Best way to play movies over NAS through TV (Whole House Distribtuion)

[TheRubster]

I have a movie collection on my NAS (approx. 4TB, 600 movies). Nearly all of the movies are EXACT copies of the DVD. I have been evaluating a number of options on how to browse and play the movies throughout my house (and in HD where applicable). I understand that I can convert the .vob to H.264 anamorphic with no quality loss (video or sound). Is this true? I also was contemplating converting to h.264 anamorphic and using AppleTV as my interface and player. I can get 1080i (?), so no quality loss in my movie collection. Are there other alternatives for distribution that has easy-to-navigate menus, etc.? What am I missing?

Thanks.

[Baldrick]

If you reconvert you will lose quality. Why do you want to reconvert? Smaller file size or just one file for each dvd or?

[TheRubster]

Good question...I don't care about file size...just quality. What I can't seem to overcome is how to access the movies from a TV with a "pleasant" interface. AppleTV is beautifully designed, but you need to have mpeg4 (h.264 would be my choice) to use it. Are they other options to access my movie collection from the TV, browse, and then play?

[jagabo]

Popcorn Hour?

[TheRubster]

Anything else?

[dun4cheap]

The klegg device will play DVD ISO files off the lan, it will also allow you to use the DVD menus.

www.klegg.com

[jagabo]

There are others like Zensonic, Tvix, Ziova, Dlink, etc but none seem to be as well regarded or flexible as the Pocorn Hour. Samsung has entered into an agreement with Divx recently. NetFlix too. Some there should soon be TVs that play Divx and Netflix via ethernet ports.

Oh, there's the new Western Digital WD TV HD too.

[TheRubster]

For those of you that use Popcorn Hour, how is the interface? I can't seem to find any info on their website. Otherwise, seems fantastic.

[TheRubster]

If you reconvert you will lose quality. Why do you want to reconvert? Smaller file size or just one file for each dvd or?

I was thinking about this statement and not sure I follow...I made an exact copy of a dvd via 1clickdvdcopy pro. There should be no compression, etc...If I now convert to anamorphic H.264 mpeg4, which should play via AppleTV, is that really a "reconvert?" Also, considering a SD-DVD is not HD, would the difference in quality (both audio and video) be noticeable?

Again, thanks for the help...I am not an expert with this stuff and it is nice to get the feedback and direction...appreciate all the help.

[yoda313]

I was thinking about this statement and not sure I follow...I made an exact copy of a dvd via 1clickdvdcopy pro. There should be no compression, etc...If I now convert to anamorphic H.264 mpeg4, which should play via AppleTV, is that really a "reconvert?" Also, considering a SD-DVD is not HD, would the difference in quality (both audio and video) be noticeable?

I am not familiar with 1clickdvdcopypro but since you mentioned you have vob files that means you copied the dvd in the dvd structure. Dvd is mpeg 2 video.

Here is information on how a dvd is sturctured:

https://www.videohelp.com/dvd

Here is information on what h264 is:

https://www.videohelp.com/glossary?A#AVC,%20H.264,%20H264

H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC, for Advanced Video Coding, is a digital video codec standard which is noted for achieving very high data compression. It was written by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as the product of a collective partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 10 standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10) are technically identical. The final drafting work on the first version of the standard was completed in May of 2003.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC


H264 is compressed video. It is different than divx but conceptually it is the same in form. It changes the video to a smaller file size by saving parts of the video that stay the same from scene to scene in indiviual clusters representing that color instead of saving the same color for each individual scene.

Here is some information on what a CODEC is:


Codec
An acronym for "compression/deccompression", a codec is an algorithm or specialized computer program that encodes or reduces the number of bytes consumed by large files and programs. Files encoded with a specific codec require the same codec for decoding. Some codecs you may encounter in computer video production are Divx, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Xivd, DV type 1 and type 2 for video and MP3 for audio.


Also consider the amount of time it will take to convert each movie from a vob to mp4 with h264. Even on a fast machine it will take considerable time to do it for 600 movies.

If you have more questions please reference the glossary and feel free to post more questions. Hope this helped.

[jagabo]

x264 does have a truly lossless mode but the resulting file will be much bigger than the source VOB. To get a file that is smaller you will be using a lossy mode (whatever h.264 encoder you use). At settings where the quality difference is minimal you may get about a 50 percent reduction in file size.