Blu-Ray Ripping and Storage Long Term Strategy - Page 3

This is one of reasons I wish to preserve the ISO. I wish to preserve seamless branching and other albeit sometimes annoying features of the original disc. But the difficulty of getting it all working makes me wonder if I should go with MKV sometimes. But I will not give up so easily.

MKV playback seems like a simple more compatible solution. I don't usually even watch the special features.

Yes, I'm thinking exactly the way you are. The promise of $100 extenders is tempting but I know it will ultimately limit me. Also I like building computers it's fun to do and they can always be upgraded as one wishes.

I have been using DVDFab but I think it only can decrypt while ripping and doesn't do it in the background like AnyDVD HD. Its lower price is tempting, but if it means no need to re-rip in the future then the extra $20 is not an issue.

I've been noticing that my supposedly 8x Blu-Ray drive barely rips at 7-14MBps or 56-108Mbps. Which is 1.5-3x. I rarely hit the higher end of that.


MS intentionally crippled the capabilities of WMC extenders so if I like the WMC interface I am stuck predominantly with the Xbox 360 which is crippled.

Otherwise I need to suffer with the amateur interfaces of some of the $100 player and their unique limitations.

An HTPC grows as new software is released. But boy can they be a pain to configure. HTPC capable of Blu-Ray playback are getting cheaper right down to the Atom/ION solution. They will only get smaller and cheaper. In about 2 years I anticipate mobile phones with micro HDMI out fully capable of playing Blu-Ray files. It might even be sooner.

Technology is moving forward so fast and to me that was the reason despite having a dislike for Sony I absolutely could not support the half-assed format of HD-DVD. People were crying about the cost of Blu-Ray and now the players are $99. If anything people don't know that first DVD players were far more expensive than the first Blu-Ray players. The DVP-S7000 was $1299. The PS3 was $599. Inflation adjusted, it was obvious that Blu-Ray was plenty cheap enough for a new format at launch. A format we will have to live with for 8-10 years.

I don't for the life of me understand how technically inclined people don't see that high cost is a temporary thing. You have to live with your format decisions for many years.

Hirent and Justin0424:

Thanks. Autoplay is the most annoying feature on earth. Since its inception it has served to annoy me.

It has a habit of re-enabling itself periodically.

That's good to know. I am comfortable with my PowerDVD9/ISO/DaemonTools solutions for now. But I will look into MKV so I use use other playback solutions. It would be nice to just use Boxee or XMBC.

I hear you. But I think Windows needs to have mechanisms that inform users before changes are made to Autoplay and a "lock mode" which prevents applications from changing settings like that.

MS does annoy me still. They have created the Xbox 360, they make some great keyboards and mouses but for all this WMC hoopla not one person over there has thought about the lack of proper WMC remote controls. They have ZERO concept of making a solution workable in a easy way for consumers. Everything needs a hodge-podge of hacks to work in an acceptable way in a domestic situation.

I guess the upside is the good feeling when you manage to get everything to work.

Yes. I picked one up at Microcenter yesterday. It's great. But it's not backlit. The MS models are not easily available and the ones they put out years ago for MCE 2005 are dated and ugly. Contrast those with the beautiful products here: http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mo...d/default.mspx

There should be at least one WMC remote option in there is what I meant. It should have been launched along with Win 7. Even better would be a Win 7 Home Premium + WMC Remote Bundle. That's what I mean about MS not being consumer friendly.

Sell us the package. I'm starting to look at the overpriced Logitech remotes at this point. Overpriced since MS does not compete in the remote arena. Which is what they should be doing if they want their WMC platform to be a complete solution.

What difference does it make if the 400 discs on in a 400 disc player or a NAS/WHS?

That's right. The WHS/NAS allows you to watch from any room and gives you faster access and customizable browsing.

You may choose to degrade your $35 Blu-Rays. But you can start your own thread for that. This thread was not entitled "The Short Term Savings Thread". Or "The Transcoding as Film Grain Removal Thread".

It's like arguing that you prefer to convert your WAV or FLAC files to MP3 because YOU believe that recording engineers mix their recordings too brightly. If so there's something called EQ.

I've thought about that option. I think it's what I'll try next. Nice small keyboard and much more reasonably priced than Logitech products.

Didn't I ask you to start your own thread? I posted the original post and if the language wasn't clear to you then let me clarify again. I meant "long-term" strategy. Again the implication being that storage is already dirt cheap and getting cheaper. The implication also being that 2 years down the road when 4TB drives are $100 I don't want to have regrets about having a server full of degraded Blu-Rays that makes me need to go right back to square one: putting the disc in the player each time I want to watch a movie.


If in the next month I wish to run a 1080p projector and sit 8 feet away from a 135" image I could do so without having to re-rip my whole collection since my server is full of transcoded degraded Blu-Ray movies. If next year or 2 years from now I get a home that lets me do that in 2 rooms I could so without regretting having made a short sighted decision.

You may only be able to afford a 19" screen or you find that $150 for 2TB is unaffordable to store 70 movie, which is where I suspect the anger is coming from. I wonder how you afford $35 a Blu-Ray. For YOU then your solution is acceptable. But I didn't ask for a solution for you. I asked for a solution for me. This is getting to be like that fox who lost his tail in a trap asking the others to cut off their tails story. Straight from Aesop.

Please start your own debate thread and leave this one alone. I said in the OP that there is no be no degradation in the solution. Please respect that and leave this thread alone.

Also my profession and my eyesight is beyond the scope of this thread. Any elitism is your perception. I just don't want to degrade a $35 product to save $1 in storage costs. That's just rational. Respect that and start your own thread.

It certainly helps. I started with DVDFab but I think I'm going to switch to AnyDVD. I think keeping the protection intact makes sense in case an update comes along and causes me to re-rip my Blu-Rays. I take it one license for AnyDVD will allow me to run it on multiple HTPCs.

I am also thinking of going for the 20-Bay Norco. I suspect that given my rate of buying movies 20 bays should be enough. But you never know and the concept of an SAS expander is new to me but I was just wondering today how to expand a Norco case + RAID card setup. I was thinking along the lines of eSata but that's not really acceptable for a rack mounted solution. I will read up on it.

Mediabrowser is great program - a real lifesaver.

I'm not yet sure how I'll do backups but eSata transfer sounds like a good idea along with offsite storage. Just keep filling them and moving them as they fill up.

I'm almost considering keeping a separate MKV copy of the discs for compatibility. I already do so with audio with parallel FLAC/ALAC/AAC libraries. The hardest thing is to keep them all consistent. I don't plan on having too many movies initially. But always quality over quantity.

Now that would be a great thing. Now if PowerDVD handled managed DLNA streaming it might justify its high cost. There are Blu-Ray players that rival its cost.