DVD/BRD/ISO Server (1 Viewer)

[JSorrentino]

Hello all, I've been searching for a solution to do what I will list below for some time now. To date I have not found anything that I like - other than commercial products that are primarily designed for hotels and very large homes.

I currently Have 7.1 surround (DTS / THX certified), BlueRay DVD player and a library of over 600 DVD / BRD Movies.

What I am looking to do is rip all my movies to hard drive and facilitate the streaming of the movies to my TV / Stereo maintaining full quality of both video and audio, and have the machine serve the movies as if I were putting the actual disc in the BlueRay player.

I see that this can be done with daemon tools, which I am already a huge fan of and have been using on all my computer systems for years. Not an issue.

I want to store the movies in ISO format. (Unless there is a good reason not to that I am unaware of).

Obviously i would like to have the movies in my library searchable and also to be view in list format / cover artwork format, etc. (This is a no brainer from what I can see of the features already implemented)

The issues.

600 DVD/BRD movies ranging from 4.7 - 29Gb in size will require multiple NAS or devices and a LOT of space. This is not an issue to me, as the convenience will be worth it.

Is there an EXTENDER available that will output DTS / 5.1 (7.1 in some cases) to my stereo and 1080i/p to my plasma HDTV? Or do i need to build my own that would actually run the mediaportal software or can the mediaportal software server to the A-fore-mentioned extender I am questioning?

I understand that there are legal issues of ripping DVD movies, but I do own all the movies i will be putting into my library, so I forsee no real issues there.

If I do need to build a PC to do this, any recommendations would be welcome.

I also want to have the feel as if I were putting an actual disc into the BlueRay player, full menu, etc.

I also want the quality that goes with BlueRay disc players as well.

Thank You all in advance, I understand I can probably test until I am blue in the face and try this the good 'ole hacker ways, but before I devote the time and commit the MONEY, I would like to be as close to sure as i can.

Cheers!

JS

 

[phertiker]

A noble goal, certainly.

The DVD rips are easy as pie, as you said Mediaportal with Daemon Tools takes care of auto-mounting the image and it's exactly like using an actual disc, provided you rip the things that way. You can also easily IMDB all your ISO's for cover art and plot synopsis, etc.

I don't know how it would work for BD rips, though. The current way to play a BD disc uses PowerDVD. I have no evidence to support this, but logic tells me that you aren't going to be able to click on a BD rip and have it launch the Mediaportal/PowerDVD plug. Someone more familiar with that bit would need to speak up, though.

Also, don't count on your "I own legal copies of all my DVD's" argument. Technically in the US you can't legally rip anything that has copy protection, and although there's plenty of arguing back and forth about busting through CSS, I wouldn't stake anything on it. On the other hand, who has to know? There is, however, a new DVD ripping/storage system coming out that gets by that by keeping the copy protection intact. I can't remember the branding offhand but it's a standalone system and I believe DVD only.

As for storage, if money is no object get a dedicated NAS box that holds at least five drives, but for the amount of storage you are talking about you'll probably want more. Redundancy is also nice. If you do have an upper limit, consider buying super cheap PC parts along with a dual-core processor (cheap, of course) and a bunch of (cheap) RAM, making sure the mobo has a bunch of SATA II connectors or just buy pci-e sata controllers. Then just plug in a bunch of big drives, install some linux distro, and run mdadm software RAID. That's what I do for RAID 5 with four 750 gig drives, a very easy 2.2 Terabyte RAID 5 array. Also, what's nice about straight up linux soft raid, is that if the box dies I can easily just move the drives to any other linux box in the universe and not lose data. You can't do that with custom RAID solutions where the low-level data is in their weirdo format.

This has gone on way too long. Hope something in that mess is helpful.

 

[Bagal]

Unfortunately MediaPortal doesn't support extenders at the moment, so your only choice with MP is to build your own client pc, the benefit with this of course is that you get to decide exactly what components go in it and it's perfectly possible to build a silent pc that is up to the job.

With the DVD rips you can also store them in their native VOB format and MediaPortal will play them just fine, no need to mess with automounting and what not, obviously some people prefer ISOs and ultimately it comes down to a matter of preference. Either way, you can have the full DVD experience.

As for physical Blu-Ray discs, at the moment MP doesn't natively support playing them (which you'll find is the same with all media center software due to lack of support in windows itself), however you can use this plugin which will start PowerDVD and play them for you.
I've only had a play around with ripping Blu-Ray's and had some stuttering problems playing over the network and even off the local disk, which I'm sure was to do with codecs but I've never really spent too much time looking into it.

I'm not sure whether you'll be able to get the full Blu-Ray experience with ripping, probably not via mediaportal itself but as with physical discs you may be able to use PowerDVD, personally I've never been bothered with all the menus and extras on my DVD rips as I can always put the disc in if I need to.

 

[JSorrentino]

Thanks for all the comments.. I installed MP on my laptop last night and got it up and running, hitch free, daemon tools working perfectly.

I did not, however, rip or test any BRD Movies; i still need to get a BRD drive to rip them, but not a big deal.

Using PowerDVD is fine, as long as it gives the feel of an actual DVD player, without all the added-in bulls*it that I've known PowerDVD to have. Has anyone tested PowerDVD for the sole purpose of adding BlueRay Disc support?

One thing I saw when testing this last night is that the Movie library will point to one directory, as opposed to being able to select multiple directories and actually have MP "library" the files in the directories (ie: such as iTunes would do).

I played a movie last night on my plasma (video only) and did a comparison between the DVD (actual) player and my laptop (HDMI output) and could not notice a difference in quality, just some minor tweaking that needs to be done. Such as the resolution on the plasma is lower than 1440x900 i believe 1365x768 (or somewhere close - i forget not at home to check right now) and thats no issue because i had it running as duplicated display on the laptop lcd and plasma, so if i were to strictly hook-up the plasma, i presume the native resolution would be output only and solve the issue.

I have not tested sound as of yet, which i plan to do tonight after i get out of work.

My worries - at the time - are BlueRay and sound. Other than that, I'll be jumping in to make the hardware purchases soon, I'm looking through the forum no to find the IDEAL hardware for the Video Card / Motherboard (need digital sound, fiber is what i run now, if it's onboard such as the ASUS board i have in my other workstation has - if not ill just go with a sound card).

Like I said, I can care less about anything else at this point in time. I'm sure ill add in more options later, such as pictures, audio, etc. - but this is my sole purpose ATM.

I need to also research a remote, I use the Logitech Harmony 890 currently, so as long as the functionality is there, ill just keep using that with whatever IR remote i find for my media box.

OH, forgot to mention that i did see (after install and test) that this will be the actual extender and that I can just NAS the storage space for the images. I plan to just do dual Gig-E (bridged for 2Gig) to get the data from the NAS to the extender (MP) and not need to really worry about bandwidth issues. I'll also dedicate this to my media only, keeping it off my intr-house LAN (due to the fact that I can use the full 1g of my lan at given times and dont want video stuttering).

Is MP2 worth looking into, or are there still features that I would need missing? Any reason to even consider using it over MP1 at the moment, I know its currently in DEV, but figure i'd ask.

Thanks to all who posted, much obliged!

JS

 

[Bagal]

I'm using PowerDVD to play my Blu-Ray discs, it's not what you'd call ideal, but it's reasonably seemless enough, what actually happens is I choose the Blu-Ray player plugin in MediaPortal, MP is minimized, PowerDVD is started, I then have to hit play on the remote to start the disc up, after that you wouldn't even know PowerDVD is running, once finished I hit the back button on the remote, PowerDVD is closed and MP is restored.

You can add multiple folders to the movie library, but to get the seemless library view you need to have MP scan all the folders and add them to the database, if you look in MP config, under Movies, there should be a database section and a scan tab, with the size of your collection this could take a while, so you might want to just try a small amount to get you started.
When you next load MP, you need to switch views when you go into MyVideos, by default MP uses the shares view which just lists the folders you've configured and allows you to browse through them, switch to title view and it will show everything combined together from the database.
Another option here is the new Moving Pictures plugin, which is looking quite promising.

...because i had it running as duplicated display on the laptop lcd and plasma, so if i were to strictly hook-up the plasma, i presume the native resolution would be output only and solve the issue.

Yep, outputting directly to the plasma should solve this, assuming the laptop supports the required resolution and the plasma can do a 1:1 pixel mapping.

I need to also research a remote, I use the Logitech Harmony 890 currently, so as long as the functionality is there, ill just keep using that with whatever IR remote i find for my media box.

I also use a Logitech Harmony, picked up an MCE remote and receiver, dumped the remote and then configured the Harmony as an MCE remote, chose said option in MP config and away you go.

Is MP2 worth looking into, or are there still features that I would need missing? Any reason to even consider using it over MP1 at the moment, I know its currently in DEV, but figure i'd ask.

Nope, leave well alone for the time being as it's not ready for prime time, the only release so far is a tech preview.

 

[JSorrentino]

Well, I don't like the PowerDVD solution, but its a solution at the moment, non-the-less. When something better is out, easy enough to switch.

I'm trying to determine hardware now. Fun.

I have a system at home with a FX60 processor that I am considering using and just upgrading that one (which i was planning on).

Audio/Video are easy. Now need to find a quiet case and P/Supply, and decide how to do the storage. Probably a linux box attaches with ethernet (bridged so i can add to the library while watching TV, yes i know its overkill, but its cheap..

I'm seeing mixed comments about the bandwidth for uncompressed 1080p/i - is Gigabit Ethernet sufficient? This can throw a hitch into my plans.

 

[phertiker]

I'm seeing mixed comments about the bandwidth for uncompressed 1080p/i - is Gigabit Ethernet sufficient? This can throw a hitch into my plans.

My gigabit network handles anything I can throw at it just fine. I don't have jumbo frames enabled on any of my nic's and everything seems fine. I guess I can't really say I've done uncompressed video, but I've streamed very high bitrate mpeg2 ATSC streams and high bitrate h.264 videos without a hitch whatsoever. I really wouldn't sweat it.

If anything your bottleneck will be a poorly configured NAS device. Don't skimp. But don't go insane, either.

I wanted to reiterate what Bagal said as well, the "My Videos" plugin built into MP can handle multiple directories just fine, I actually have my views set to "Share" so I can view my TV rips and suchlike. I haven't bothered to rename everything enough to set up the TV Series plugin yet, but all my movies are scanned into the database for cover art and movie info. If you aren't going to have any little vids or anything then using a database view will work great.

Also, FFDSHOW or AC3Filter can output the audio stream straight to SPDIF so no worries there. I use FFDSHOW for just about everything for convenience and cleanliness.

Good luck, this sounds like a great project!

 

[charli181]

Standard ripped DVD's over a network (VOB Files) with MP use only 7-8% usage of my 100Mb network card so going Gigabit should be fine.

Don't have BluRay but I would assume it would be about double the usage

 

[JSorrentino]

Yep. I was misinformed by the person who told me to watch the bandwidth. After actually thinking about it and tell him he was wrong, I determined that what he was talking about was not the same as what I was.

So, to make a long story short, I've started purchasing my new workstation and still need to figure out a few parts of the puzzle of hardware that I want. Video card (nVidia w/HDMI out - not sure which yet), case (but thats not too big of a deal), and how i want to do the NAS for the (approximate) 8 TB i need to store everything in the beginning, more later. (ripping will be a time sink and i can add more later).

As for the NAS, linux for sure. Trying to figure out what is a decent hardware SATA raid 5 card that will host 8 drives (figuring i need 2 of these unless i stumble upon something else). I would love to just go SCSI, but the cost is just stupid for this project.

I ripped about 10 movies to test with in the mean time and everything is fine so far. I just need to learn how to use the plugin for moving moving pictures and how to create sets for movies with more than one disk. Not too big of a deal and now is the best time to learn as opposed to when i have 100 movies in the library.

Thanks all for the help - you have been geat.

Always welcome new ideas or pointers too!

JS

 

[Bagal]

Video card (nVidia w/HDMI out - not sure which yet)

I believe the 8500's have a good reputation for being cheap and capable of hardware accelerated video decoding, personally I've got an 8600gts, never had any problems with it (except that I replaced the stock cooler as it was rather loud!)
I'm not sure if you'll find many cards with HDMI out, last time I looked there weren't that many but things could have moved on, I'm using a DVI to HDMI cable and this works fine.