Noob, hoping to get some advice...setting up media center pc.

[KidCastro]

Hi Friends,

After reading through multiple threads but never becoming a member. I've decided I need some help in regards to my 600+ DVD movie collection. Its getting out of hand and I'm finding it hard with space in my lounge room for this many movies. So I am interested now in setting up a media centre pc with many teribytes of space.

I just have a couple of questions and not sure if this is the right place to ask, please move my thread if required:

1) DVD's are generally fairly large, in terms of size, do you think I should use handbrake and convert my dvd's to H264-MKV or MP4 compresson or reduce to 4.7 GB compressed DVD files?
- Im trying to find out what the better quality is and save space to fit more movies.
Open to your recommendations?

2) Which Media Centre software would you recommend, Im really taking a liking to BOXEE interface?
This is it for now, its very important for me because I want to do it right first time and dont want to have to convert 600+ dvd's in the future.

All your advice is most appreciated.

Justin

[solarfox]

Well, to properly answer to your first question, we need to ask you a question in return. Namely, which do you have more of, and/or is more important to you: money, or time? 600 movies is gonna take a long time to reencode, no matter how you slice it or what end format you choose.

Even if every one of those 600 DVDs is a dual-layer disc filled to maximum capacity (and realistically, most movies actually aren't), that's a worst-case scenario of about 5.1TB. You can get a 6TB NAS (Network-Attached Storage) box for as little as $750 if you shop around, or you could just stuff a bunch of 1.5TB or 2TB hard drives (around $99 - $139 apiece) into your home-theatre PC. Then, just rip everything as-is and leave it on the drives without bothering to reencode, and be done with it. Might cost you a little more, especially if you want to have everything mirrored on a second set of drives as a backup (though there's probably no reason to do so if you're gonna keep the original discs), but it would have the virtue of being a lot faster to set up.

[KidCastro]

Well, to properly answer to your first question, we need to ask you a question in return. Namely, which do you have more of, and/or is more important to you: money, or time? 600 movies is gonna take a long time to reencode, no matter how you slice it or what end format you choose.

Even if every one of those 600 DVDs is a dual-layer disc filled to maximum capacity (and realistically, most movies actually aren't), that's a worst-case scenario of about 5.1TB. You can get a 6TB NAS (Network-Attached Storage) box for as little as $750 if you shop around, or you could just stuff a bunch of 1.5TB or 2TB hard drives (around $99 - $139 apiece) into your home-theatre PC. Then, just rip everything as-is and leave it on the drives without bothering to reencode, and be done with it. Might cost you a little more, especially if you want to have everything mirrored on a second set of drives as a backup (though there's probably no reason to do so if you're gonna keep the original discs), but it would have the virtue of being a lot faster to set up.

Thanks for the reply, I would have to say at this time money.. I dont mind re-encoding my DVD into compressed DVD or H264 because I have the time less the money.

I just want to know what will have better picture/sound quality?

A DVD compressed --> 4.7GB
or
A DVD compressed --> H264 MKV or MP4 format?

Im thinking of slotting a couple of SATA2 drives into my pc and I have 6 slots free for 2TB drives. The way I see it, I want room for future expansion and so your advice is very valuable.

[yoda313]

Probably the first one I imagine. However the second choice of moving to mkv or mp4 will give you future flexibility.

You didn't mention hardware. Are you planning on watching straight off the computer or through another device? Consider possibly doing a xbox 360 or ps3 if you already own one. You can use streaming software like ps3 media server or tversity to stream from your pc.

If you have xp media center or vista premium and above or win 7 premium and above you already have media center software. Though you'll have to use some registry hacks to get them to read dvd iso's or actually win 7 is supposed to have native h264 support now.

If you want to stay away from the pc/mac as a direct interface you can go the hd media player route. That would entail getting a wdtv media player or a popcorn hour box (or many of the competitors out there). That way you hook harddrives up to the little black box and the little black box to your tv with no need for the pc. And they are versatile and can play just about anything out there.

[redwudz]

I'd agree with solarfox. What I use is full tower computers with about nine hard drives in each, accessed over a gigabit LAN to my HTPC and other computers. A video server. They are in a back room and I can turn them on with a Wake on LAN program. You could rip the DVDs as ISO files and play them back that way. Or just as VIDEO_TS files, each in a named folder. I prefer the ISO as there is only one file that way. I started with 320GB HDDs as they were the cheapest at the time per gigabyte, then 500GB, and now 1000GB. For my servers, I used recycled motherboards and full tower cases and a couple of PCI SATA adapters. A 500W power supply is sufficient. You could use some version of Linux for a OS to keep down OS costs. Much cheaper than a NAS, IMO.

You can view ISO files with Window Media Center (With some add ons) or there are several software players that can view ISOs. Or as VIDEO_TS folders, there are several players that can view them.

Alternately, you can convert them to a more compact format, but you will usually lose all menus and the extras would have to be done separately. You can try some of these conversions to see how long each would take you and that might help your decision. Presently hard drives are much cheaper than the time it would take me to do that many DVD conversions. Something like AutoGK would be one choice. If you wanted to convert to something like H.264, then there are other alternatives. Then you could reduce the file sizes down to maybe 1-2GB and keep most of the quality. But these conversions do take a fair amount of time. You would want a quad core PC running at about 3Ghz to do this fairly quickly. But how much is your time worth?

And welcome to our forums.

EDIT: And since this is primarily a Media Center question, probably better in our Media Center Forum. Moving you.

[KidCastro]

Thanks again guys, My setup will be as follows:

Current PC
Core2Duo E8400
4GB DDR2 Ram
1GB Nvidia 8800GT
Future --> SATA2 HDD's currently have 2 TB's but can upgrade with 6 more slots..

Now.. via DVI from video card, this will be connected to the TV via DVI -> HDMI adapter for video and toslink optical audio cable from onboard motherboard to the amp I am going to buy for audio input.

Planning to use BOXEE as the frontend - what do u think guys?

The way I see it, If I have space for 12 TB ~ 4.7Gb per movie cutting out menus and extras for ultimate quality, I can fit in the future = 2500+ movies if I ever get a collection that big. Not interested in blue ray so this is convenient for my viewing on samsung led 46" tv. Also, I can play games since my tv supports great resolution of 1080P and sound should be superb.

Thats what I am planning as an ultimate setup.

Im leaning towards using a compressed DVD format over H264.

[redwudz]

Sounds OK. You could use DVDShrink and a external decrypter and just do the main movie. Many times you wouldn't have to shrink the main movie and then no quality loss as they are often already close to 4.7GB without extras, subs and extra languages. I use a remote server, but if you have room in your existing PC, should work well enough. I use HDMI to a projector and to a LCD monitor and the audio goes to a surround amp.

I would consider ISO containers for the VIDEO_TS folder as you don't need a external folder for the movie name, but either way will work. You don't need the AUDIO_TS as it's usually empty anyway, but it doesn't take up much space, so up to you. VLC can play ISOs and some other players can also or maybe MS Media Center. Don't really know about BOXEE.

[yoda313]

I thought I'd just point out 4.7gb is just for single layer dvdr burning. However if you don't plan on burning your compressed rips to a disc than you can really choose any size you want.

But that is a good target to start with. For larger movies that take up more space you could decide to shrink to 5.5 or 6gb to have less compression.