I Vants the BluRay on all my TVs

bowen

I'm not sure if I posted this in the past, as my memory is terrible and I can't seem to find it in my post history or anything. Slightly different than my media center box.

I want to use one of my spare PCs as a streaming media solution of sorts. I want to take my blu-rays, rip them from disc (I assume that's the terminology), and stream them to my PS3 or any media center in the house (we have a few places we could stream to). Basically I want to stop having to go downstairs to get a disc if it's midnight and I want to watch movies or something like that.

I do have a PS3 I can test this out with, which is my goal is to get it PS3 compatible. I'd also like to know if there's any inexpensive media boxes I can plug in and replicate that "stream this blu-ray/DVD to the PS3" without needing to buy another PS3, on the other TVs in the house (4 TVs, one has the PS3).

What's my procedure for getting the discs (DVD + Blu-ray) onto my PC, and then share them? I'm not looking to share my movies or torrent movies so don't give me advice on that stuff (besides it being illegal and probably get you banned).

Thanks all.

BlindZenDriver

Plenty has already been written about what you ask so I won't go into much in the way of specifics. In think what you want comes under "fair use" in legal terms but it may depend on where in the world you live. Some places have no laws covering this others have laws that aren't enforced and others again it may be very differently.

Let me break the process down a bit.

1. Rip is the right word. What to use for doing this depends on your specific needs. I suggest do a search for the words rip blu ray and guide. Not long ago this was pretty impossible with openly available software but not anymore.
2. As you know blu ray's bring great video and audio quality. Keeping that quality means putting a side a lot of hard drive space for each movie - depending on your needs you may wanna compress the movies, leave out bonus material and so on. There should be guides for this all over. Something like 10GB per movie should be okay for most people but it is a compromise.
3. Streaming. There is a whole world of options but look at DLNA to get started it's a widely used standard. Also if you want to view content on more than one TV at a time there is likely extra challenges - especially if you want to view different content on each viewer.

bowen

Yeah most of my TVs are 720 except one, I have no problem going with 720 all around. As for "at a time" I can't really see that a thing much more than "oh hey I'm in the living room, I'd like to watch this movie down here"

Having scene skipping stuff would be nice though, not sure if that's possible, but I won't pull my hair out over it if it's not. I did find a few guides but I did wonder if anyone had any specific instructions or recommendations that worked for them.

I assumed I'd have to get an eSATA drive at some point here for this, but I do have ~500gb that I can donate for a few movies to give this a shot.

Thanks for the info so far though BZD.

Allforce

The PS3 isn't going to play .mkv files, which you're going to be more than likely ripping your blu-rays to so they're at least a manageable size. Look into something like a WDTV Live, Patriot Box Office, Dune HD, AOIS HD Media Center, etc. They'll all run you about 70-100 bucks apiece, and play EVERYTHING under the sun. Also at that point you have NetFlix, Spotify, etc on all those TVs as well as your entire blu-ray library.

bowen

I think I bought tversity a while back to watch hulu on my ps3. That may work?

Count Zero

For transcoding I've found that ps3 media sever can be a lot less of a hassle to set up than tversity, you wont be able to rewind or fast forward but it does have the option to display videos as folders full of "chapters" so you can navigate to roughly where you want to go. also despite the name it is not compatible solely with the ps3.

Ego

Allforce wrote:

The PS3 isn't going to play .mkv files, which you're going to be more than likely ripping your blu-rays to so they're at least a manageable size. Look into something like a WDTV Live, Patriot Box Office, Dune HD, AOIS HD Media Center, etc. They'll all run you about 70-100 bucks apiece, and play EVERYTHING under the sun. Also at that point you have NetFlix, Spotify, etc on all those TVs as well as your entire blu-ray library.

I'm not an expert on video formats at all, so I expect this is just something I don't understand, but I thought mkv was a container format for videos using all sorts of encoding methods?

electricitylikesme

I think the program you're looking for is AnyDVD, which you can use to - amongst other things - rip Blu-Rays.

The resultant files are playable by most things - XBMC is particularly good.

EDIT: Also screw manageable size. Unless you have thousands of movies, you can easily afford to keep the typically 30gb movie files on a fileserver. They'll stream perfectly well over a network (though don't try to use wireless since interference, spectrum crowding and the shared nature make it iffy for this type of thing).

90% of Blu-Rays out there can be converted this way - the file to play is always the largest one on the disc.

bowen

Yeah I don't have an ability to run wires at the moment so it'd have to be wireless. I'm okay losing quality for that. even less than 720. HD isn't really my thing as much as convenience is. I'd also like to avoid pay for software if at all possible because I'm a cheap ass.

Djeet

If you need to stream wirelessly you're going to have to rip, decode (break encryption) and transcode to lower bitrate. Explaining how to do these tasks besides transcoding may be running up against the forum rules (encryption breaking certainly, and I associate "ripping" to generating decrypted files, though I supposed it could also mean generating an iso)? After that you'll need a client (or built in app) to stream it to your TV. DLNA clients are the most widespread, but they seldom support the mkv format if you chose to use that. An HTPC directly connected to the viewing screen offers the most flexibility.

bowen

I figured as much on that, thanks all. I think I have my answer for the most part.

Stormwatcher

So I'm gonna do a quick hijack
I have a pc with Win7 on my home office, connected to the main wifi router, and a smart LG TV on the living room, with DNLA, connected to a receiver router. I can see the files inside the Homegroup shared library of my main PC, ONLY when I have Windows media player open.

Otherwise, it can see the pc, but not the files.
Is there any other software that will allow my TV to see my videos without setting up anything fancy on the TV?

Count Zero

Stormwatcher wrote: »

So I'm gonna do a quick hijack
I have a pc with Win7 on my home office, connected to the main wifi router, and a smart LG TV on the living room, with DNLA, connected to a receiver router. I can see the files inside the Homegroup shared library of my main PC, ONLY when I have Windows media player open.

Otherwise, it can see the pc, but not the files.
Is there any other software that will allow my TV to see my videos without setting up anything fancy on the TV?

Try ps3 media server

http://code.google.com/p/ps3mediaserver/

SporkAndrew

bowen wrote: »

I figured as much on that, thanks all. I think I have my answer for the most part.

I'm not sure if it helps much, but I'm currently saving up for one of these. I keep all my Blu-rays backed up in ISO format on a HTPC, and I'm looking to replace that with a NAS tucked away in a cupboard somewhere, so was looking for a streaming solution. At the moment I have a piece of software called Media Browser that automatically mounts the ISO and runs PowerDVD, but moving away from 'giant box under the TV' would mean I would have to have something else that does the decoding and displays on the TV.

Essentially it ticks all the right boxes - it's wireless, decodes everything up to Blu-ray 3D ISOs and will output at whatever your TV is set to so you can take everything as 50GB rips direct from disc and be future-proof if you ever upgrade your TVs to 1080p. It can even do local storage as well as mount network space, so you can shove a USB stick in the side.

bowen

@SporkAndrew any US sources to buy something like that?

SporkAndrew

Not that I can see. The only place to get it here in the UK seems to be through the company I linked to. I can't find any reference to it on any US sites, sorry.

But the good news is that such a thing exists, so maybe in a few months there'll be a few competing products doing something similar, but better.

Gooey

If I remember correctly one of the Popcorn Hour models will read blu-ray ISOs.

adytum

PS3 most certainly does play .mkv files.

Allforce

I listed a ton of media streamers above, never heard of the one Spork listed however. A lot of them have the same features and are a lot cheaper on this side of the pond at Amazon.

And I've never gotten the PS3 to run anything but an .avi or an mp4 file, anything in the mkv container just won't be recognized ether from network or hard drive via USB. Whats the secret?

adytum

Actually maybe I'm crazy, and should be ignored. I was reasonably sure it was possible without streaming. It's definitely possible with streaming.

Probably should have double-checked with my PS3 first

Allforce

Oh you mean streaming as in, transcoding it with something like TVersity? I never tried that since I don't have a beefy enough PC to do that on the fly.