DVDs on hard drive for back up and play back on TV

[yadoc]

Foregive me if this has been discussed elsewhere. I have done reasonable amount of work and converted ALL my home movies to DVDs using Click to DVD over the past three years.Each I produced in duplicate as backup( I have 2 kids and scratches do occur ) . The result was DVDs with chapters and nice menus etc...

I have had this idea that some day, I will be able to place them ALL on a device (? drive ...) and play them on TV by chosing the DVD with a simple click (just as we all probably converted our CDs to mp3s and now play them through an
Ipod) I know that apple has Apple TV but am not familiar with how it works.

I recently got a 1 TB external drive and started placing all my DVDs on it using DVD Decrypter. So they are still in VOB format because I am not sure in what direction to go next. Is apple tv the only device out there that would compile the DVDs in one spot, and what format to convert to WITHOUT loosing Menus, Chapters and Quality ?

This will also serve as yet another backup. I might even pass copies to my other family members just as I passed to them my music library.

Your insight is greatly appreciated.

[DereX888]

Well, thats almost exactly what I do.
I dump iso images to a "home network storage machine", and i access them from there thru wired home network.

[jagabo]

Rip the DVDs as ISO image files (DVD Decrypter's ISO read). Then you can use any player software that supports DVD ISO images (VLC, MPC, KMPlayer) to play them back as if they were DVDs. There are also a few set-top players that can play ISO images off external USB drives. Writing the ISO images back to DVDs is fast and simple (DVD Decrypter's ISO Write).