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Gear / Technical Help => Playback Forum => Home Theatre & HDTV => Topic started by: Corporate hack on December 13, 2011, 03:21:58 PM

Title: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: Corporate hack on December 13, 2011, 03:21:58 PM

Before someone says you should go build a box that... no.  I'm looking for a stand alone unit.

Is there something out there that I can basically drop a DVD or BLU-Ray disc into, it will rip it, store it on a hard drive and act as a server or just stand alone player for my tv?  I really, really, really want to box up and store my dvds as they juts take up too much space, and I'm willing to pay to get that space back.

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: philR on December 13, 2011, 03:25:48 PM

why not rip them to a hard drive then use a boxee or the like to play them?

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: Corporate hack on December 13, 2011, 03:45:26 PM

Quote from: philR on December 13, 2011, 03:25:48 PM

why not rip them to a hard drive then use a boxee or the like to play them?

I have yet to figure out how to get a system set up that doesn't give me jittery ripping.

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: H₂O on December 13, 2011, 03:48:07 PM

Sure there is - Get this:

http://www.kaleidescape.com/ (http://www.kaleidescape.com/)

Probably WAY out of your price range though - these are designed to sell to Hollywood and DOT COM moguls.

They start at around $5K (at least in 2010 they where) and the sky is the limit - a decent system will run you about $17K

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: flipp on December 13, 2011, 04:00:18 PM

It looks like the vortex box (http://vortexbox.org/about/) mentioned here (http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=152164.msg1927635#msg1927635) would be perfect except it appears to be audio only. Maybe in the future some firmware update will allow it to do DVDs also.

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: JMFanDotCom on December 13, 2011, 04:38:12 PM

DVD -> HandBrake (to H264) -> iTunes -> AppleTV.  Cheap and easy.

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: Corporate hack on December 13, 2011, 04:40:40 PM

Quote from: JMFanDotCom on December 13, 2011, 04:38:12 PM

DVD -> HandBrake (to H264) -> iTunes -> AppleTV.  Cheap and easy.

find me a way to do this that copies accurately and doesn't introduce jitter.

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: runonce on December 14, 2011, 09:02:51 PM

Quote from: flipp on December 13, 2011, 04:00:18 PM

It looks like the vortex box (http://vortexbox.org/about/) mentioned here (http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=152164.msg1927635#msg1927635) would be perfect except it appears to be audio only. Maybe in the future some firmware update will allow it to do DVDs also.

I think VortexBox does support DVD - the web interface references DVD ripping - I just popped one it - and it seems to be ripping.
Im not to hip to video yet - I think its saving as MKV?

Edit/Update: looks like it uses MakeMKV to rip DVDs

http://www.makemkv.com/

Title: Re: Stand alone DVD Server
Post by: dnsacks on December 15, 2011, 11:45:48 AM

find me a way to do this that copies accurately and doesn't introduce jitter.
[/quote]

How/where in the process does jitter manifest itself?

I've been ripping dvds to my computer's hard drive for a while using dvdfab -- I simply rip the dvd in its native (uncompressed) format to a video_ts folder on my hard drive.  I then use VideoRedo to combine the vob files into a single mpg file (changing the package type but again leaving the underlying contents/overall file size unchanged).  I play these back using windows media center extenders on my hdtvs.  Multichannel audio is intact and the video looks a-ok without any dropouts of studders, etc. 

It would seem that isolating what step of the process is causing the jitter to be introduced will help you find your solution.