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DVD Archivey dealie? (!)
ben0207
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
MODS: THIS MAY BE OF 'QUESTIONABLE LEGALITY', SO LOCK OR WHATEVER IF THIS CROSSES THE LINE
Basically, I'm sick and tired of having to store all my DVDs - roughly 70 or so with more bought every few weeks. So it struck me while I was dropping the kids at the pool that I might store all my films and that on some sort of hard drive type jobber, then stream them to my TV.
Of course, as you can see from my oh-so-not-good technical mouth-words, I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.
So I come to you fine nerd-folk for some assistance.
My current setup (well, the bits I think might be useful), so you can tell me what to buy:
Intel iMac with about 100GB of HD space free
Xbox 360
Godawful shitty ethernet router modem thing.
A really big amount of cash
A really small amount of personal time to dick about with stuff to make this work.
My idea:
Some sort of fancy automated software, a networked hard drive and an AppleTV. Any good?
Basically, I'm sick and tired of having to store all my DVDs - roughly 70 or so with more bought every few weeks. So it struck me while I was dropping the kids at the pool that I might store all my films and that on some sort of hard drive type jobber, then stream them to my TV.
Of course, as you can see from my oh-so-not-good technical mouth-words, I have no fucking idea what I'm doing.
So I come to you fine nerd-folk for some assistance.
My current setup (well, the bits I think might be useful), so you can tell me what to buy:
Intel iMac with about 100GB of HD space free
Xbox 360
Godawful shitty ethernet router modem thing.
A really big amount of cash
A really small amount of personal time to dick about with stuff to make this work.
My idea:
Some sort of fancy automated software, a networked hard drive and an AppleTV. Any good?
ben0207 on
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Going to take fucking ages to do all of them though. Assuming this one works nice and dandy.
*Chosen because it's recent, so I figured it would have the besterest copy protection.
Windows Home Server is a new product from MS (currently in closed beta-testing) that can provide a centralized location to stream digital content to other computers and your 360. That may also work well, but it's also far more costly. It can also automatically back up data on Macs and PCs.
Mediafork is the new Handbrake. It should be able to rip to an iTunes (and iTV) compatible h264 file.
And it's sat unused in my cupboard.
Why didn't I tihnk of that sooner?
Wow, that seems mad complicated crazy-time. I don't think I have the time, energy or give-a-shit-ness to go that far. I know it would do just about everything I could want it to do, but frankly I was hoping to just throw money at this rather than time.
In that case, Mac mini for under the TV, one of these (if necessary, your TV may take DVI):
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?mco=4BB568D3&nplm=M9267G%2FA
and one of these:
http://www.buffalo-technology.com/products/product-detail.php?productid=97
Rip your movies to the terastation, stream them to the mac mini. Try and run a cable for that, though, I've had iffy results with streaming over wireless.
I would make this post neater, but I haven't figured out the new bbcode yet.
Wiki says that high quality HDMI/DVI cables can be as long as 15m without loss of picture quality.
External hard drives connectible to the PC should be much cheaper than NAS.
At night, the ice weasels come."
He could also use the DVI -> TV thing with the iMac, and NAS is just cooler. He did specify "A really big amount of cash."
Personally, I use Thoggen to rip and re-encode (before I switched to Linux I used DVD-Decrypter + AutoGK), my FreeBSD fileserver and XBMC, which essentially amounts to a ghetto version of what I posted above. Money no object, I'd get a huge NAS box and one of those tiny new shuttles running MythTV.
I think an digital->analog converter would be a bit more expensive than $20, so I assume it uses the analog part of the DVI-I output...
I'm guessing it will also be cheaper/easier to extend a digital video signal with a repeater or some such thing.
He probably won't have much leftover with the HDTV though ;-)
At night, the ice weasels come."
Considering its not even "out" yet on DVD, im going to guess that it has no copy protection.
Also the easiest way to do this would be just to make ISO images of them and then mount them with a virtual drive program and use regular dvd watching software. Preferably on a PC thats dedicated to the television.
Check out my band, click the banner.
Eh? I have it sat right in front of me here!
Ta Dah!
Anyway, my ripping attempt was a success using HandBrake. From looks of I think I'll buy some thing huge:
Like this
Or maybe this
And attach it to my iMac (using FireWire), then use an alias in my "Movies"folder to get the files on it to show up in Front Row. Then either run a big long wire (or buy an AppleTV, which would be really handy for streaming my iTunes librabry as well - the 360 with Connect360 works but it feels like a hack job and doesn't lay out stuff at all nicely)
Are there any immediate flaws that I'm missing with this plan?
Not particularly. If you don't mind those, you're good to go.
Once you can get an AppleTV, that is.
Well, I have about 100GB free on my iMac, so I'll only want to buy a new HD about 30ish movies from now. And even including HDMI cables (already have the HDTV) the AppleTV comes to £220ish, which ain't too unreasonable.
The lock in does bother me a bit, but I imagine myself using a Mac for a good long while, and even then everything is pretty standrad except the ATV, so I houldn't be too buggered.
Either way, good luck, and be sure to tell us how it all works out. I might consider buying one of my own if it turns out to be a good setup.
To the bank then!
And yep, you can expect to see how it pans out. Probably with pictures involving kittens.
(And now I have the agonising job of ripping all those gorram DVDs.)
Yes, ripping DVDs is often a task that is time consuming. It's really bad for these season boxsets I'm doing. My little brother watches them too, so what I have to do is do a full disc rip, rip the individual episodes from the resulting video_ts folder, then work the disc rip down to fit on a full DVD and burn it to a DVD-R so I can put these things into cold storage. It's like 2 or 3 hours a disc, so I've only gotten a few done.
My iMac is pretty fast so trhey aren't takking too long, and at a push I could also use my brother's eMac to do two at once. Bit concerned with how to do seasons and stuff though, you're right. I'd rather not have a big messy liust with every episode listed, but then I'm not sure how well Front Row (and by extension ATV) handle folders.
so I get paths like TV/Scrubs/s02e04 - My Big Mouth.avi. I do this partly because XBMC runs up against the FATX maximum path length pretty quickly, but it does make it easy to find what you want and looks pretty neat in a list.
I use the same method. However, I also add the series name, so that way when you do a big multi-show playlist, you know what's what without having memorized the titles.