What are the advantages to digital video versus discs?

[Jugernot]

Ok, I'll admit it, I'm a bit old school. I have around 350 DVDs, 40-50 HD-DVDs, and maybe 10 Bluray movies so far.... I keep seeing everyone talking about various video formats, such as H.264, MKV, Mpeg4 and it makes me wonder, why not just use the discs? I'm guessing only a small percentage of users are pirates, so the majority are people who buy movies and just don't want to use the discs....

Back almost 10 years I remember when Divx came out and started splintering off in Xvid and various other formats. I remember downloading a few clips and being impressed for their size, but converting over DVDs to Divx was a pain in the ass.

Has something changed? I'd like to digitize all my movies to my HTPC or would even consider buying something like a Popcorn Hour or one of the newer WD HD boxes but if it isn't any easier that it used to be, why even bother?

I'm 27years old and work fulltime in the IT industry and I just feeling I'm being left behind! Can someone take a few minutes and fill me in on why everything seems to be going digital versus using discs?

Jugs

 

[sdifox]

err, the people on h.264, mkv and mpeg4 are pirates... except for the ones who record OTA or make their home movies.

 

[jtvang125]

A digital copy gives you less disc handling. Rip the DVD/HDDVD/BRD and store the original in safe keeping. Of course you're trading physical space for increase hard drive space requirements. Also with a digital copy you can store and access all of it in a central place (htpc or some other type of media server) and catalog your whole collection with software.

Also note that when going from a physical media to a digital one any compression, if you decide to use it, will cause some PQ loss. With dvds you can do a straight rip and keep it down to 5-6gb files which is tolerable. With HDDVD and BRD you're looking at 15-30gb files though without any compression.

 

[jtvang125]

Originally posted by: sdifox
err, the people on h.264, mkv and mpeg4 are pirates... except for the ones who record OTA or make their home movies.

That's probably true but for people that want to rip their hidef disc formats into files for their htpc or media server while trying to save space, h.264 is probably the best compression method to use. Once compressed you can use either mkv or avi since they're both just containers.

Of course the argument is, why even bother going hidef if you're just going to compress it back down anyways?

 

[Spicedaddy]

Codecs are better than they used to be, and CPUs are much faster at encoding, but compressing DVDs or Blu-Ray is pointless IMO. DVDs aren't that big, and why pay for a Blu-Ray if you're gonna compress it and lose quality... I'd only reencode if it was to play on a portable media player.

Just get a couple of 1TB hard drives, and rip the movies if you want quicker access and want to protect your original media.

 

[Jugernot]

What I want to do is remove all the menus, etc. and just have hte movies. From what I've found online I can do that with Clone DVD...

As far as ripping Bluray or HD DVD, how would I go about removing everything except the movies from the discs? I never watch the extras and if I do want to watch them, I'll just get the disk from the shelf.

My Movies is the way I'm going to go I think.... do I need a 3rd party DVD player program for the decoder or does Vista have one builtin? How is the quality?

Does My movies do HD material?

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: Jugernot
What I want to do is remove all the menus, etc. and just have hte movies. From what I've found online I can do that with Clone DVD...

As far as ripping Bluray or HD DVD, how would I go about removing everything except the movies from the discs? I never watch the extras and if I do want to watch them, I'll just get the disk from the shelf.

My Movies is the way I'm going to go I think.... do I need a 3rd party DVD player program for the decoder or does Vista have one builtin? How is the quality?

Does My movies do HD material?

You are looking at 30GB per movie.

 

[flxnimprtmscl]

Originally posted by: Spicedaddy
Codecs are better than they used to be, and CPUs are much faster at encoding, but compressing DVDs or Blu-Ray is pointless IMO. DVDs aren't that big, and why pay for a Blu-Ray if you're gonna compress it and lose quality... I'd only reencode if it was to play on a portable media player.

Just get a couple of 1TB hard drives, and rip the movies if you want quicker access and want to protect your original media.

I've just started playing around with ripping my blu-ray discs for easy access in my htpc. I've been using .264 and VC1 (can't decide which I like better) and there's very little if any visible loss in quality. Note, I said visible loss in quality.

Of course, I'm viewing on a 46" 720p Samsung DLP so maybe it's more apparent at 1080p. However, if you were to show me an uncompressed 20-50 gig disc and a 5-10 gig .264 rip I'd have a hard time telling the difference.

From my experience, people who say "why compress a hi-def rip" have never seen a good one. Why compress anything? Why compress a BMP file or a WAV file or a DVD?

 

[sdifox]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl
I've just started playing around with ripping my blu-ray discs for easy access in my htpc. I've been using .264 and VC1 (can't decide which I like better) and there's very little if any visible loss in quality. Note, I said visible loss in quality.

Of course, I'm viewing on a 46" 720p Samsung DLP so maybe it's more apparent at 1080p. However, if you were to show me an uncompressed 20-50 gig disc and a 5-10 gig .264 rip I'd have a hard time telling the difference.

From my experience, people who say "why compress a hi-def rip" have never seen a good one. Why compress anything? Why compress a BMP file or a WAV file or a DVD?

720p <>1080p on your 46", you are right, you are not going to see any diff if the re-coding is done correctly.

Do not confuse lossy compression to lossless compression.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: flxnimprtmscl
I've just started playing around with ripping my blu-ray discs for easy access in my htpc. I've been using .264 and VC1 (can't decide which I like better) and there's very little if any visible loss in quality. Note, I said visible loss in quality.

Of course, I'm viewing on a 46" 720p Samsung DLP so maybe it's more apparent at 1080p. However, if you were to show me an uncompressed 20-50 gig disc and a 5-10 gig .264 rip I'd have a hard time telling the difference.

Um, what? Most Blu-Ray discs are already in H.264 and VC-1. Either you're talking about the early MPEG-2 discs, or you're lowering the bitrate on them. If you can't see a difference with the latter, you're not really looking for the differences, IMHO.

 

[RKS]

I make copies of all dvds purchased for my kids because:

1. It get rids of the annoying and usually unskippable adverts. (Disney's Fast Play is utter BS).

2. Most kids, especially mine, are filthy, have no concept of tight finances, and don't give a shit about other people's personal property.

 

[tw1164]

Originally posted by: RKS
I make copies of all dvds purchased for my kids because:

1. It get rids of the annoying and usually unskippable adverts. (Disney's Fast Play is utter BS).

2. Most kids, especially mine, are filthy, have no concept of tight finances, and don't give a shit about other people's personal property.

This

It's also nice for when the kids want to watch a certain episode of spongebob, I don't have to look through 5 seasons of dvds to find it.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

it's a shame movie and music companies don't want you to make legit copies of something you paid for. as always, i recommend http://www.videohelp.com/