Boot laptop into dvd player

[pcjunkey]

Hey guys-

I was just wondering if any of you know a way to boot a laptop into a dvd player. In otherwords, I travel alot and I like to watch movies on planes, but I don't want to waste time/battery life booting into windows xp. I was wondering if anyone knows of a minature O/S that could help me out, maybe linux based. I know they have cd players that you can use in laptops without the laptop actually being booted, thats what they need for DVD in my opinion. However, I'll settle for a software solution for right now.

THANKS!

 

[Xemus]

Knoppix is a version of Linux that runs off of a bootable cd, and most likely has DVD software that you can add to the build.

http://www.knoppix.net/

The really nice thing about it is that you don't have to install it, just boot from the cd and it runs.
The bad thing, in your case at least, is that you would still be running an OS.

http://www.closedsocket.com

 

[cdogg]

pcjunkey,
Unfortunately, music CD's and video DVD's are two different beasts. In order for a CD player to function without the OS, all that is required is power and speakers/headphones. That part is easy.

For DVD's, video must be displayed in addition to audio. For that to happen, the CPU and onboard GPU must be available, which in turn requires an OS.

You can try Knoppix as Xemus suggested, but you may find that the boot process won't be any quicker than booting into XP. Instead, you should focus more on the hibernate options for your laptop. You should be able to leave your laptop booted into XP and hibernate, which essentially writes the state of your system to memory (RAM). In this mode, very little power is used to keep RAM powered.

That might be your best bet if your laptop's hardware is new enough to support it.


~cdogg
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