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8 Dimensions is a company based in Seattle thats sells their Media pc software for 60 bucks. It supports tons of formats too. http://8dim.com/

I have hundreds of DVD discs lying around. For a while I've been pondering what it would take to build a networked video server, Audiotron for video, recently I finally got it working. The objective was to be able to play DVD's seamlessly from a server share, by seamlessly I mean complete with menus, extras etc., with high quality video and digital sound. Several STB DVD players play files over ethernet but this is usually mpeg4 or DivX, not DVD quality mpeg2. In theory a 100Mbit LAN should have enough bandwidth since DVD's video stream is at most 9Mbit, the most difficult part was putting together a quiet client machine capable of generating a good quality analog video signal. I ended up buying a cheap ($400) Dell Poweredge machine on ebay, it's practically silent, this is important since it sits beside the TV. For DVD decoding I'm using something called the XCard (http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard.htm), it decodes video and outputs digital audio. On the software side I am using TVedia (http://www.8dim.com/default.asp?linkid=vcdhelp), it generates menus on the TV to access media on the LAN. It also works quite well with the XCard, which comes with a serial port IR remote sensor. I can play DVD's by picking the title from a menu or search previously entered metadata such as director/genre etc. When I select a movie the DVD starts as if it were in the drive, the only real difference is it is much faster to jump between chapters and menus.

The system is limited only by storage. So far I have over 100 DVD's on the server. It's very cool to be able to pick a movie using the remote and play it instantly, no discs, no jewel cases and most importantly no exhausting roundtrips from the armchair to the DVD player. The system also decodes DivX (in hardware) and a few other formats, which means I can download clips/movies and display them on the big screen.

I have hundreds of DVD discs lying around. For a while I've been pondering what it would take to build a
networked video server, recently I finally got it working. The objective
was to be able to play DVD's seamlessly from a server share, by seamlessly I
mean complete with menus, extras etc., with high quality video and digital
sound. In theory a 100Mbit LAN should have enough bandwidth since DVD's
video stream is at most 9Mbit, the most difficult part was putting together
a quiet client machine capable of generating a good quality analog video
signal. I ended up buying a cheap ($400) Dell Poweredge machine on ebay,
it's practically silent, this is important since it sits beside the TV. For
DVD decoding I'm using something called the XCard
(http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/xcard .htm), it decodes video and
outputs digital audio. On the software side I am using TVedia
(http://www.8dim.com/default.asp?linkid=vc dhelp), it generates menus on the
TV to access media on the LAN. It also works quite well with the XCard,
which comes with a serial port IR remote sensor. To make a DVD playable from
the network I use DVDDecrypter to create an iso image and daemon tools to
mount the image on a virtual drive, TVedia can then play the "disc" as if it
was in the local machine's drive. The system is pretty neat if I do say so
myself. I picked up a couple of Maxtor 250G drives from Frys, that's about
50-100 DVDs online. In theory I could stick another cheap PC in the bedroom
and have access to the movie collection there also.

If you're not terribly worried about price (which I'd assume you aren't, since you're willing to invest in 1TB worth of storage just for movies), I may have a solution. The Sigma Designs Xcard is an MPEG decoder card that A) delivers superb picture quality over compsite, component, and S-Video B) can decode MPEG4 video such as Divx and Xvid in hardware and C) With the help of a piece of software called JovePlayer it can playback DVD image files, and can also act as a PVR system.

Assuming he doesn't mind running Windows:

Buy the XCard - it will playback divx and mpg, but it does it in hardware so even a slow computer can serve movies(Specifically it plays Plays DVD-Video, Superbit DVD, Super VideoCD (SVCD), and VideoCD (VCD) 1.x, 2.0, DivX , MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 files, Play NTSC titles on PAL televisions, PAL titles on NTSC televisions )
Composite, s-video, scart rgb, s/Pdif outputs.

Then you should buy JovePlayer - this is a player dedicated to work with the Xcard. Your basic "Home Theater Software", it displays its menu interface on the TV screen (and is skinnable btw, so if you want it to look like StarTreks LCARS, you probably could) - if you have a faster machine it offers the ablity to reencode video formats that the XCard doesn't support nativly (such as RealAudio, Windows media - and straight from web pages if you like).

Then you just fit your "home theater" machine, with harddrives with your content, pop in CD's, or mount network shares and navigate with JovePlayer (and the remote) to the desired folder and click on the relevant IFO file. It will play back as a normal DVD, (because in essense it is a normal DVD, you might just have relocated it) -via the remote you can navigate the DVD Menus, change soundtracks, page through subtitles etc. You can bookmark specific places and make playlists as well :)

Assuming he doesn't mind running Windows:

Buy the XCard - it will playback divx and mpg, but it does it in hardware so even a slow computer can serve movies(Specifically it plays Plays DVD-Video, Superbit DVD, Super VideoCD (SVCD), and VideoCD (VCD) 1.x, 2.0, DivX , MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 files, Play NTSC titles on PAL televisions, PAL titles on NTSC televisions )
Composite, s-video, scart rgb, s/Pdif outputs.

Then you should buy JovePlayer - this is a player dedicated to work with the Xcard. Your basic "Home Theater Software", it displays its menu interface on the TV screen (and is skinnable btw, so if you want it to look like StarTreks LCARS, you probably could) - if you have a faster machine it offers the ablity to reencode video formats that the XCard doesn't support nativly (such as RealAudio, Windows media - and straight from web pages if you like).

Then you just fit your "home theater" machine, with harddrives with your content, pop in CD's, or mount network shares and navigate with JovePlayer (and the remote) to the desired folder and click on the relevant IFO file. It will play back as a normal DVD, (because in essense it is a normal DVD, you might just have relocated it) -via the remote you can navigate the DVD Menus, change soundtracks, page through subtitles etc. You can bookmark specific places and make playlists as well :)

Assuming he doesn't mind running Windows:

Buy the XCard - it will playback divx and mpg, but it does it in hardware so even a slow computer can serve movies(Specifically it plays Plays DVD-Video, Superbit DVD, Super VideoCD (SVCD), and VideoCD (VCD) 1.x, 2.0, DivX , MPEG-4, MPEG-2 and MPEG-1 files, Play NTSC titles on PAL televisions, PAL titles on NTSC televisions )
Composite, s-video, scart rgb, s/Pdif outputs.

Then you should buy JovePlayer - this is a player dedicated to work with the Xcard. Your basic "Home Theater Software", it displays its menu interface on the TV screen (and is skinnable btw, so if you want it to look like StarTreks LCARS, you probably could) - if you have a faster machine it offers the ablity to reencode video formats that the XCard doesn't support nativly (such as RealAudio, Windows media - and straight from web pages if you like).

Then you just fit your "home theater" machine, with harddrives with your content, pop in CD's, or mount network shares and navigate with JovePlayer (and the remote) to the desired folder and click on the relevant IFO file. It will play back as a normal DVD, (because in essense it is a normal DVD, you might just have relocated it) -via the remote you can navigate the DVD Menus, change soundtracks, page through subtitles etc. You can bookmark specific places and make playlists as well :)

I built a system up for exactly this purpose - DVD playback, MP3, TV tuning, Cable-TV tuning, digital VCR, etc. I wasn't happy with the typical DVD player's support for less "mainstream" formats either (such as DivX, MPEG4, SVCD, etc), so I was pretty motivated to find a better solution.

In the end I gave up on the TV tuning part of the project. I ended up with a dead-silent machine that can play almost any sound or video codec with perfect quality, but could not find a decent solution to the TV tuning functionality.

Quality was my first real problem with the TV signal. Even the software supplied with the Leadtek TV-2000XP resulted in lousy picture quality. The UI was awful too! I didn't want a monitor, so I was depending heavily on my TV out support.

The second problem was that the UI was never really intended to be used as a VCR replacement. It's like nobody ever seriously considered that I didn't want a keyboard or mouse (just a remote).

Finally, drivers were buggy, crashes were frequent, and I gave up.

On the other hand, I now have the best DVD player on the market. Picture quality is better than any commercially available DVD player. The digital audio output supports standards that my amp can't begin to decode (Dolby Digital 7.1 is a little too advanced for my amp).

My advice to anybody trying this sort of project is to focus on the achievable first - TV tuning is not yet mature enough to be a viable option.

Buy yourself a Realmagic X-Card, a copy of JovePlayer (easily the best DVD player application in the world, but requires the X-Card), and build the machine. Then look at extending the functionality as the software/hardware matures.

Lurgen.

The most important bits...
RealMagic X-Card
Jove Player
Zalman CNPS-6000Cu (silence is golden)
Seagate 60GB hard disk (nice and quiet)