Media Player or Blu Ray or PS3???

[foxifoxie]

Ah, the refresh rate. That sorted it, changed it to 70 and problem solved.
I see your point on the standard player on the Mediaportal but it surprises me that there isn't a progress bar to click on to skip back and forward in the movie.
Have to say, apart from the orange traffic cone, I'm pretty chuffed with VLC. A bit geeky but I like to watch movies with the Directors commentary occassionally or even to watch it on the subtitles.
Don't know what you use to burn DVDs but I can't praise the Digiarty DVDRip Platinum.
I've been wrestling with aMPdroid remote trying to get it to connect then I think I'm well on the way to geting the srt up sorted.
I'm thinking of just using my old laptop that I've been messing about with for playing movies as an HTPC but it doesn't have hdmi output. What's your view?

[dragonkeeper]

Ah, the refresh rate. That sorted it, changed it to 70 and problem solved.
I see your point on the standard player on the Mediaportal but it surprises me that there isn't a progress bar to click on to skip back and forward in the movie.
Have to say, apart from the orange traffic cone, I'm pretty chuffed with VLC. A bit geeky but I like to watch movies with the Directors commentary occassionally or even to watch it on the subtitles.
Don't know what you use to burn DVDs but I can't praise the Digiarty DVDRip Platinum.
I've been wrestling with aMPdroid remote trying to get it to connect then I think I'm well on the way to geting the srt up sorted.
I'm thinking of just using my old laptop that I've been messing about with for playing movies as an HTPC but it doesn't have hdmi output. What's your view?

Glad u got the laptop issue worked out.

In Mediaportal the progress bar is hidden, using the jog wheel on your mouse makes it visible, you can jog forwards and back makes it pretty simple imo. never have been a big fan of Win Xwhen i was converting DVDs i used anyDVD to beat the protection, copied movie to hard drive then used avisynth to set up a script to do what i needed to do (converting to mkv yielded a smaller file sizes and better quality than converting from dvd9 to dvd5 and i was able to retain all my audio and subtitle tracks as well). When you start looking at DVDs on a 50" or better screen you can really appreciate doing all you can to get the best quality. And at 120" all dvd material looks pretty crappy. So i'm re-buying all my favorite old movies in BD and re-ripping. I know it sounds crazy but, i can really see the quality drop on a 120" screen, and if i upgrade to a new projector I'll be going up to at least 200", which may make my old movies unbearable to watch.

aPMDroid is on my to do list for this weekend it looks pretty sweet. If your not vewing HD material your lap should be fine, 720P over s-video doesn't look bad at all, small quality drop but not they noticeable. I don't think I would try 1080P over s-video though. But if your laptop has DVI out , you can purchase a DVI to HDMI cable which will handle 1080P (be aware that this cable does not have an audio path, so you will have to use RCA jacks unless your laptop has digital out)

[foxifoxie]

Yes the aMPdroid remote looks the biz but can't get it to connect at the moment. Back on to it tonight!
I've had no problem with any protection issues and the Digiarty software has ripped everything I've thrown at it. That said, when I copy using the full disk option the only player that seems to handle the subtitle options is VLC (which I don't have a massive problem with). The files are big, anything from 4gb to 9gb but with hard drives the price they are again I don't mind too much. I've just bought a 2TB GoFlex drive, upgradeable to USB 3 for £80. My background was print and I can remember the days of a gig of storage costing £1000s.
Still toying whether to try to upgrade the laptop or just get an HTPC. Is it possible to get a /sound card with HDMI output and how easy is it to upgrade the USB from 2 to 3?
Steve

[dragonkeeper]

I don't know about you but for me hard drive prices have doubled since the floods in Thailand, sO my hard drive purchase have been put on hold. I've got enough free space to last about 6 months, if i include my old drives that are collecting dust I have about 14 months. So hopefully prices go back down before I run out of space. I've got the money ready to pull the trigger on a 40TB freeNas server, (based on pre-flood hard drive prices).

If all your playing is SD movies, the laptop should be fine

[foxifoxie]

40TB, now that's a serious drive! I reckon by the time I've got the Top 1000 films I'll need about 5-6 TB and by our current rate of watching on average 2-3 movies per week that will be getting on for 10 years of viewing and of corse there will be some cracking films released by then too.
Also looking to burn the best TV series of the last decades.
How will you fill 40 TB?

[dragonkeeper]

40TB, now that's a serious drive! I reckon by the time I've got the Top 1000 films I'll need about 5-6 TB and by our current rate of watching on average 2-3 movies per week that will be getting on for 10 years of viewing and of corse there will be some cracking films released by then too.
Also looking to burn the best TV series of the last decades.
How will you fill 40 TB?

I've been buying an average of 3 movies a week since about 1997, I currently have over 1500 movies (1200+DVD, about 30 HD-DVD and 200 + BD) I'm slowly converting them all to MKV (keeping all subtitle and audio streams a DVD 9 when converted takes up about 1.5 GB, a 1080P HD movie takes less than 10GB). I am also converting my TV shows to mkv as well of wich there are a many (a 1hr show in SD = 400 MB, the smae show in 720P = 1.4GB). I also have tons of CDs and albums I'm converting to mp3. I also record to MKV about 15Gb of tv shows a week. I'm currently using 4.5 TB of 6 TB and am less than half way through the conversion process of all my media (I figure it will take 10GB in all). Add to this I'm still collecting movies (down to about 4 a month now), as well as recording 9 TV shows on a weekly basis. It won't take long to fill 40TB at this rate, I just hope they have petabyte drives by then.

[foxifoxie]

Wow, that's going some.
Did you get the aMPdroid remote working? I can't get mine to connect yet so I'm using the gmote software which sort of gets me there.
Just watched Apocalypse Now (redux). Such a while since I saw the movie I couldn't spot where the addiitons were but the movie seemed to make more sense than when I watched it as a teenager (probably the intervening years helped too)

[dragonkeeper]

I got ampdroid working fine, did you take a look at the trouble shooting section? You must install GMAWebService, dotnet 4.0 on your PC as well as the following MP extensions WifiRemote
If you are trying to stream Live tv to other devices using MP you may also need TV4home (I'm only interested in the emote functionality have not tried anything else.)

Be sure to have wifi remote enable.
Be sure to have your wireless network active, make sure your android is able to connect to the network.
That's pretty much it.