DVD, NAS storage and playback for beginners.

[AntAxon]

Hi folks I was wondering if anyone can give me some advice. Please excuse my ignorance but I know absolutely nothing about this subject. I have a very large DVD/Blu-ray collectionwhich is currently filling several shelves in my lounge. What I would like to do is store all the DVD/ Blu-ray electronically and then be able to play them back through different televisions in my house. If I can access them remotely when travelling all the better.

I assume I need to get a NAS but unsure about the capacity or which would be best, I suppose I have around two hundred films but the collection is getting larger. Then I'm not sure how I file them and play them back I would ideally like to use a tablet or maybe a laptop if that ir better. Is there any software that would be good for this so I can organise the films a bit like I use iTunes for music?

Obviously I need a wireless router and the TV needs to be wireless too or at least capable of connecting to the router via an online adapter.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[bigboss]

The easiest way to rip and store is this. You can add a NAS or external drive to it for more storage.

This is a far cheaper option, but isn't fanless like Innuos. The advantage is you can spec it with a large capacity hard drive, obviating the need of an external drive.

 

[AntAxon]

I think I would have to go for the cheaper option, it looks really good though. Thank you very much for your help.

 

[Feral]

then there are far cheaper options out there for that sort of money which you could then spend on the NAS and a player. I'm not sure if i can mention specific software but ther are free utilities widely know that will rip the uncompressed audio and video into MKV containers. for playback i've used KODI on a Raspberry Pi and Nvidia Shield TV which uses a fork called SPMC which is a free download in the app store.

TinyMediaManager is another free utility which will pull all the metadata for your library. Once you have ripped a few you will see it's a very simple process. Obviously if you don't have a PC thenyou might find the convenience of the one box solutions is for you but you pay a premium for it.

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

I use a home theater (sic) PC two which I've attached a Mediasonic ProRAID 4-disc unit. This can handle up to four 3-1/2-inch hard discs, up to four 10 terabyte hard discs in up to a RAID10 areay (RAID in theory cuts down the risk of loosing all your data - movies and mysic in this case) by spreading the data over multiple discs and in the case of RAID10 by storing data in "stripes" across discs 1 and 2, with mirror images of discs 1 and 2 - or 1 and 3 on discs 3 and 4 - or 2 and 4).

Downside is you need the PC and drive unit to be switched on and either a PC or something like an NVIDIA Shield or a streaming BDP attached to each TV.

Also your PC needs a graphics card with an HDMI output port and capable of streaming 7.1 or undecoded bitstream audio (better - it avoids some audio decoding problems) over the HDMI. I use a GEForce GTX970 card but you may get by with a 950 series onwards - I'm not sure.

On the HTPC I use MakeMKV software to convert the DVDs and regular BDs into .mkv files for storage and playback. Atmos BDs have to be "backed up" comoletely. 4k BDs can't be decrypted (yet) and even if they could the storage cost for all that data becomes prohibitive.

For Playback I use Cyberlink PowerDVD.

There may be other solutions.....

 

[Benedict_Arnold]

There are also micro PCs on the market now which are absolutely tiny. These can go around the house to service other TVs away from your HTPC.

There may be other solutions.....