Hi there.... I am trying to find a solution to the following.... I have a computer that will have a DVD player in it shortly (didn't install one as didn't think I'd need it) and would like to copy the DVD's down to hard drive storage. My concern around doing this is keeping the audio in full dolby surround while copying. Second part is that I want to playback these DVD's with full dolby audio on my home theatre system in the next room. ATI has released the "Remote Wonder" which would allow me to control my computer from another room and I can run the cabling which is really great. Anyways, my reason for doing this is that I have a large collection of DVD's and a few of them lately have gotten scratched by kids and made them unplayable. I hate the idea of buying another copy of a movie I already own... since I have a large amount of hard drive storage I am thinking of storing my entire collection on hard drive and locking the originals away. If anyone has any input on doing this, has done it etc. I'd love to hear details on the setup you are using (software/hardware). Thanks.
You can keep full sound quality, your concern should be your hookups to your home theater, I would sugest an optical(toslink) link for high quality. You should restate your other question(s) for they are a little vague, by ripping to your hard drive I would not recomend using just the video card, to keep good picture quality with DVD and many other sources I would recomend the RealMagic Xcard, it is a hardware decoder that can be found for around $80 here: http://store.yahoo.com/livewarehouse/dvsi90800.html This card supports many formats, can decode high quality audio and video, and it takes the load off of your CPU, not to mention that it comes with a remote. Now, for connecting your computer to your home theater, as stated above I recomend optical for high quality audio, for video I can recomend svideo, or, if you have HDTV with the correct connectors your can even plug the VGA or DVI port directly into the tv, however with that approach you will have trouble finding a long vga of dvi cable and with such a lond link the vidoe quality goes all to hell.
Adding on, I am just curios, do you have an incredibly large hard dick, ie: RAID, or are you planning to put just a few movies on your computer. I would be quite interested to know how this works out. Especially if you have enough hdd space(several hundred gigs) to create your own DVD quality library on your computer. Also, I must add that if you do not wish to purchase a dedicated hardware decoder you should use a high quality software I recomend WinDVD Platinum, it is a little pricey but has many excelent features plus, if you have a video capture card you could upgrade to windvd recorder which would make your computer a TIVO. Now, if you would like my oppinion on an excelent system it would not cost very much, the dvdxcard: http://store.yahoo.com/livewarehouse/dvsi90800.html the WinTV-PVR Model 250: http://www.erwincomputers.com/haupwinmod25.html assuming you have the correct hardware: good video output and a large hard drive, you could have an excelent computer DVD library and digital video recorder for about $203 plus shipping, keep in mind that these links are the lowest prices on these products that I could find, and that if you do not live in the US, which I suspect, these prices will most likely be slightly higher.
wow, sounds like a lot . . . I would compress the dvd to something else, like at least svcd and that way you could even burn it to a regular cd that could play in a dvd player (most). with your dvd drive you can rip audio and video, and I think even chapters and put that onto an svcd. I'm not sure about the process, but I know there are tuts for it around.
