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DVD media storage
mookaloid - 22/1/12 at 07:46 PM

So I have about 150 films on DVD - what's the best way to transfer them to some sort of store that I can then access and play them back on tv? What sort of store should I be looking at?


Thanks in advance

Cheers

Mark

SteveWalker - 22/1/12 at 07:59 PM

I use Magic DVD Ripper http://www.magicdvdripper.com to rip my DVDs to hard-disk - in my case they then go onto my home server.

B.H.! I've just checked back on their website and the price has pretty well doubled since I bought it!

It has worked well so far and has continued to work despite me changing from XP to Win 7.

[Edited on 22/1/12 by SteveWalker]

stevebubs - 22/1/12 at 08:40 PM

Assuming these are your own family DVDs...

- DFDFab to copy to the hard drive.
- Handbrake or similar to recode them down in size
- Serviio on a linux box or TVersity on a Windows box to serve them out to all your household devices

[Edited on 22/1/12 by stevebubs]

mookaloid - 22/1/12 at 08:43 PM

All my own DVDs.

How many films can I get on say a 1TB hdd?

stevebubs - 22/1/12 at 08:52 PM

quote:
Originally posted by mookaloid
All my own DVDs.

How many films can I get on say a 1TB hdd?


A lot!

In their native format without further compression, you're probably looking at 2-300...

With further compression - 2-4x this...

[Edited on 22/1/12 by stevebubs]

Ninehigh - 22/1/12 at 09:04 PM

Storage

Last time I was in Currys there was a small box on display, it was some sort of network drive with a tv interface. If you imagine a sky box designed to work only on the sky+ function, but could pick up recorded programs from anywhere. If I had any idea what it was called I'd link you

mookaloid - 22/1/12 at 09:06 PM

ok so does this box do the same as Serviio or TVersity? I have 1 TB external drive available.

cheers

Mark

Ninehigh - 22/1/12 at 09:18 PM

That looks very much like the one I was thinking of. I can't say yes because I've never heard of Serviio or TVersity but I do plan on getting one and cancelling the tv subscription one day

ChrisW - 23/1/12 at 09:48 AM

Data storage is that big these days why bother re-encoding them? Just make .iso files of the DVDs and put them on the hard drive. A DVD will be between 5-9GB. That was huge when DVD's first came out, but these days a 1TB drive will hold somewhere around 150.

The advantage of doing it this way, of course, is that all the menus and extra features will work when played back.

As for playing them back, I can't recommend XBMC high enough. If you're just playing standard-def content (ie DVDs) you can run it on a classic XBox which go for <£20 on eBay.

re: copyright issue, afaik the 'one copy for personal use' rule applies to DVD's the way it does to CD's. ie as long as you own the DVD there is no reason why you can't keep a single backup on the hard drive.

Chris