Have you ripped your dvd/bluray collections for use with your wdtv etc?

[yoda313]

I thought I'd get a feel for how many here have done this.

I have a few tv series on dvd and I've at times wanted to get them ripped to play them on my wdtv. However whenever I do think about its just so easy to pop the disc in my 360 or ps3 that I never get around to it.

I do use my wdtv for stuff I've gotten off the net.

I've also used it for tv shows I've recorded with a settop dvd recorder. I've ripped those discs and cut the individual shows out and named them so I can just hop to the show I want to watch on the wdtv. THese were recorded on marathon broadcast sessions when I wasn't able to put them in hour title blocks.

But for the most part I don't really use my wdtv a whole lot. Its a gen 1 model so I can't do netflix with it (I use my 360 for netflix).

So have you put your tv shows and movies on your media player similar to the wdtv or the wdtv itself?

I think part of it too is I haven't gotten around to buying larger harddrives to do this. I have a 500gb and a 320gb available but I only have my 500gb in service. And at that its not full. I know you can get 1 tb drives under a 100.00 on sale now but I just haven't been motivated to do it.

I don't want to get rid of my wdtv but I want to use it more but I never get around to it. Anyone else in a similar position?

[fritzi93]

I have an HTPC, no media player, but some of your points do apply in my case.

1) I hear you about hard drive space. I only have 1.5 TB right now and have been meaning to add much more, but never seem to get around to it.

2) OTOH, every optical disc I buy gets ripped immediately. More than half of my Blu-Rays have never been played on a standalone. (No forced firmware updates for me, screw 'em). I hate trailers and menus. So movie-only, and audio converted to 640 kps AC3 means no re-encoding most times, and they get backed up to BD25s.

3) Anything I'm going to keep on the HTPC awhile is re-encoded to BD9, due to space limitations. They still look pretty good. Anything definitely staying on the HTPC gets repackaged from BD9 to MKV. MPCHC is more convenient than TME for playing those.

4) Blu-Ray only, if it's available and is better than the DVD version, which is by no means always the case.

5) I understand the advantages of a media player, but I'll stick with my HTPC in my library/den. I use it all the time, particularly for HD-PVR recordings. The BD25 backups are in the living room with the other HDTV. No streaming here, and no plans to start.

[dragonkeeper]

That may work for you now, but what about in the future, when you have several hundred movies and dozens if of series. Going back and playing catch up is gonna be a Pita (meaning going back and putting on it the things you want to keep seems to take forever ). I put it off for years and I'm now in the process of playing catch up, everything I own is being ripped to MKV. About 1600 movies of which about 300 are HD movies, also have over 100 series (early on bought a GGW-H20L so that rip both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray). My PC has pretty much been ripping \ encoding non-stop for 2 months now.

I too have a an HTPC for which I'm writing my own front end. Everything i own is being ripped to this thing (currently have 7 TB of hard drive space I'm using an e-Sata port multiplier which allows me to use an unlimited # of hard dries as the devices can be daisyed chained). I no longer have to spend an hour trying to find a movie. And the wife loves it as well she's no longer intimidated by the daunting task of finding a movie to watch,there's something to be said about having everything at your finger tips.

[TBoneit]

Yoda

Alot of things I turn to mkv's

OTOH if I want best quality I leave DVD rips and HD PVR captures un-encoded and play them that way.

I'll have to move a straight BluRay copy to the Live Hub and see how it plays, I suspect Fine.. Main movie only I have plenty of storage and it still gets filled up.

11Tb right now online via USB and NAS's. I can manage all the files via the computer since the Live Hub acts as a NAS in that I can access USB drives attached to it via the network

[dLee]

My WDTV useage is cyclical - I'll use it a lot for a while and then I won't for months at a time.

I don't usually rip movies to HDD - mostly because of my ambivalence toward what Hollywood produces. Rarely do I want to watch a recent movie more than once.

I would like to rip tv series, but the time investment in ripping the discs to individual episodes is usually too great.

I can't stream - ISDN is the best internet access I can get.

I use my WDTV for work - I can watch footage and renders on a TV without burning a disc or hooking up the camera.

I also like the randomness of my satellite TV. If I feel like watching something, I'll see what's on. Sometimes I'm disappointed (can't find anything) and sometimes I discover something great.

[yoda313]

I no longer have to spend an hour trying to find a movie.

Actually I have most of my dvds in five or six dvd cases. I have my major ones that I watch most often in one or two. I generally know which movies are in which cases. I have other cases for stuff I've recorded off tv. I know more or less whats in those cases.

I have one stand of dvds in their cases. I can take a quick glance at that and know where my movies are.

Also I have maybe twenty or thirty blurays and a dozen hdvds. Those are in a clear plastic bin I can easily flip through. I have both Star Trek Bluray sets and the matrix trilogy in a hddvd box set.

I dont' think i have a 1000 movies. I have a few hundred if you count my tv series. I might be in the thousand range if you count the stuff I've recorded off tv over the years.

One thing i did start doing was dubbing some of my vhs movies to max bitrate h264 with my hauppauge hd pvr. I then copied those to my harddrive for my wdtv. I may start doing that more frequently. That would be a good reason to use it more. Save the tapes.

Thanks everyone for posting.

Its interesting to see how people use their high tech gear.

[redwudz]

I've been converting all my DVDs to MKV, AC3, at 19.5 quality with Handbrake. I took a spare PC and put in four DVD drives. It's slow going, but I'm about 2/3 done. They look good to me. I convert my BDs to MKV with RipBot, average size 8GB for easy backup of the MKV to DL media. Though I've now switched to BD-25s as they are a bit cheaper per video. I just do this in case of HDD failure in my servers.

Most often I use one of my PCs for display. But my WDTV is also hooked up to my monitor and video projector. The servers are hooked up to the PCs with CAT 6 over my gigabit LAN.

[Bjs]

Every dvd, bluray, vcd, audio and photo discs copied and backed up to 6 x 1 terabyte externals (3 x non-array backups) ... no wdtv ... use astone media gear ep-05 for mkv + real and anything else it will take.

1200 dvd titles +

Then there's the media server for all online services.