Best way to back up my Blu-Ray Collection?

[Beast Lee]

Clearly, some of the people on this forum share the same frustrations as me. Honestly, I know I can watch my movies on the disc.... yet I'm so OCD about this, I cannot give it up. So, basically I want to know the best way to back up my Blu-ray disks. It seemed to be going well until I tried to rip one with Cinavia protection (Salt). Since then, I've been trying to come up with the best way to do this, since there is so many ways. My frustration begins with quality. I would use CQ 18 on RipBot to preserve the best quality possible, but it made for some strange results. For instance, I would get about a 20gb file when I ripped The Godfather. Honestly, I want to do this because I want to say that I did it. This way, I can have a file on my computer in which someone downstairs in the living room, my room, or my dad's room can watch if they want to without using the disk. So my questions are:

What format is the best? MP4 gives good quality seemingly, but has limited audio support. MKV is very good, but my PS3 nor my downstairs Sony Blu-Ray player support the MKV container. However I would use PS3 media server but that is unsupported by the Sony BDP. AVCHD isn't really an option for me because you cannot crop it.

What mode should I use? Fixed bitrate gives me a file size before conversion, but I don't know if this is a good idea since the quality will not remain constant. CQ is great, but like my example with The Godfather, can create very large files, yet also small ones depending on the movie. Fixed size mode is similar to fixed bitrate, but limiting it to 8gb may be a bad idea, but I don't know.

Guys, you don't need to tell me how bad I am at asking questions, or how n00bish I come off as. What I want to know is the best way to backup my collection to files in which I can watch on all my devices. Another option is using my Xbox 360 with the Media Center extender, but that seems to be really laggy, and quite frankly a little worse in quality compared to the PS3. I'm stuck, and I know that at least one of you guys has a very good system going for this type of thing. I learn quick, so please share. Again, I apologize for this being unorganized and hard to follow. I'm just not good at getting my thoughts out clearly. Thanks!

[poisondeathray]

1:1 backup, don't compress

HDD are more affordable these days

[jman98]

The PS3 and Xbox have long long been surpassed by much cheaper devices as media streamers/playback devices. Honestly, worrying about what your PS3 or Xbox requires is kind of like worrying about keeping a VHS tape machine going. Sorry man, but you need to face the truth about this. For a little over $100 you could get a media streamer that will blow the living crap out of your PS3 and Xbox and will have a lot more playback options to boot.

MKV is a superior container to everything else out there. It was designed to support basically every possible video/audio/subtitle combination you could think of. I wouldn't even consider using a media playback device that doesn't support it. MK4 using X.264/H.264 on the video and you may need to extract the AC3 or DTS core for your audio rather than using the original audio unchanged (many streamers can't handle Dolby Lossless or DTS-HD).

[Beast Lee]

Yeah, I was thinking about that.... MakeMKV is a great program. However, movies like The Godfather would take up almost 40gb that way... like the movie is great and everything but... really? And HDD would be nice but how much nicer would a Netgear Media Server be? Like these are the types of questions that are hard to get an answer. Stuff like this takes trial and error to get right, and I'm looking to get it perfect. So you use 1:1 backups? How do you play them?

[Beast Lee]

@jman98 Yeah dude I hear ya... even the Blu-ray player is worse in that category than the PS3 and Xbox. Well, I will be going off to college soon... so what do you recommend?

Oh, and DTS playback is a must... If I want to bypass Cinavia protection, it has to be a lossless copy of the DTS Audio

[Beast Lee]

Jman do you mind telling me what you use? You seem to know what you're doing

[gmoorc]

MKV is very good, but my PS3 nor my downstairs Sony Blu-Ray player support the MKV container.

I see the comments about getting a different streaming device but if not you can use mkv2vob to change the container to mp4.
Should then play fine on your ps3. Only takes a minute or so for a 6Gb file if no transcoding is required.

[bbanderic]

Definitetly get a media player, Best one out there IMO...

http://store.duneplayer.com/shop/item.aspx?itemid=12