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DVDs to PC to TV...wirelessly.

post #1 of 7
Thread Starter 
I have about 200 discs that I want to be able to access on my TVs without having to put in physical media. The breakdown is:

180ish DVDs...
10 HD DVD...
10 Blu-Ray...

At first I was thinking HTPC but I would like a lower cost alternative. I want to take all the media, put it on my PC and then be able to bring up some type of interface where I can just pick the movie and bam, it plays. Ideally I could access the library from two different televisions. I need this to be wireless.

I have looked at Apple TV, Roku, Boxee box...just not sure what would be the best solution. Ideally I would also like a unit that can stream Pandora.

What's going to be the best and or least expensive and most logical way to do this?
post #2 of 7
First install anydvd/hd to rip your content to your pc, although I would get either a nas or an external hdd because all those dvd's will take up room. Then get a WDTV live or boxee box or netgear player. I don't think the Roku players can stream from a pc or a hard drive but I may be wrong. Figure out what format you will be ripping to, like mkv or ts etc and find a player that can stream it and also handles Pandora. The ripping is the easy part. Finding the player is the hard part. No one box does everything.
post #3 of 7
Quote:
Originally Posted by acebreathe View Post

First install anydvd/hd to rip your content to your pc, although I would get either a nas or an external hdd because all those dvd's will take up room. Then get a WDTV live or boxee box or netgear player. I don't think the Roku players can stream from a pc or a hard drive but I may be wrong. Figure out what format you will be ripping to, like mkv or ts etc and find a player that can stream it and also handles Pandora. The ripping is the easy part. Finding the player is the hard part. No one box does everything.

I'm not sure that you should rip video from dvds, just because of time. If you convert them into H.264 (you'll not loose quality) every dvd rip will weigh ~1.4 GB instead of 4.5 Gb. I recommend to look on Xtreamer SideWinder 3 as media player and some NAS. I do not know about roku etc, but Dune, PCH and Xtreamer can play DVD menus, and often Blue-ray Disk menus, imho that's one more reason do not rip dvds
post #4 of 7
The Apple TV3 would be an excellent choice for your purposes BUT it doesn't have a Pandora App. You would need to stream Pandora content to it from an iDevice such as an iPad,Phone, or iTouch via AirPlay. The ATVs interface will allow you to sort and view all of your stored content and view cover art and MetaData. As mentioned earlier, you will have to copy the movies to your PC and convert them to H.264 to work with iTunes but the file sizes are smaller with no loss of quality. Handbrake is an excellent piece of freeware with new features being added all the time Thanx to a great group of open source developers.

The problem you will likely run into is with BD streaming wirelessly. Some get lucky, but not consistently. I would expect your BD collection to grow so you may want to explore a hard wired option for 1080p content. But for 720p, the ATV handles wireless streams with aplomb.
post #5 of 7
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arslanx View Post

I'm not sure that you should rip video from dvds, just because of time. If you convert them into H.264 (you'll not loose quality) every dvd rip will weigh ~1.4 GB instead of 4.5 Gb. I recommend to look on Xtreamer SideWinder 3 as media player and some NAS. I do not know about roku etc, but Dune, PCH and Xtreamer can play DVD menus, and often Blue-ray Disk menus, imho that's one more reason do not rip dvds

Thread starter mentioned not wanting to handle physical media so I thought rip you say convert, only using handbrake. Pretty much the same thing except for size, but also a good idea.
post #6 of 7
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the help folks. Looking at the Apple TV...

If I did convert my DVDs to H.264, would I then be able to stream them from the ATV?

I like the idea of ATV simply because it's relatively inexpensive and I have an iPhone and iPad.

On the ATV, if I convert all my content over, will it be possible to show album art/movie covers?
post #7 of 7
Quote:
Originally Posted by infin|ty View Post

Thanks for the help folks. Looking at the Apple TV...

If I did convert my DVDs to H.264, would I then be able to stream them from the ATV?

I like the idea of ATV simply because it's relatively inexpensive and I have an iPhone and iPad.

On the ATV, if I convert all my content over, will it be possible to show album art/movie covers?

ATV doesn't support HD audio, and possibly never will. You can buy a ATV2 and jail break it and install XBMC, and you will have a better over all media player.

Using Handbrake takes forever to convert a movie specially if you are doing bluray.

You will not be able to stream wireless bluray movies, they will stutter or lag. You will be able to stream DVD rips wireless if you want. I know this because I've done a lot of testing. I ended up building my own server and streaming everything from it.
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