Anybody have their movie collection on Harddrives instead of DVDs?

[jtvang125]

Another solution to storing and playing large amounts of dvds is a dvd changer. There are a few 400 disc changers out there. I have one for sale if anyone is interested.

 

[Kwaipie]

I'm waiting for TB drives to be $200, then I'll make the 7GB array I will need for my 1000 DVDs. I want to make my own interface in Vis C# as a programming exercise. I love the idea of all of my DVDs being in 4U of rack space instead of 3 floor to ceiling bookshelves.

 

[JImmyK]

i thoght about dvd changer but i have 4 hd tvs and need @ least 2 of them to have access if not all 4....

so can somebody chime in about the dsm 520 dvd streaming capability over 802.11g

thx

 

[aldamon]

Originally posted by: JImmyK
Hey Im pretty excited about your post and I researched this DSM-520.

Cash is always an issue but I have a couple grand I have set aside for this project and 3 of these DSM 520s with 2 terabytes of storage will only set me back about a 1200-1400.

My question though: is it pretty straight forward to play vobs off my main machine using the DSM 520?

IE if I use dvd shrink to rip the movie onto the HD in a folder like c:\gridiron\ can I jsut navigate to that folder using dsm 520 and pretty much play it?

Thanks again!

Or you could just put a $20 DVD player on every TV in your house and call it a day? I'm not trying to be an PITA because like I said the idea of a video server is cool as hell, but I'd hate to see you spend hours of work for no gain.

Anyway, to answer your question. It's a good machine but it has its quirks. Supposedly there's new firmware coming out soon. Right now, the DSM-520 can play VOBs from a uPnP file server (running a program like TVersity or DLink's software), but it will not display the DVD menus. You have to dump the main movie VOB into a folder with DVD Decrypter. There is also a file size limit for the VOB. I can't remember what it is off the top of my head, but it's not really an issue if you just take the main movie. I think it's a 4GB limit.

Unfortunately, I don't think software like TVersity or DLink media server are designed to connect with multiple boxes simultaneously. So your multi-room plans might not work with the DLink or a lot of other boxes either.

This is a good place to start if you like the 520:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=593973

The DSM-750 is also coming out soon. There are lots of other players out there too.

 

[Leros]

I can only see this being worthwhile if you are renting movies and copying them to your server.

Putting a dvd into the dvd player is not that bad compared to ripping it so a server.

 

[0roo0roo]

interesting idea, but actually i dont really watch films more than once. so it would be a waste of money and time. plus there are so many new films coming out all the time theres no real need or time to rewatch old stuff over and over. and unless you rip straight image rips you won't have special features/commentary which is basically the only good reason to revisit a disc

 

[jtvang125]

Originally posted by: JImmyK
i thoght about dvd changer but i have 4 hd tvs and need @ least 2 of them to have access if not all 4....

so can somebody chime in about the dsm 520 dvd streaming capability over 802.11g

thx

I have one of those media players/streamers but although mine doesn't have wireless capability it does have an ethernet port. Mine plays variety of formats including dvds ripped to iso or to audio_ts and video_ts folders. It can hold an internal hdd but you can always add more drives through the 2 usb ports. Again I'm selling it as well as it has problems playing a few HD content.

 

[b0mbrman]

I have it on both...DVDs at home, xHD backups (in h264) with me

 

[silverpig]

mythtv + 1.3 TB of storage

You could write a linux script that would rip and encode the dvd for you. Get a dual core cpu + dual DVD drives, and go at 'er.

 

[b0mbrman]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
interesting idea, but actually i dont really watch films more than once. so it would be a waste of money and time. plus there are so many new films coming out all the time theres no real need or time to rewatch old stuff over and over. and unless you rip straight image rips you won't have special features/commentary which is basically the only good reason to revisit a disc

I rip and encode most DVDs I buy before watching them the first time...

Which is why I really pay attention to reviews before buying DVDs

 

[Jamshedk]

Use an old junker laptop sitting around as long as it has a P4 2.0 with 512 mb ram, get a USB sound card that has optical out, wouldnt that work?

 

[Ronin]

200 movies, 280GB right now. It's easily done..you just have to be mindful of how you export them. Straight DVD images will take a ton more space then compressing with with almost identical quality (4GB vs 700MB-1.5GB). It adds up fast.

 

[DBL]

Originally posted by: Kwaipie
I'm waiting for TB drives to be $200, then I'll make the 7GB array I will need for my 1000 DVDs. I want to make my own interface in Vis C# as a programming exercise. I love the idea of all of my DVDs being in 4U of rack space instead of 3 floor to ceiling bookshelves.

That's going to be a while. Personally, I settled on the 720GB drives which are bound to drop in price quickly once TB drives hit the shelves. So, I paid (too much) for 3 of the drives so that I could start building the media server now and by the time I have a need for more storage, I'd be able to add on extra 720GB drives at much less.

 

[JImmyK]

Originally posted by: Ronin
200 movies, 280GB right now. It's easily done..you just have to be mindful of how you export them. Straight DVD images will take a ton more space then compressing with with almost identical quality (4GB vs 700MB-1.5GB). It adds up fast.

Ronin, can you please tell me how you compress it to get nearly identical quality and with 5.1 surround still? AutoGK?

What can I add to a laptop to get optical out for these DIVX/xvid files?

thanks!