So if we leave the player/vault attached to the Encore-side, it can catalog, attach to the Premier-side for importing, and it just imports w/o option to catalog?
Yes and no. This gets a little bit complicated because we're expecting that the feature that allows the Encore-connected vault to be used to import discs to the Premiere system is not going to be ready in the first release, and will follow. So, let me describe the end state, and then I'll describe the temporary intermediate state.
Let's assume for simplicity that you're not planning to use the music functionality on Premiere. Let's also stipulate that the Disc Vault really belongs on the Encore system, because one of its functions is to provide disc presence verification, and it needs to be part of the Encore system to do that, since that's where content is being played.
End State
You would have your Disc Vault(s) and all of your players on Encore. A disc inserted into the vault would be automatically imported onto the Premiere system.
If you wanted to do disc-to-digital, you would just insert the disc into one of your players, and when the movie detail sheet appears on screen, you could do the disc-to-digital transaction right there and then eject it. You'd really never even need to catalog it.
Intermediate State (no vault import yet)
You would have your Disc Vault(s) and nearly all of your players on Encore. You would leave one M500 player behind on Premiere to allow importing discs onto Premiere. For systems that have DVD import capability, when you import a DVD, you just take the disc out and store it. When you import Blu-ray, you take the disc out
and then put it into the vault so that the vault can verify disc presence.
If you want to do a disc-to-digital offer, then just as above, you put the disc into a player on the Encore system and do it.
But, what happens if you put a disc into the Encore-connected Vault during this interim period? In that circumstance, it would be cataloged, and if you selected it in the onscreen display and said "Play", the vault would actually load the disc into the optical drive and send the bits over the network to the player. (This is how Alto systems with Disc Vaults work today, so that functionality carries over.) Once disc imports are supported, though, those discs would be imported and then played from the Premiere server.
Adding Music to the Mix
What I've described so far deliberately excluded music to keep things simple. Let's add music back to the mix now.
In order to support music playback, you need to leave at least one player associated with the Premiere system. If that player has an optical drive, it can be used to import discs, so during the interim period, it can serve double duty (music playback, and disc import). Once vault import is ready, you probably wouldn't use it for DVD/Blu-ray import anymore, because the vault is more convenient, but it would still work if for some reason you wanted to use it to import a disc.
One question I need to go research and then return here: I'm not sure if we'll be able to do CD import from the Encore-connected vault to the Premiere server, or if you'd need to use the player you're using for music to import CD. I'll follow up.
