#867194 by slinky09
25 Feb 2014, 08:52
I was having a bit of a sort out of my home office and realized just how many films on DVD I've got stashed in cupboards and on shelves ... I see no point in buying these again through streaming, but would like to have them stored digitally.

Thing is, I'll need a lot of storage - anyone have any ideas? I am not a fan of the cloud for much, I have concerns of long term service delivery so it would have to be something local. I have a preference for Mac compatible technology too.
#867195 by Slipperman
25 Feb 2014, 09:00
You could build your own cloud,(latest edition PC Pro has an article on this) have a NAS storage device on your home network. Storage-wise each film could range up to 8.5 GB approx (SD) or up to 50 GB approx for blu-ray, ...so depending on the number of CDs your storage requirements could be high... , but storage is reasonably priced (2TB disk £60 - £70) .
#867196 by Slipperman
25 Feb 2014, 09:14
... The NAS storage controller box will add more cost, varies by model, It's like a dumb pc having processing and memory to manage the storage within it. They can also be configured to provide resilience in case of failures etc.
#867197 by David
25 Feb 2014, 09:17
Strangely enough, I started the same thing a few months ago.

We have Sonos so already have a NAS drive on our home network which is great, stable and doesn't need an internet connection to use in your home. (it does to stream to your device outwith but bandwidth issues can make it a problem)

I used handbrake to rip them but didn't really play enough with the settings and ended up with a few subtitled versions instead of the normal versions and then versions with missing chapters etc.

Am sure this would be fixed if I actually read the instructions ;)

Then I got bored and gave up.

You need a pretty high end computer and loads of space to do this as, especially with blurays, its a pretty intensive job, but to get rid of all the clutter and be able to watch everything "on demand" via smart tv's etc is worth it.

Its probably a job for a spare week in your life ;)

David
#867199 by pjh
25 Feb 2014, 09:26
One thing to watch is the compatability with any notionally smart devices such as TVs and DVD players. I bought a Western Digital MyBook device to do just as Slinky is intending only to find that I cannot get it to play nicely with my LG Smart DVD player. It's great for backup though, and the interaction with my iPad is fine; one treat was being able to stream my home music collection to the apartment we had in Sydney at Christmas.
#867201 by David
25 Feb 2014, 09:35
pjh wrote:One thing to watch is the compatability with any notionally smart devices such as TVs and DVD players.


Good point - We have Panasonic and Samsung smart TV's and the Samsung one plays/reads many more formats than the Panasonic one.

David
#867206 by Slipperman
25 Feb 2014, 10:36
pjh wrote:One thing to watch is the compatability with any notionally smart devices such as TVs and DVD players. I bought a Western Digital MyBook device to do just as Slinky is intending only to find that I cannot get it to play nicely with my LG Smart DVD player. It's great for backup though, and the interaction with my iPad is fine; one treat was being able to stream my home music collection to the apartment we had in Sydney at Christmas.


Yes. a lot of people do have issue setting up DLNA/UPnP devices. I'm afraid a trip around the forums is inevitable....
#867213 by pjh
25 Feb 2014, 11:23
Slipperman wrote:
pjh wrote:One thing to watch is the compatability with any notionally smart devices such as TVs and DVD players. I bought a Western Digital MyBook device to do just as Slinky is intending only to find that I cannot get it to play nicely with my LG Smart DVD player. It's great for backup though, and the interaction with my iPad is fine; one treat was being able to stream my home music collection to the apartment we had in Sydney at Christmas.


Yes. a lot of people do have issue setting up DLNA/UPnP devices. I'm afraid a trip around the forums is inevitable....


Nooooooooo...... :0

Actually, I though that might be the case. Just got to mentally prepare myself for being roundly abused for not understanding the basics.... :)
#867216 by wwerdna
25 Feb 2014, 12:26
Definitely agree with the sentiment that you need to determine exactly what your needs are going to be once you've ripped them, and what devices you already have. We're a mostly Apple household, so I have a 2 TB external hard drive plugged into our mac, and use Handbrake (on just the Normal preset) to rip the DVDs. A regular DVD takes up about 1GB at that setting, and then it's easy to add them to iTunes for loading onto iPod/iPad/iPhone, and for streaming to the Apple TVs we have in the living room and kitchen.

From reading forums I suspect if you're not as Applefied as we are then you're going to be looking at something like Plex or XBMC for sorting out the streaming, and then it will depend on what your TV will handle for streaming (there's also the Google Chromecast which looks like it might simplify a lot of stuff).

Basically, ripping the DVDs/Blurays is the easy part, and the storage is relatively straightforward. The complications are always in getting the ripped files to play on some device that isn't a computer!
#867662 by lucavigg
02 Mar 2014, 19:59
I rip my DVDs to an adequately sized hard drive and then use either Air Video to stream it to my iPad / iPhone, or a Western Digital network media player plugged into the back of the telly. It took a while to get file/folder permissions sorted but now I can watch any of my DVDs anywhere in the world with Air Video, providing I have left my PC on, which isn't unusual. And it's free.

I suppose it's just a small step to upgrade to a NAS box but Air Video needs a component running on the PC or Mac to access it.

L
Virgin Atlantic

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