Lucy to the Rescue

By Scott Wilkinson • Posted: Mar 6, 2009

I'm looking for a DVD changer that will play five DVDs in succession with no intervention from the user. I have an elderly disabled mother who is terrified of going to sleep at night. She watches DVDs of I Love Lucy all night, but once I go to sleep, she can't change the DVD when it's over. I put an old Toshiba DVD changer in her room, but once the first disc finishes, you have to press Next Disc, then wait until it loads, then press Play. She cannot operate the remote.
Is there any changer that will bypass the DVD menu and play five discs in succession by itself? I tried a Samsung, which won't do this, and Yamaha tells me its changer won't either. If not, is there anyone who can modify a DVD changer to do this?

Dennis Senges

I know of no DVD changers that can do this, and I know of no one who can modify a changer in such a manner, which might involve changing the firmware. Even if you found a changer that automatically went from the end of one disc to playing the next, it would probably call up the disc menu rather than starting the program directly. Perhaps our readers know of an exception...

As for your mother's fear of sleep, I suggest trying soothing music and/or meditation CDs. At least CD changers can play discs in sequence. Even better, load an iPod with her favorite music. That will last for many hours with no pause in playback.

Now that I'm thinking about iPods, maybe you could rip the I Love Lucy DVDs to a computer, re-encode them in MPEG-4, and load them onto a video-capable iPod. That would take some work on your part, but I think they could be played back sequentially with no user intervention. I've never done this, so I'm not sure it will work. You might have to somehow delete the disc menu, but I don't know how to do that. Again, maybe our readers can offer a suggestion in this regard.

If you have an audio/video question for me, please send it to scott.wilkinson@sorc.com.

Comments

Submitted by Strawman on March 11, 2009 - 10:27am.

I've got three words for you: network media player. You reader can rip every episode and save them in a harddrive. Connection to TV wouldn't be simpler. Can you imagine, days, not hours, of I Love Lucy?

Submitted by fred on March 11, 2009 - 10:49am.

i can imagine hell now . . .

Submitted by Another Fred on March 12, 2009 - 9:56am.

You can do similarly to Strawman's suggestion with a Tivo if you already have one (it plays all the shows in a folder, oldest first) but you'd have to record them from the air first or transfer them from ripped and reformatted files on a computer.

Submitted by SL Sutherland on March 22, 2009 - 10:12am.

you might wanna try to burn the dvd's yourself rip the originals and then add to a 9 gig disc that should give you about two or three dvd's in one depending if you edit the xtra content.. just a work around that might work for you ..

Submitted by Joey on April 22, 2009 - 6:00am.

I have a Onkyo DV-CP702 six disc changer that I bought a few years ago. It automatically changes disc after each one is played. It also can be set up to repeat. This is the first changer I ever owned. I just assumed they all did this. Guess I got lucky. Btw,it plays DVD DVD-R/RW CD CR-R/RW MP3 etc.