Chromebook playing movies thru external DVD player

[walterg1]

I know the conventional answer is, no you can't.
I believe its possible.
Has anyone on the forum tried it?

I just got an Acer C720. It really got me wondering if I could play a DVD on it.

So here's my theory. We know you can easily dual boot ubuntu on the C720.
So in theory the only thing you would need to add is the codecs.
I have a link for the codecs for ubuntu. I wasn't sure if it was okay to add it to this thread.

So what do you guys think. Will it work, or am I missing something.

 

[Rukbat]

I know the conventional answer is, no you can't.
I believe its possible.
Has anyone on the forum tried it?

I just got an Acer C720. It really got me wondering if I could play a DVD on it.

So here's my theory. We know you can easily dual boot ubuntu on the C720.
So in theory the only thing you would need to add is the codecs.
I have a link for the codecs for ubuntu. I wasn't sure if it was okay to add it to this thread.

So what do you guys think. Will it work, or am I missing something.

You're forgetting one thing - you'd have to add a video input to the Acer. DVD drives run raw data to the computer. You can't do that from an external device. It's possible, but I wouldn't count on it, that plugging a USB DVD player into an OTG cable which is plugged into the device would work, but it would have to be a 3-way cable, so you can power the DVD player from an external power source.

 

[walterg1]

I have a LG external DVD drive, no external power source needed.
Its powered thru the USB cable.
Will this work on a Chromebook.?
I have no idea. It will work on an Acer netbook.

I know a Chromebook will support an external hard drive thru USB.

I also read on Googles Chromebook support page that they will Support external DVD. And CD drives in read only.

I can find no conformation on the Acer site.
The DVD player I have doesn't require drivers. So thats one issue out of the way.
Without testing it I'm not sure if my player will work on ubuntu.
It should. But....

 

[walterg1]

So far so good. Test 1 passed.
I did the initial setup today on my new Acer C720 chromebook.

I downloaded Pixlr from the Chrome store.
Hooked up my LG dvd player, only had to plug it into one of the usb ports, the Chromebook recognized it. It powered up fine.
I had a disc with tractor pics on it.
I was able to view them in Pixlr.

 

[Mark Kelly3]

did you use pixlr photo editor? i have a phillips dvd player. do think that will work???

 

[walterg1]

Mark,
Yes I have Pixlr photo editor installed.
Any brand DVD player that will work with a netbook should work.
You wont be able to watch DVD movies off of a disc, because Chromebooks
Don't have the needed codecs.
A music CD wont work for the same reason.

I installed Adobe Acrobat reader and was able to view a catalog on disc.
Also photos stored on disc are viewable.
So should any documents, as long as you have the right program to read them.

 

[Lee Korth]

Since we are "PLUGGING THINGS INTO OUR CHROMEBOOKS" here, I wonder if anyone has tried to plug in an "EXTERNAL WEBCAM"? I have an H/P CHROMEBOOK 14, & the only thing I really miss is the ability to PLUG & PLAY devices, like disc drive, but I would really benefit from being able to plug in a webcam, after all, I do have 4 USB ports, they have to be there for some ability?? Any ideas folks? Thanks,

WONGA

 

[walterg1]

I haven't tried it, but I've read some usb webcams will work and some won't.

 

[Nephele]

Nope chromebook doesn't have enough horsepower to read data from external disc drive. The ideal solution for me is streaming server.
Plex seems to be a choice to stream video to Chromebook, but you need another computer that runs the server part of it. But that also requires some third party converters to rip dvd into digital formats. Both MakeMKV and Free DVDAid work well.

 

[Stephen Gale]

I have been playing around with getting a DVD player to work (to play Videos) on my Chromebook for a while now. The easy way would be Crubuntu, but to get back to the fast and friendly ChromeOS environment, you have to run a commandline switch to change your Primary Active boot partition.

Last night, I was able to get my Chromebook using Crouton to play a DVD. It seems that Google in their infinate wisdom flags USB Connected DVD devices as 660 (rw,rw,-) leaving no method for the Everyone group to read the device. If you chmod

/dev/sr0

to 664 (rw,rw,r) and run the installcss script from libdvdread4, you can play DVDs from within a Crouton-In-A-Tab environment.

Here's a clip of My Chromebook playing the DVD "Kung Fu Panda 2" through an external LG DVD player.
[video]goo.gl/BMkXmi[/video]

Crouton and Crouton in a tab require that your Chromebook be in Developer mode. Every time that you reboot or reconnect your External DVD drive, you must change the permissions. I have scripted it when I start my shell as part of the .bashrc, as well as some aliases (like "criat" = Crouton In A Tab).

 

[ilmcgee]

Bought an external drive for my chromebook before researching this topic, and now I have an external dvd drive I don't use. Anyway, could I connect a dvd player to my chromebook through the usb to watch movies? I have a spare dvd player, they make a rca to usb cable, but what else would be involved? Any ideas?

 

[Jimmyklee5]

Can you send me that link because my disc drive is not working. Do you know how to get it to work.

 

[toddfadel]

i'm impressed by your ability to make this work. Any suggestions for a father who is trying to make this work for his teenager daughter? I have very little experience with using the chromebook in developer mode and for that matter, doing most of what you have tried.

What could I do to educate myself in this setup?

 

[William Day1]

hey where on the suport page dose it say that as i cant find it at all as i have told that they dnt suprt external disc drive at all as the need a programe to be instiled

 

[Mereck Fandohan]

It works in my case. I bought a Windows 10 computer. It was an HP Envy 750-167c and I installed CloudReady on it. For those of you who don't know what CloudReady is, it's basically installing Chrome OS, or to be more specific CHROMIUM OS, on a Windows computer and dualbooting with it. For more info, check neverware.com. Anyway, back to the story. The computer I had had a built in DVD drive. I inserted a DVD, and found it in the Files app. While Chromium doesn't by default support DVD, or neither does Chrome OS, I downloaded VLC from the Chrome Web Store, then went into VLC and added in the VIDEO_TS folder to play (by opening VLC and click the folder icon in the left corner.), and BAM! I've got a DVD playing. Here's a screenshot: https://www.mediafire.com/?rxjtxb633cu5n55 Anyway, I'm thinking it you connected an External disc drive, it'll work too!