Kind of a newb question, but prices are really coming down, and I'd like to get on board. Have a dream of a movie server in the living room with my entire collection ripped to a drive, accessible at the dbl-click of a mouse.
So I get one of these BD drives on the cheap:
http://www.newegg.com/Product....eType=1
1. And I want to rip my OWN DVD's and BD's, without all the previews/FBI warnings, and shit. I assume, legal or not, this is frowned upon by the MPAA, so what software do I want? I want them full quality, video and audio (1080P and up to 7.1 audio).
2. Once I have them ripped, what sort of machine do I need to store them on for playing on the big TV in 1080P? I assume the video card needs a HDMI port, and I don't think even my gigbit ethernet is fast enough to stream in that quality, so I need a machine in my living room. (Boy, would be neat if I could use that RJ45 jack in the back on my actual BD player to actually stream BD movies off of a server).
3. I have never played with the Microsoft... media center, or whatever it is called. Would it be a nice front-end for what I want to do? Be able to sort all of the movies and crap by title, genre, year, whatever? Box art and summary, in case I can't remember what a particular movie was? If MMC doesn't do this, what does? Does this program have some sort of buffering that would actually allow me to stream from a server? I prefer to keep the server farm in the basement where it is 15 degrees cooler and out of the way.
Also, I had no idea BD drives were that cheap, now.
What am I forgetting/what don't I know about? Do I need other special hardware due to on-board DRM, or anything?
Edited By GORDON on 1244427541
BluRay Drives/Burners
Hmmmmm, maybe I should join you. Since my DVD collection was recently plundered, perhaps I should replace them with Blue Ray.
Let me know what you learn that you wish you'd know when you started.
Edited By TPRJones on 1244428144
Let me know what you learn that you wish you'd know when you started.
Edited By TPRJones on 1244428144
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
I've been thinking about talking to a few EE friends of mine to see if they can figure out a way to rig up an old jukebox full of discs to feed into a player, everything tied into a PC. Somehow, things look & sound better when they're in a jukebox.
Diogenes of Sinope: "It is not that I am mad, it is only that my head is different from yours."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSC, SSC: "Better dead than smeg."
1) I dunno. But this came from Gizmodo, so it looks like a good guide.
2) HDMI port would probably work better than VGA, since most TVs dont take the full resolution via VGA. Any relatively decent recent machine should be able to play the videos. Actually, with normal compression (and still no/little visible artifacts), I streamed a ripped BluRay over 100mbs. Look amazing. 1080p, etc. It was a 5GB file for a 2 hour movie.
3) Media Center is nice, but I'm not sure about 264 support. I use TVersity, BUT I use it as a media server (streaming to an Xbox 360).
2) HDMI port would probably work better than VGA, since most TVs dont take the full resolution via VGA. Any relatively decent recent machine should be able to play the videos. Actually, with normal compression (and still no/little visible artifacts), I streamed a ripped BluRay over 100mbs. Look amazing. 1080p, etc. It was a 5GB file for a 2 hour movie.
3) Media Center is nice, but I'm not sure about 264 support. I use TVersity, BUT I use it as a media server (streaming to an Xbox 360).
It's not me, it's someone else.
This looks like the hardware I might actually want under the TV.
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlines....ory_id=
http://www.popcornhour.com/onlines....ory_id=
The Popcorn Hour A-110 is an enhanced version of the popular A-100 model. It adds support for 2.5"/3.5" SATA HDD and USB Slave functionality to improve connectivity and transfer rates. HDMI has been updated to the 1.3a spec, allowing full support of HD Audio pass-through for DTS HD-HR, DTS HD-MA, Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD. The ports on the device have also been reconfigured, with a USB port moved to the rear panel, optical S/PDIF replacing the co-axial S/PDIF and a hardware reset button to allow for easier use of the device.
Popcorn Hour A-110 allows you to pull in digital video, audio and photos from various sources for your enjoyment on your HDTV or Home Theater setup.
You can stream or playback your digital media content from a variety of sources, such as your PC, NAS, digital camera, USB mass storage devices (Flash drive, HDD, DVD drive) , internal SATA HDD* and even directly from the Internet via the Media Service Portal.
It also serves as a NAS and a BitTorrent peer-to-peer downloader** to eliminate the need to switch on a PC or other device for this purpose.
The Popcorn Hour A-110 supports the latest high bitrate video formats (MPEG2 MP@HL, H.264 [email]HP@L4.1[/email], VC-1 AP@L3 in TS of at least 40Mbps) to give you up to 1080p high-definition videos.
In recognition of advances in Internet TV, the A-110 supports peer-to-peer Internet TV streaming technology from SayaTV, as well as popular unicast internet TV such as YouTube, Revision 3 and Vuze via the Media Service Portal.
The A-110 firmware is upgradeable to support future media containers, codecs and features.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
Apparently this sort of thing has a name and a following: The "Network Media Tank."
http://networkedmediatank.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
http://networkedmediatank.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
I didn't hit any of those sites, but my guess would be that you could stream HD over a 100, let alone 1000mbps Network. Just because your TV is big, doesn't mean it's going to need more bandwidth.
I get all my ripping/converting software from www.doom9.org.
I get all my ripping/converting software from www.doom9.org.
I just won an auction for a Network Media Tank last week. After much digging through reviews, I chose this one.
It should come in today or tomorrow. After I play with it a bit I'll let you know what I think.
It should come in today or tomorrow. After I play with it a bit I'll let you know what I think.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
No way. Really?Cakedaddy wrote:Just because your TV is big, doesn't mean it's going to need more bandwidth.
I just thought there was way more data going through the HDMI cable than the CAT5e, especially considering the overhead involved in a packet of data. I guess I will have to research numbers.
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
Well, I haven't seen it in action yet, but that's the theory. Not that I've seen that mentioned anywhere, but it'd be silly not to design it that way and they've gotten good reviews, so you figure it would have been mentioned if they were silly that way.
I'll know more later this week.
I'll know more later this week.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Well I like that because it should mean I can just add a terabyte hard drive onto my server to store my TV/movies... I think. Then just have this networked media tank in the living room. And I recently installed 2 RJ45 jacks in the wall behind the TV, so I already have that going for me.
Edited By GORDON on 1244474045
Edited By GORDON on 1244474045
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
I don't know about the Popcorn Hour, but the IstarHD I bought will also act as a file server on the network. I plan to plonk my 1TB hard drive in there and take that workload (tiny as it is) off my main box.
Oh! It will also act as a bittorrent client, too, although I'll have to see the interface for that before I know if I'll use it that way or stick with my current client.
Oh! It will also act as a bittorrent client, too, although I'll have to see the interface for that before I know if I'll use it that way or stick with my current client.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Posted here for later reference:
Ripbot264
http://www.afterdawn.com/softwar....264.cfm
Ripbot264
http://www.afterdawn.com/softwar....264.cfm
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."
I love it! I like the menu system, I like the setup, I like everything about it. It works well and it works fast. Of course I'm not feeding it HD and have it hooked up to an old TV, so I can't attest to how it would handle more intensive network traffic. But with what I've got the hardware to do it is perfect.
I noticed in the setup menus that the eSata or USB connection can run a DVD or CD drive. I wonder if perhaps it could also handle your Blu Ray drive. I do not know, as I don't have anything to plug in there and play around with yet.
Oh, and when I start up a video I get about three seconds of a screen that says "buffering" so it does indeed buffer instead of trying to drive the video raw across the network (which could of course lead to stuttering if the traffic is heavy).
I'm having a problem adding my NFS share properly as a main menu shortcut. When you add a share it assumes it's SMB by default, and you have to alter it by hand. But if I browse through the network to the share there it works properly without any tweaking.
EDIT: Fastforward and Rewind are a bit jerky at first and then smooth out after a few seconds. That's a little annoying.
Edited By TPRJones on 1244591037
I noticed in the setup menus that the eSata or USB connection can run a DVD or CD drive. I wonder if perhaps it could also handle your Blu Ray drive. I do not know, as I don't have anything to plug in there and play around with yet.
Oh, and when I start up a video I get about three seconds of a screen that says "buffering" so it does indeed buffer instead of trying to drive the video raw across the network (which could of course lead to stuttering if the traffic is heavy).
I'm having a problem adding my NFS share properly as a main menu shortcut. When you add a share it assumes it's SMB by default, and you have to alter it by hand. But if I browse through the network to the share there it works properly without any tweaking.
EDIT: Fastforward and Rewind are a bit jerky at first and then smooth out after a few seconds. That's a little annoying.
Edited By TPRJones on 1244591037
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Here's a nice thing: I just programmed it into my remote, and when restarting the remote afterwords it killed power to all devices as part of that, right in the middle of watching a video across the network. When I started it up again and hit play it did "Resume from Bookmark" and picked up right where it left off automatically.
Edited By TPRJones on 1244592125
Edited By TPRJones on 1244592125
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
ooOOOo! I was watching Feasting on Waves ep 1, and when it finished it automatically moved on to Feasting on Waves ep 2 without my having to tell it to. So when playing files in a folder it'll just move on down them like a playlist. Convenient.
"ATTENTION: Customers browsing porn must hold magazines with both hands at all times!"
Looking at the specs of the system from the ebay link you included, above:
So this thing only has 32MB of RAM, and no hard drive?
One thing I caught immediately was the HDMI 1.1... current spec is 1.3. I wonder what the difference is.
You are streaming from a PC/file server, yes? What is your network architecture? OS?
Support Media Containers:
MPEG1/2/4 Elementary (M1V, M2V, M4V)
MPEG1/2 PS (M2P, MPG)
MPEG2 Transport Stream (TS, TP, TRP, M2T, M2TS, MTS)
VOB
AVI, ASF, WMV
Matroska (MKV)
MOV (H.264), MP4, RMP4
Supported Video Codecs:
XVID SD/HD
MPEG-1
MPEG-2
MP@HL
MPEG-4.2
ASP@L5, 720p, 1-point GMC
WMV9
MP@HL
H.264
BP@L3
MP@HL
AP@L3
Supported Audio Codecs:
AAC, M4A
MPEG audio (MP1, MP2, MP3, MPA)
WAV
WMA
Supported Surround Sound Formats:
AC3
DTS
Supported Picture Formats:
JPEG, BMP, PNG, GIF
Other supported Formats:
ISO, IFO
Supported Subtitles:
SRT, SMI, SUB, SSA
Technical Specifications
Processor :SIGMA DESIGNS 8635 REV C
RAM: HY 256M
FLASH:SPANSION 32M
HDMI: 1.1
SATA:1
Network:RTL8201L 10/100M
USB2.0:1
Optical Audio Out:1
Coaxial :1
Power Input:12V
So this thing only has 32MB of RAM, and no hard drive?
One thing I caught immediately was the HDMI 1.1... current spec is 1.3. I wonder what the difference is.
You are streaming from a PC/file server, yes? What is your network architecture? OS?
"Be bold, and mighty forces will come to your aid."