So I want to begin replacing my DVD collection and putting them all on a computer so I don't have to keep using the discs anymore. My plan is to get a tower powerful enough to run a couple of external hard drives and run a good video card to support up to 1080p, or at least up to 720p. I will be ripping all of my DVD discs onto external hard drives and no HD content. All my HD content will stay in Blu-Ray form only. So far, I've come up with the math that I would need at least 5TB of hard drive space to rip all of my DVD's to, so I will probably go with 3 2TB Dual external drives by Western Digital, but there are a couple different versions that they offer and I wanted to get everyone's opinion here as to which one would be the best, and also which video card/sound cards would be best to build a system like this. Here's a couple of questions I have about what I'm trying to do here, hopefully some of you could assist me with these to build the best setup possible. 1. Which of these hard drives would be better? [ Mirror Edition | Studio Edition | World Edition ] 2. What's the difference between running DVD rips off of an internal drive vs. external drive in regards to quality & performance? In order to save money, I want to go external but want to know the cons, if any, of going external vs. internal. And also with going external, will hooking them up through a USB hub do any extra damage (as far as quality and/or performance) than it would being external already? 3. I plan to hook these drives up through a notebook so I don't have to get a big tower. It will more than likely be the XPS 1530 because it has the option of a video card that will support 1080p and the notebook will have an HDMI port on it. If I connect this notebook to my 46" Sony Bravia LCD TV through HDMI, is that also going to cover the audio to its full effect, playing fully the audio that the DVDs were originally mastered in, or do I need to make sure that I need a certain type of sound card? 4. Is there any quality loss in a full disc DVD rip? 5. And if a video card supports 1080p, it is assumed that it can also go down to 720p, correct? The reason I ask is because while I will be getting a 1080p video card, I would mainly only be using 720p because I will just be viewing DVD content. 6. Just to make sure I understand about this as well, if I rip a DVD that has a 720p resolution and I make the PC's resolution at 720x480 (or does it have to be 1280x720), that will fill up the screen correct?
For what you want to do it's best to use internal hard drives, it would probably be less expensive and more reliable in the long run. It would be no problem sticking 5 x 1 TB hard drive inside a tower. The reason is those hard drives need good ventilation. I have 4 x 500gb seagate hard drives (spent 99.00 each)in my midsize tower. Everyone of my hard drives has it's individual cooling fan. I run my tower 24/7 for months on end. In the 3 years I've had my PVR tower, I've only lost 1 hard drive a 4 year old 80gb WD. The larger drives have been very reliable. External drives take up a lot of space and have multiple cables etc, also most externals have very small cooling fans. But as far as feeding a signal to a computer, they are more than adequate, theres really no difference between the externals and the internals. For a home theatre computer, you need a good motherboard/video card and a decent power supply. I don't think a laptop would be up to the job. When I built my first home theatre system, I use generic parts, I lost 2 power supplies and 1 motherboard. With a tower changing/upgrading parts will be no problem.
