HDD ( Hard Disk Drive) Digital Media Players?

[admin_exported]

Ok, where do I start?

I have a fairly large collection of films on DVD and have recently decided to move across to Blu-Ray to take full advantage of my Sony LCD TV. In my humble opinion, Blu-Ray will see the end of DVD over the next five or so years and rightly so, 1080p images are truly spectacular and appreciated by movie fans like myself.

In order to make room for both formats I intend to box away the DVDs. Prior to doing so, I have began to slowly convert them into AVI files. Using the following computer program 'Xilisoft DVD Ripper Platinum 5', I have noticed very little drop in picture and sound when running them as DivX files. They are now a fraction of their original size and I have began to notice that companies are producing hard disc based storage devices know as media players to accommodate such practices. These great little devices can store all of my films as the latest players have 1 terrabyte drives. It will be many years before a lot of the films in my collection reach Blu-ray so would like to have them all stored on a handy little media player thus saving space and still having all my classics readily accessible to watch over and over again.

Finally the question, I have seen numerous players on the internet with the following catching my eye:

Freecom 1000GB Wireless 450 media player with SATA drive (HDMI output) £220.00 & the ICY BOX Portable External 1000GB 1TB Media Player Hard Drive £150.00.

Can you Guys & Girls recommend the very best device out there for a modest budget of up to £400.00 or so. I want to store all my films on the player. Connect it to my TV in the best possible way in order to have stable playback with picture and sound. A player that has good software support thus has a simple navigation menu to access the films off the hard drive. The wireless type has obvious advantages and is more future proof with the better spec but various online review states it is prone to crashing and lock ups.

Any advice and help must appreciated!

Many Thanks, Neil

 

[John Duncan]

A Mac Mini. You can add additional storage (it will only come with about 250gig as standard) as and when required - use Mactheripper to store the DVDs (illegal of course) in their native VIDEO_TS folders.

 

[Anonymous]

On this matter, when the dvd is ripped to the hard drive does it still keep the dts sound quality of a dvd? I am building a media center with the idea of storing my dvd's on the hard drive but do not want to lose the sound quality. The PC wil be connected to a Av receiver and I'm currently using dvd shrink and dvd decrypter!

 

[John Duncan]

marcusarnett:On this matter, when the dvd is ripped to the hard drive does it still keep the dts sound quality of a dvd? I am building a media center with the idea of storing my dvd's on the hard drive but do not want to lose the sound quality. The PC wil be connected to a Av receiver and I'm currently using dvd shrink and dvd decrypter!

Can't speak for those packages, but I'd expect DVD Shrink does what it says on the tin, so you may be losing audio quality. Allegedly, if you rip to the original video_ts folder structure (I apocryphally have something by ImToo whose name I forget), you could theoretically have an exact copy and can play it in media centre just like a DVD (provided you fiddle with the registry to have it show up in your video library - link here).

Course, this non-shrinking takes up an awful lot of space, but you can choose to drop alternative language soundtracks, bonus material, subtitles etc to save space

I'll now add my usual caveat about this being illegal and you mustn't do it.

 

[fr0g]

I would check out the Popcorn Hour. My mate has 2, and they are a pretty interesting piece of kit.