Hello Everyone! I found this site about a year ago now, and I find the collected knowledge in these forums to be an extremely useful tool. This is in fact the first time that I have not been able to have my questions answered by a previous thread. But I digress. My family is big on movies, and hard on the discs. My wife has proven to be incapable of EVER putting a disc back into its case, and my 3 boys [ages 5/7/7] have committed atrocities so vile upon some poor DVD’s that I will refrain from speaking of them. When I replaced the sponge bob movie for the third time I decided to look into backing up our discs to save myself some aggravation and $. This seemed like a great idea and I happily spent several weekends on DVD Shrink turning out backups. [The burner was like $70 and the discs like 30 cents each.] Everything seemed to be working out great. That is until I realized how fast these backups scratch. Our living room DVD player has “guide tabs” on the disc tray, and even I can’t seem to keep them error free for long. Frankly I’m getting sick of the hour long decode/encode/burn cycle to replace my kids disc backups. Looking for DVD disc alternatives has led me to the only viable option (That I can Find) mass storage. So I’m thinking about storing all my DVD’s on my computer. At least the ones that require a re-burn every few weeks, as we have approximately 600 DVD’s if you count by the disc. Now if im going to do this I might as well set it up as a HTPC on my home theater, and I would like the drives to be external if possible to allow for transport to a friends home. I’ve done some research and on the current market mass storage seems to cost: External [NAS] - about a buck a GB HD - [300 GB unit] .80 cents a GB HD - [500 GB unit] 1.30 a GB Internal HD - [250 GB unit] .40 cents a GB HD - [400 GB unit] 1.70 a GB I guess sense I’m talking about any where from 500GB-1.5TB of needed storage I would like to know if anyone out there has tried this and how it turned out for them. Any advice on the setup I should try, as well as any thoughts on the subject. Thanks in advance for any help, ~Hot Carl PS: Some added HTPC type questions I just thought of: Question: If I was running a movie from my computer. Would I have to run the movies full screen on my computer to see them on the TV? Or is there away to export the movie only and leave the desktop free? Question: Im going to want to use my computer as a tivo-like tool are there any hardware/software products that anyone has found to work especially well for them? Question: Using my wireless network I would like to be able to “stream” the movies to my bedroom where I will watch them on my TV. Are media files this large realistic in this wire free HT environment? Question: I have seen WiFi Network Media Players that hook into you TV/stereo and allow you to access your media files. Does anyone know if any of these would work with the decoded VOB files? [Or would my Lap Top be needed.] Question: If the WiFi option checks out would it be possible to stream 2-3 movies at the same time from the same computer to 3 different rooms? [1 wired, 1-2 WiFi] Or would this prove to be to much?
I have gave that a try. using hd's instead of burning a DVD everytime. The biggest problem is this, ...cost $$$. A dvd can use close to 9 gigs. And if you have 600 DVD's, you would be buying a lot of harddrives. One more thing to think about. If you would be doing this because your kids mess up the dvd's, now, they have to play with your computer to get to watch a movie. - something to think about. as for your other questions: 1. you can run your movies full screen on the tv. a lot depends on your hardware setup on your computer. 2. for a Tivo like computer. try www.snapstream.com ,I know there are free software versions of the same thing, and believe me, I have tried them all. but BeyondTV at snapstream.com works the best. imo 3. yes 4. No. would probably be to much of a work load on the streaming computer. good luck with your setup.
If you're going to be making a DVD jukebox look into converting them to DIVX. You'll be able to get the size down to 1.5gig approx. Hard drives are cheap now and so are USB2 external cases. I just got to SEagate 250G for $40/ea after rebates. You can get external cases for about $20 online. Then for viewing on another tv over your network you can get a network media player and it can play these size files just fine. If you're going wireless make sure it's A or G, not B. You'll still have the occasional pauses on wireless though.
