[plooger]

Here's a scenario for why XBMC displaying offline DVDs would be handy... I either don't have the HDD space or the personal time to rip my entire DVD collection to the hard drive; however, I would like my family and house guests to be able to search through my *entire* media collection (online and offline) to find something that interests them -- and XBMC's library is a whole lot nicer than having to stroll around to the various DVD storage cabinets spread around the house.

Some short-term workarounds...

• Rather than using an empty file as the placeholder for the offline DVD disc, I can use some short, small homemade video clips instructing the viewer that the selected media is a DVD not stored online... and could go so far as to have several different clips for each DVD storage location in the house. ("The DVD disc you have selected to play is stored in the main Living Room entertainment center.") Extra credit for also noting DVDs that have been loaned-out.
  
• Find a relatively simple/automated way to overlay some graphic (disc, house) onto media thumbnails associated with offline content, providing a visual cue that a given title is offline.
  

(Need to look into the PC-based XBMC library managers to see if they already have these features. Such PC-based applications could have much more flexibility in creating the dummy video files, based on specific status text associated with each DVD. e.g. "stored at yada", "loaned to Mom & Dad", "loaned to Steve K. three years ago and the rat bastard is yet to return")