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Media Center Setup
So I've been thinking about taking my current Windows 7 PC and making it a media center PC and getting a new desktop... I've got it partially setup through my XBox 360 eXtender, but I'm not sure if I like it that way... My main goal, really, is to have my DVD collection available through the PC or an extender so that I don't have to get DVDs out, etc to watch movies. I have DirecTV and 2 standalone TiVo boxes so I hadn't been too worried about creating a TV-based media center. Is there anything I'm missing here (I love TiVo)...
So, I may not need to change my current configuration, I may just need to improve on the way I rip the DVDs to my drive. I don't know. I started by using DVD Shrink and it worked for a lot but not everything. That would get the VOBs onto my PC and then I would rename the main VOB file to be an MPG, place the DVD XML file out there... For the DVDs that DVDShrink didn't rip I installed the trial version of AnyDVD and I could now get the VOBs off using DVDShrink on top of it and everthing seemed good...
... Until we started to watch the movies. Many worked fine, but many would freeze in the middle of watching them. NONE of them allow me to fast forward/rewind/etc and NONE of them show the correct time of the movie/etc.
I've thought about doing a conversion to an AVI or straight MPG file (rather than re-naming the VOB) but that appears to take a lot of time! The DVDShrink (with/without AnyDVD) takes about 10 mins per DVD. Not too bad... Any sort of conversion beyond makes the time increase to a point to where I'll never get the job done!
Any thoughts on how to improve on this??
Thanks! J.
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Comments
The best combo that I've
The best combo that I've personally found is the one that you are already using: AnyDVD with DVD Shrink. I did purchase AnyDVD, so I'm not sure if there is something different about the purchased copy, but I don't think there is. When I first started, I was using Handbrake to compress the movies after ripping them, but I eventually found that more trouble than it's worth, since hard drives are so big and cheap now.
I usually just let DVD Shrink rip the main title to a "Movie Name/Video_TS" and "Movie Name/Audio_TS" folders and then I use Sage TV extenders to watch them around the house. Most anything is going to be able to play the straight MPEG2 dump from a DVD, and I like the fact that I'm not getting any compression artifacts when watching the movie. I've never had any problems with rewinding or fast forwarding on any of the rips I've done like this.
There's a bunch of different extenders available (Popcorn Hour, etc..), but if you want to setup a PC just for watching movies, you should check out XMBC, if you haven't already. The interface is really nice looking and it should play most formats you'd be interested in. I don't use it in the house, since I use SageTV, but I do use it in my car PC sometimes for playing music and movies.
Very cool information as
Very cool information as I've been considering doing the same thing. One thing I'd love to be able to do is share my encoded DVDs out to my family, but until my financial situation turns around, I'll stick to handing them the DVD. ;)
The most notable part of your response is "in my car PC". How many people have a car pc? Closest thing I have is my iPhone.
Feels strange to be back on NTH and not see anyone online but me. Hmmmmmm
We need Smart to post in
We need Smart to post in this all Nerd topic before I jumped in.
Oh yeah, for the record -
Oh yeah, for the record - AnyDVD and ShrinkDVD for DVD's and I use ANyDVD HD and ClownBD for Bluray rips.
I store them on my PC and watch them upstairs on my iStar H5 which is a Popcorn Hour clone. I think I have 6TB of movies now. I don't compress.
Never a problem, both Shrink and Clown are easy to use and I don't need to fiddle fart with it as I would with Handbrake. Depending on the media player used such as the iStar H5, some to most all Bluray subtitles will not display. You have to get them from Opensubtitle.org or subscene, which usually works fine. Sometimes you're forced to watch ALL subtitles come across the screen, not just the Na'vi language as in my Avatar rip.