Ripping my Blu Rays for Media Streaming to my home TV's

[Tony Martin]

Ok firstly I am new to this, so please be gentle. I am looking to build a computer (media server) to use only as a media player for my blu rays. I have a collection of over 60 blu rays and would like to store them onto my media server and have it connected to my av receiver to play through to my tv via HDMI.

I have built a computer before (don't laugh please) in 2001 and it lasted me a good 10 years before I could no longer update it and had to be junked. I know I will need a lot of TB's but what I am after is very specific and I would like some advice on the matter as I am in no way a professional. I would like advice on what motherboard I should be looking at, the cpu, grafics card and raid card plus anything else I may need, like the amount of ram etc.

The features I am looking for in my media server:

1. wireless keyboard and mouse
2. bluetooth to allow me to use my iphone or ipad as a remote
3. at least 1 hdmi port (but 2 would be better)
4. redundancy, I was thinking of having 8 hard drives 4 for use and 4 for redundancy just in case something fails. I need this because I will getting rid of my blu rays to make space.
5. I want to make rips of my blu rays in their entirety and in true 1080p and 5.1 surround sound, this means special features, subtitles etc etc (Yes I know it will take up a lot of space). I am told this will require me ripping them into .iso files but I am not 100% certain on that.
6. Enough power in the cpu and graphics card to not have choppy play back or stuttering. I have read this will mean pre transcoding? I am not sure if that is a mother board feature or what.
7. It will be on all the time so the lower the power consumption the better and the quieter the better.
8. Possibility to access my collection online so I can play them on my computer when I am away from home (if that is possible). And have others (friends/family) able to access my movies from distant locations. I have read this is possible, but it seems too futuristic to me!
9. Wi Fi, although the computer will be hard wired into a dedicated LAN line.

I believe that is all, though I feel I may be missing something. I do not need over kill on all the components, but I do not want bottle necks that are slowing and ruining my movie experience. I have looked into a few things as far as programs.

http://www.conceiva.com/products/mezzmo/
For media play back as it says it supports .iso files and has a lot of features I am looking for.

http://www.acrok.com/video-converter-ultimate/
for ripping the blu rays but I am not sure about it removing copyright protections.

But these are not set in stone. I have been told PLEX is good, but I have seen it and it will not give me menu options etc, I just watch the feature film and that is it. I have also been told that I should get a NAS device, but then I would have to buy a separate blu ray burner and that just makes it seem like I should build a whole computer as an external blu ray burner will take a lot more time to rip than an internal.

Thank You for your time and help

Tony

[Baldrick]

We only rip Blu-rays with AnyDVD HD, DVDFAB or MakeMKV here.

But even if you rip to iso you wont find any streaming solution with full blu-ray menu support.

Moving you to our blu-ray ripping section.

[Kerry56]

#4 Do not get rid of your physical Blu-ray discs. Stack them up somewhere out of the way, but do not get rid of them. Digital storage, even with backups is not foolproof. Also, your legal right to watch the movies is tied to the physical media if that matters to you.

#5 You can rip Blu-ray in their entirety as files as well as ISO image files. You can rip as files using a free program called MakeMKV. You must use it in Backup mode to get the entire thing onto the hard drive, (insert the disc, click File, then Backup). And you must update the beta key each month or so: http://www.makemkv.com/forum2/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1053
If you don't mind paying for a program, I would recommend AnyDVD HD above anything else as a decrypter/ripper.

Neither of these programs will re-encode or compress your movies.

#6 Virtually any modern cpu/video card combination will work to provide good 1080 playback. Even onboard video using a Haswell/Skylake cpu like an i3 or i5 series chip will work very well for this. Most software for playing Blu-ray can work with hardware acceleration.

#7 I'd stick to Intel for low power consumption. Again, an i3 Haswell or Skylake cpu would do fine. Haswell would use the cheaper DDR3 memory, and you'll need at least 8gb for any new build, I'd say.

[Clockwork]

MakeMKV is my current favourite.

[redwudz]

I use AnyDVD HD for BD rips, then re-encode to ~8 GB MKVs with H.264 codecs and AC3 surround audio. I use RipBot for that.

For DVDs, I encode directly from the DVD disc with VidCoder to MKV as above. Size is about 2 GB

The PC I'm using is in my Computer Details. Having 8 cores does speed re-encoding quite a bit. It usually takes me about 2 hours per Blu-ray.

I use 8GB MKV size as it's easy to back up to a BD disc in case of server HDD failure. I keep the original BDs, so I don't need the menus or extras, just the main movie. A 1TB HDD can hold about 33 BD rips of average size, 30GB. For your existing BDs, you would need at least 2 TB, more if you add more BDs. I don't want to use that much HDD space.

I don't use RAID on my system. I back up to BD media instead.


Spend quite a while designing and shopping for your encoding computer. Not many have room for 8 HDDs.
I would also suggest looking into water cooling for your CPU for long encodes and lower noise.

I would recommend multiple core CPUs, around 4 GHz, 16 GB RAM. You can add more but it won't likely be used.
A 150 GB SSD boot drive and a few 1 TB+ HDDs, at least three.

This is a thread on my present encoder PC: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/360866-Motherboard-CPU-RAM-upgrade-to-8-core-AMD-CPU

A more general one assembling a PC if you aren't familiar with the process: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/255934-Guide-How-to-Build-a-Basic-Computer

And welcome to our forums. )