Building a Movie jukebox w/ standalone DVDplayer, eide HD

[scholar]

I'm looking to create a generic FAQ about getting standalone DVD players to play movies (backed-up from DVDs) that are stored on external HDs, i.e., create a movie juke-box....So here are some questions for those who've pulled this off.

From cursory reading on the net, it appears that information read from DVD-media (by the standalone's built-in drive) is transported over an IDE cable within the DVD player. Is this correct? Does this imply that an IDE HD can be connected in lieu of the built-in DVD-ROM reader (assuming the HD is powered by an external PS/enclosure)?

Assuming that movies are stored in individual directories (in the same format and region(free) coding) on the external HD, will a DVD player recognize/play them without tweaking the bios or whatever (i am an ignoramus...)? Any resources that you would suggest I refer to.

It would be great if folks could post their thoughts on any related issues.

[MachineMan]

Sounds good! Im not sure how to do it but I've heard about people downloading games and movies to the HD on and Xbox and playing them later.

[MrMungus]

Sounds like this kind of device would work but I'm not sure if you can just disconnect the DVD player and connect a hard drive. But hey, I don't know a lot of things.

If I were you, I'd look at how a TIVO works. I think it's nothing more than an MPEG-2 encoder/decoder and a hard drive...which now makes me wonder how hard it would be to modify a TIVO to accept removable hard drives...hmm... Let us know what you come up with.