Easiest way to playback VIDEO_TS for a lone TV?

[w@ntonsoup]

We've got a little "exercise room" and a TV in there on the wall. I've recently bought a zillion workout DVD's and ripped them all to my hard drive. I'm wondering what the easiest way to playback all of these on my TV is? There's no wired net cable to this room, but I'd be willing to buy hardware if there are like hard-drive media players that I can copy all of these to and play from the TV.

What are my best options? I'd rather not do Windows Media Center there, I don't want to have to use an actual PC.

[rumplestiltskin]

Western Digital TV Media Player with an external USB2 HD. (Don't bother with the crippled "mini" WDTV version.) It works great for many different formats. I use it for H264s that I created for my AppleTV. I do believe you'll simply need to save the VOB set to an mpg stream (which shouldn't require any re-encoding). As I use a Mac, I use MPEG Streamclip with Apple's MPEG2 codec; others here will surely suggest PC solutions.

[jagabo]

A word of warning about the WDTV and WDTV Live: they don't handle DVD menus. They will simply play the longest title. That works for movie DVDs but not for episodic DVDs. Chapter handling isn't very good either. How did you rip your DVDs? ISO images? VIDEO_TS folders? Divx files?

[w@ntonsoup]

We'd need to retain DVD menus - everything is in VIDEO_TS folders because I've been using the DVD feature in Windows Media Center on my HTPC.

[jagabo]

How does Windows Media Center handle menus? You might be able to use its DLNA (ie, media) server rather than network shares.

[cal_tony]

Either the WD or Seagate device would work. I've used them both in my gym The Seagate has some menu support but the WD will play vobs as mpgs. Both devices have simple displays.

Titlewriter can be used to write simple menus without re-encoding the vobs and Shrink can be used to separate the vobs into separate titles if the contents are episodic.

Without any problem either device will play the dvds one right after the other without stopping..

Tony

[w@ntonsoup]

For the benefit of others, these devices do exist!

http://www.kombitz.com/2010/01/04/set-top-media-players-supporting-dvd-menu/