How to choose a Media Server?

First off, welcome to the forum. Copying your media to hard drives is a step in the right direction. Let's start with the terminology. You 'Rip' a disk to make a one to one copy of the content, usually to a hard drive. To 'Burn' is to produce a copy on recordable media like a DVD+R disk. To 'Shrink' or 'Transcode' is to perform an operation on your 'Rip' to make it smaller or to make it compatible with a player such as an iPad. Let's for a moment assume you are after only the content (no FBI warnings, Trailers, Fillers or Extras). MakeMKV will nicely handle the ripping of BluRay or DVD in that case (I'm not sure about the 3D stuff - I don't use it). It is also currently still free. There are several other rippers out there, too. DVDFab and AnyDVD are two of them. Those two can make copies that include menus and such. If you need to transcode your rip HandBrake is a good free program that will produce an MP4 or MKV file that is typically smaller but has reasonable picture quality. Search AVS Forum or Google for more info on these programs and terms.

EDIT: Here's a good thread about ripping: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1448332/bluray-to-mkv/40_40#post_22826509
Edited by olyteddy - 1/14/13 at 7:43pm

1st you ahve to deccide what format you are going to RIP to, then you can decide which media player you want to use. There are many many players that will serve you depending on what you plan to rip to. For instance most all players will play MKV Blu-ray rips. Only the newer players however will give you access to 3D mkv\iso. You woulld serve the rooms either via a shared drive\drives on the network Server\NAS\Share Drives connected to router.....There are a few different ways to share media over the network.

You sayyou are shopping on a budget, but its better to say what the budget is as no one can give you a good answer unless we know what youre workign with. We'll also need to know what you currently have in your network to start with....

You first need a solid network infrastructure. You should have Ethernet wire pulled to each location that you will be viewing/listening to your media. You will also need a media player at each of these locations as well. There are several decent media players out there. The fact that you require 3D Blu-ray media playback limits your choices as the players that can handle this type of media are still immature and may have some playback issues unresolved as of yet. Take a look at players from Popcorn Hour and Med8er. If you do not require 3D media playback, Dune Smart players are the most stable and flexible.

FYI : I have backed up around 167 Blu-Rays and it takes up about 4Tb on my NAS. I use MakeMKV and it has worked on every single BD disc. Consider backup solutions as well. Now that 4Tb external USB drives are available at Costco affordably it becomes a possibility of managing such large data with rsync. Backup offsite is absolutely crucial IMHO when dealing with so much data.

I would wait for Dune to release a 3D MKV capable player. I have ripped all my other BDs . Dune is the most reliable media player and plays everything I throw at it. I use Zappiti as my jukebox. 350+ TV shows and 167 BD's . There is a thread on AVS discussing Dune's plans for a 2013 3D capable player that also supports XBMC.

I have used both MKV and Handbrake. MKV is really easy to use, the only downside is that it does not work well on Apple devices so i have to transcode with Handbrake. Initially I was having problem getting the audio to play on my MKV files when streaming to my Samsung TV, until I discovered Plex. My 2012 Samsung Plasma has a PLEX app, and once I installed the server on my PC and Plex app on my TV everything worked perfectly. My AVR decodes the DTS tracks, and the picture is amazing. I have been looking at Synology NAS devices the last few weeks and discovered that a few of them also support Plex as well. I just ordered a DS412+ and 3 3TB Western Digital Red drives today. Having used the Plex server over the weekend with my regular PC and Samsung TV I was quite impressed. The synology NAS devices are a little pricey, but it looks likes I can avoid having to buy dedicated HTPC for each TV. There are lot of options out there, so take your time and read about them before you go and and start buying stuff.
Edited by GoLaLakers - 1/15/13 at 2:18pm

You will need a computer to rip your collection....

The programs I suggested mostly need Windows OS to run. Some are available to the Mac-o-philes but Windows is easier.

Popcorn hour A400 will also do 3D