
make sure and get the SP2 patch right below it. IT works a hell of a lot better. In fact I couldn't even use the Gateway server software because it would just freeze and say NOT RESPONDING. This on e kicks ass!

Posted by: bosstone74 at Feb 17, 2005 8:44:42 PM

anyone know how to modify the firmware upgrade files to force an upgrade without input from the remote? Hoping to upgrade my player to support "g" wireless (it's a go video player) I flashed the gateway code. Works great, except now the remote doesn't work, so I can't flash back to the original Go Video code, I can't use the down arrows to select "upgrade". I tried monkey around with the file but so far no dice. Any help is much appreciated.

Posted by: Marc at Feb 24, 2005 12:13:33 PM

>Hey guys, CHUCK the gateway D5 software and replace it with this. Make sure you use the add/uninstall utility in your control panel section to get rid of the GATEWAY SHIT first. REstart then down load this http://www.govideo.com/Index.asp?GV=D2730V3#8
make sure and get the SP2 patch right below it. IT works a hell of a lot better. In fact I couldn't even use the Gateway server software because it would just freeze and say NOT RESPONDING. This on e kicks ass!

Question? Do I have to flash the Gateway DVD Firmware? In other words, may i use the Go Video Server (you site above) with a Gateway Connected DVD player ?

Posted by: Steve at Feb 27, 2005 3:10:22 PM

please helpme... how i do to enable "repeat disc" of my cd-i player from the cfg file in my vcd...

Posted by: jose at Mar 3, 2005 10:28:17 AM

Question? Do I have to flash the Gateway DVD Firmware? In other words, may i use the Go Video Server (you site above) with a Gateway Connected DVD player ?

Marc, No you do not need to update the firmware on the DVD player

Posted by: Bosstone74 at Mar 8, 2005 4:15:16 PM

So when was this player discontinued?

I think I might be one of those that bought the last batch because right after I received it, it was no longer listed on the gateway website.

Of course I got it for a little over $100, which is pretty awesome already because it is progressive scan, but wondering why it was discontinued.

I have yet to use the networked caba

Posted by: Nelson at Apr 8, 2005 9:02:50 AM

To answer a question on the Karaoke function. I have used it and it seems to work fine. Although I had to use the stereo hookup connection and not the optical audio cable for some reason. So what I did was hook up the connected DVD player to my HDTV and then I have an optical audio cable cord to go from my TV to my receiver/amp and it sounds good although I would prefer the optical audio connection straight from the DVD player.

Hope this helps.

Posted by: Jared at Apr 12, 2005 7:58:47 PM

To summarize key points in improving the Gateway Connected DVD player as I finally did it today...
1. Get GoVideo firmware update. This allows you to access UPnP servers such as Rhapsody and MusicMatch. It also has superior search functions and seems slightly faster.
2. Only install this firmware update if you have some programmable remotes and some knowledge of remote controls. Otherwise forget it as you will have a useless DVD player, although you can always reinstall the Gateway firmware. I use a HTM MX-800. I downloaded most of the Go Video codes from remotecentral.com from an HTM MX-700 package and got additional codes from a Pronto file (.ccf)
3. I also bought and returnd a One for All (OFA)remote to use code 0711 to get the rest of the missing keystrokes on the remote. If you don't want a complicated remote control install, just use the OFA remote and have OFA "perfect" the remote control by putting it to a phone and updating it. This is probably a solution if you don't use a computer to program your remotes.
4. I also prefer the Netgear MP115 server program than the govideo as it is newer.
5. I now have a perfectly working system. Even if you don't use UPnP (which I believe is a mistake as you have access to over a million songs), the firmware makes it easier to search your own media as the number keys become "letters" making it easier to search for songs or files. Hope this helps and good luck.

Posted by: Ben Goldberg at Jul 13, 2005 9:12:32 PM

Hello,

I am downloading movies online and sometimes have to get it from different people but it will continue and still join up as one movie. My problem that I am facing is the D5 Media Server rejects such movies with reason as "truncated movie" although they playback OK on my PC.

May I know is there anything that I can do to solve the problem or do I always have to encode the movie again using Dr DivX?

Posted by: Joe Ng at Aug 2, 2005 11:02:45 PM

I have been thinking about a media server to play divx movies and shows from my networked PCs. I have narrowed my search down to the gateway connected adc-320 or govideo d2740. Which do you guys recommend and why?

Thanks
Shane

Posted by: Shane at Jan 17, 2006 3:05:54 PM

41 second issue: I too had the same problem with my Gateway Connected DVD player jumping to the next song after 41 seconds. I read all the posts in this forum, none of which gave clear solutions (other than totally shutting off your Windows firewall which nobody would ever want to do). It is true that the cause of this problem is the firewall. The solution is to open the ports needed by your dvd player. After hours of research, I learned that the same problem exists on the GoVideo DVD player which uses the D5 Media Server software the same (or very similar) to the D5 software that Gateway uses. To fix the problem, go here to GoVideo's site at http://www.govideo.com/Index.asp?GV=D2730V3#10 and download the SP2 patch, unzip it and run it. It will open the ports on your Windows firewall (this works on any dvd player using the D5 software like Gateway or GoVideo). It's that easy!

Posted by: Michael at Dec 6, 2006 8:18:24 PM

Does anyone have a solution to the player pausing while playing a DVD disc? Mine will be playing fine then pause intermittently and then after a period of time start playing again.
It seems it only does this with burned discs so I am wondering if there is another brand or type I should use.
Currently I am using Dynex DVD-R discs from Best Buy and they work fine in my other players.
I use RipIt4Me (DVD Decrypter and DVD Shrink) to do the backups because it works great.
Any ideas?

Posted by: Mike at Apr 2, 2007 8:15:56 AM

Hopefully some of you still read this. Do any of you know where I can find the GOVIDEO mediaserver software that will work with the Gateway Connected DVD player. The link mentioned above (http://www.govideo.com/Index.asp?GV=D2730V3#8) doesn't work any more.

Posted by: Louis at Nov 16, 2007 8:21:22 AM

Gateway Connected DVD hacking

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