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Suggestions for a DVD Video on Demand System?
An anonymous reader asks: "I was paid, with about 1000 DVD movies, by a video rental store that owed me money and then subsequently went out of business. I'd like to rip a couple hundred of them to a 1 TB disk array, and serve them up to my big screen, via a video on demand system. However, all the systems I can find for interfacing computer network to the plasma display only serve up the basic MPEG files, and not the entire ripped DVDs with their menus, etc. What systems would Slashdot readers suggest that could manage the ripped DVD files as a complete disk, and serve them up?"
I would start with MythTV. They have a section on working with DVDs for their PVR software.
libertarianswag.com
And as a plus, it also runs MAME and Unixware.
If he's got a plasma screen, he's not going to want to give up any video quality, so recompression really isn't an option.
.VOB files? If he's planning on using the original DVD navigation, I'd think they'd try to access those files anyway.
Who says he has to recompress? Maybe there's a solution that will use the original
BTW-- damn, I wish I had 1000 DVDs. He should open up his own store, then "black out" certain ones while they are rented so he can't watch them at the same time.
dont rip em, put em in a disc changer,.. something like sonys 400 disc dvd changer... http://www.downtownaudio.com/sodv400didvd.html im sure theres some out there that can hold even more
http://www.xlobby.com/ Also be sure and check out the AVS Fourms HTPC section. http://www.avsforum.com Tons of stuff in there about the hardware and software.
Is the apple DVD player considered "off the shelf?"
Use a disc imaging software such as Alcohol 120% to create direct DVD images. Then mount the disc's in a virtual drive, and hit play. At ~9 gigs a disc, you'll need 9 TB's.
The disadvantage is that it is a) not cheap (starting at $27k) and b) not f/oss.
but then again, it is exactly what you are looking for
If you want to keep the movies in tact with menus and mpeg2 format, you're gonna need more than 1 gig per disc. You're looking at 2-4 gigs per dvd. With 1000 dvds, one terabyte won't even get you halfway there. . .
Read the HTPC topic on the AVS Forum. You can learn all about this topic, in exhaustive detail.
First, I would recommend transcoding the DVDs to XviD or DivX with a high bitrate (2Mb/s). You won't notice the quality loss and you'll save a whole lot of disk space. This route also gives you a lot more options, as you can use software like Winamp or BSPlayer to play the videos.
Second, are you any good with programming? What I've done is rig up a simple fullscreen frontend with Java. When you select a movie, the player starts fullscreen. I've got a simple IRman interface, a remote control, and Girder to translate keypresses on the remote into keystrokes that the Java app recognizes. Works great, and it's customizable to my preferences. I can understand if you don't have the time or skill to write a frontend, and I'm sure other posters will point out pre-made frontends.
The best part about Girder: you can translate keys like FF, REW, STOP, etc. into commands the player understands.
In a similar sort of situation, I ripped all my DVD's to a HD, then converted them into ISO files; I then mounted these with Daemon Tools. The result is that the OS doesn't know the difference from there being an actual DVD in your drive.
Of course, this assumes you're using Windows...but maybe a similar approach could be used on other operating systems.
not exactly what you're looking for, but maybe worth looking at?
Who modded this insightful?
Almost every DVD playback software can play DVD disc layouts from a folder (I know PowerDVD and WinDVD can both do it, to name a few off-the-shelf products, as well as Xine and Ogle), complete with all menus and original features. How do you think people who author DVD content test their menus, etc. before committing to disc?
Of course if the disc was encrypted, you need DeCSS to get the disc contents onto your HD, and that's legally iffy right now (fair use says yes if you own the original disc, DMCA says no). But there's absolutely no problem supporting menus, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, multi-angle, etc etc. from content in a HD folder...
Most of the rental stores I have seen end up selling off the older rental dvds. The local blockbuster has several racks of 'pre-viewed' ones for sale.
I would assume that if there was an issue here that blockbuster would be a big enough target that the MPAA would have stopped it long ago.
assuming windows:
rip them with dvdshrink. be sure you have nero installed. you can set dvdshrink to 100% quality and have it automatically burn to nero's image writer once done. you can then put the images on your storage array and mount them with software like alcohol 120% of daemon tools (i recommend the former, although the latter is free). attach the computer to the plasma and use some software dvd player. (and before someone complains, i do this to dvds i bought and paid for so i can watch them on my laptop without bringing the disks with me).
dvdshrink will preserve all the menus and whatnot and if you set it to 100% quality and use nero's diskwriter plugin it more or less just rips the dvd to a full image minus the css.
assuming linux:
i use linux alot but honestly i have never played a dvd movie nor ripped a dvd movie under linux. someone suggested the mythtv site, i would advise going there. that said im sure it would be rather easy to to basically the same or similar thing on a linux box as i suggested for a windows box. a small amount of shell scripting and you could write the interface for choosing the movie.
Damn. That's a lot of movies. I don't see anything wrong with watching them on a Plasma screen though. Plasma TVs, with their 16 by 9 HDTV ratio are great for watching high-quality DVDs on. As long as everything is the best quality you can possibly find, it works out.
As far as backing up some DVDs.. it's going to take a lot of money if you want to do it quickly. I hear they sell Terabyte harddrives for $1300 now (not sure who sells them) -- you could start by ripping and decrypting them to the harddrive... then either splitting them into two parts and burning on seperate disks or compress it as much as possible (lessening the quality horribly; defeating the purpose of the DVD) and burn to a single DVD. I'm saying this because it gets it ready for the user to download (2 parts would be faster than one big part). Also, it'll save you a lot of space on your server.
None the less, this is going to take a lot of time. Have fun!
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
myHTPC combined with a plugin for it called simpleVideo is the frontend you are looking for.
Some kind of raw image ripping program (CloneCD, BlindRead, etc.) combined with DAEMON Tools and DaemonUI .DUI scripting language
Mount the images and run the DVD player using DaemonUI's
Obviously this is a Windows solution. This can also be done easily with linux, although I don't know the specifics of mounting disc images.
Now as to the storage, an average DVD has 7 to 9 GB of data. 1000 DVDs will take up nearly 10 TB. The MPEG2 data cannot be compressed any further losslessly.
If you don't mind a quality loss (and spending a HUGE amount of time re-encoding the video and converting the menus) you can convert to your favorite MPEG4 derivative (Divx, Xvid, Quicktime MPEG4, etc.)
This will be a hugely expensive project, with the cheapest hard disk based solution costing over $30,000 (3x Xserve RAID 3.5 TB) plus the client machine to attach to the fibre channel switch (and that's not cheap either) to read from all the Xserves.
My suggestion: Just like with legal adivce, this is not the time to ask slashdot. With the kind of money involved, hiring a professional is the best option.
I used to get high on life, but I developed a tolerance. Now I need something stronger.
Just choose the "Play files from hard disk" option.
I believe than VLC and VLS can stream MPEG2 files from files or directly from the DVD drive. www.videolan.org Luc.
Yes, Sony has a car player with a HDD, and auto ripping capability. Model # Sony MEX-1HDP rodView.asp?s=0&c=3&g=62700&I=158MEX1HD&o=m&a=0&cc =01&avf=N
Here is a link to crutchfield:
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-bpdQMmcLqTX/cgi-bin/
You didn't mention whether you were looking to run Linux or Windows or OS X, but I think the principles are the same.
This is a good Windows-only setup using mostly freeware tools:
DVD Decrypter to rip the DVDs to macrovision-free/region-free ISO images
Daemon Tools to mount the isos as virtual drives on demand
MyHTPC as a TV-friendly filesystem shell (in combination with some simple batch scripts to control Daemon Tools, several of which can be found in the MyHTPC forums)
Zoom Player to play the DVDs (it's fast, full-featured, and you can turn off the GUI entirely which is nice on a TV.
You will also want WinDVD: not to play the DVDs, because the interface is so bulky and slow, but because you will need good MPEG-2 codecs and I don't know of any free ones as good as the filters that come with WinDVD. Zoom Player has a feature that automatically finds the codecs and registers them for you. (AC3Filter is a free AC3 audio codec that is comparable to InterVideo's.)
There are loads of ways to do it in OS X and Linux. Somebody who knows better than me is sure to post them.
Kaleidescape has developed several patent-pending technologies. The company's products are manufactured under license from the DVD Format Logo Licensing Corporation, DVD Copy Control Association, Inc., Macrovision, Inc., Dolby Laboratories, Inc., and others.
321 Studios should use this info in their DVD X Copy appeal. Obviously, the DVD CCA is willing to let some companies sell fair use products, but not others. It is probable that Kaleidscape system DVD reader has a legit player key so as to not need to circumvent the DCMA, but that establishes a double standard where fair use products can only be developed by companies willing to pony up cash the the DVD groups.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Troll=1, Redundant=1, Insightful=6, Overrated=1, Underrated=1, Total=12. (not mine)
The XBMC native Xbox application is a lot more functional than anything I've seen for linux, and a whole lot faster on the Xbox. It is a customized version of mplayer built specifically to run on the Xbox - no underlying-RAM-hogging operating system needed. I'm fairly certain XBMC can play VOBs off a network drive, and using the Advanced A/V pack from Microsoft the progessive scan modes look very nice on an HDTV set.
This site has Tons of information on anything do with DVD's, VCD's, Video etc.
Firstly, if you intend to keep the DVD's data intact, as in not re-encoded, there'll be a more difficult issue with CSS-encrypted DVDs. Even the libre software that decrypts is bound to the hardware device, AFAIK... please correct me on this!!
.iso images. The directory or directories of disk images are browsable, and can be made to appear such that each is its own disc in a platform-independent manner. I bet you could do the same for DVD's... and with a little work on existing projects, it'd become very popular. ( =
I think you might want to consider using Samba to share the drive images, in any case. I think it was the Linux Journal, which had an article about using it as a CD jukebox, using
(oh, you can do nfs simultaneously if'n you like)
Was it a bat I saw? Racecar. Stack cats. A man, a plan, a cat, a ham, a yak, a yam, a hat, a canal--Panama!
There's a list here which includes some Hollywood movies (but it's no longer being updated).
I don't want to say don't do it, but...
:). It will even connect to the internet and catalog your DVDs. It's very nice, and, more importantly, hassle free.
Buy yourself a couple of Sony DVP-CX777ES 400 disc DVD changers and connect them to an Escient DVD-M100 DVD manager. This is what I use for ~450 DVDs in my theater (110" DLP front projection
Some rough numbers off the top of my head: 3x changers @ $700 each + 1 manager @ $1800 = $3900. More expensive than 4x250GB drives + computer, but you'll be able to store all of your DVDs and not spend a ton of time ripping them and figuring out how to manage/play them.
You can check out the Escient manager at www.escient.com.
get nemulator
I use DVD Backup to copy a DVD to my iBook when I take a trip but do not want to take my original DVD with me. For a thousand DVDs you will need more than a terabyte of storage, but you should be able to setup a machine to serve that over nfs maybe with a few mounts. Hook-up a mac to your plasma screen and use the DVD Player included with MacOS X to play your movies. DVD Player has a menu item 'File -> Open VIDEO_TS Folder..." that does the trick. Plus you can script DVD Player with applescript, so you can quickly hack something together that lets you choose the movie you wish to play. Then you can navigate the usual DVD menus as you wish. You can get a wireless keyboard and mouse to make navigation from your couch easier.
Nope, you're absolutely right in what you're doing. The problem is that there simply aren't enough people doing it to make the MPAA sit up and take notice. People are selfish. The average person isn't going to get involved and deprive themselves of pleasure just to help "society" if they derrive no immediate return from it.
One solution you might want to try however is the same thing I'm doing with music and dvd's: I never buy them new. Go to a used media store and you can buy the latest stuff (I mean less than weeks old) at incredibly discounted prices. Add to that the fact that the RIAA (music) and the MPAA (movies) don't get a penny for these sales and it just sweetens the pot. That way, you can enjoy the stuff but rest easy in the knowledge that you aren't contributing to the problems.
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
Actually, I think the video stores pay much more for their stock because they have to buy licensing rights for each movie. My memory fails me, but the the stroy Kozmo.com gave me when I lost a movie was that they pay 89.00 for it. I couldn't believe they wanted to charge me $89 bucks for a copy of Inspector Gadget! I bought a copy at walmart, told 'em I lost the case and sent it back.
Molino Networks announced the Media Mogul at DEMO last week. The small unit can store 50 DVDs is $995 and the large unit with 1TB can store 200 DVDs is $2,995.
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
For the DeCSS software I recommend SmartRipper. I use it, it works. And it works well with the aformentioned players (I use PowerDVD (Windows) and Xine (FreeBSD)).
You'll also need far more than 1TB if you plan to rip all those DVDs. Your average DVD hold 4GB of data; any fool can tell you 4GB * 1000 > 1TB
I have a 0.5TB array for DVD storage, I can only hold around 100 DVDs (some are much bigger than others, LOTR-FOTR is like 8+)
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
fair use says yes if you own the original disc
No, "fair use" does not say yes to this particular use.
Fair use is a specific doctrine that describes a certain set of exceptions to copyright, generally of a subset of a work for purposes like education, review, or scholarship.
There are other exceptions to copyright in case law that allow you to make backup copies, or to make incidental copies necessary in the ordinary course of use of the product (think the copy of that CD in your disk cache and app process memory, as well as on the CD, or in your router). But those exceptions are not "fair use".
"Fair use" does not mean anything like "I can do whatever I want with my own copy", as you see so often on Slashdot, nor does it mean "any exception to copyright".
You'd think people that are so picky about the precise legal meaning of "theft" as opposed to "piracy", would be more concerned over the precise legal meaning of "fair use".
The markup isn't for any rights on DVDs. The markup is simply so that they can release it to rental stores before any sane person would want to buy it. Wal-Mart's not going to stock an $89 DVD, but rental places will buy it at that price. Then, a few weeks later, the price plumets for everybody, and that's when retail picks it up.
So, the $89 was likely the price Kosmo paid, but not the price they could replace it with now.
isnt this the obvious solution?
create images of the dvds, then load them up in a virtual drive such as daemon tools?
Downmix - The Artscene News Source!
Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?
He probably failed to mention that this was a porno video store. As far as I know (and in my experience), pornos don't use CSS encryption. Just copy over the VOB files and you are done.
Also, Bollywood (Indian movies) and probably other foreign film makers don't use CSS encryption. I think its only those Hollywood jackasses that pull that crap.
Zoot!
1. Use DVD Decrypter in File mode to rip movies to hard drive/storage area in separate folders. Remove UPOs at same time for convenience.
2. Create a web page on your server which links to each starting VOB in that folder with the name of the movie. Customise as necessary into Genre etc if desired.
3. Associate VOB files with your choice of DVD player software. Set player software to go into fullscreen mode and disable screen sleep.
4. Use remote mouse or whatever with video interface to computer to choose appropriate movie and voila!
Visceral Psyche Films
How we home automation integrators handle starts with being able to spell, write an understandable sentence, and formulate a logical sequence of steps.
Crestron is http://www.crestron.com/ (the best home automation controllers)
HumaneInterface.com is http://www.humaneinterface.com (the leading program/design firm)
http://www.kaleidescape.com/ (the referenced DVD server system)
http://www.request.com/ (makes a DVD changer controller that interfaces to the excellent Audio Request music server)
aem
-a.e.mossberg
I actually ran into this about 7 years ago. A client of mine was setting up a video on demand system and wanted to run the videos off of hard drives. The plan was to encode the video as MPEG and serve it up off a single copy on the HD. We were going to buy 10 or 15 copies each of each movie and park them on the shelf to satisfy legality, and play off the HD. The software would only serve up as many simultaneous streams as we had real copies. These were going to be the $85/copy video rental versions, not the $15/copy "for personal use only" version, so it was legal to rent these or play them across a CCTV system. Everybody we consulted in the movie industry said "NO!"
So we had to do plan B and actually load these 10-15 copies of 8 - 10 movies into a bank of 150 cheap VCR's (DVD players were too expensive then) and serve that up on demand.
Maybe the legal issues are more sane now, but that's where it was 7 years ago.
Of course if the disc was encrypted, you need DeCSS to get the disc contents onto your HD, and that's legally iffy right now (fair use says yes if you own the original disc, DMCA says no). But there's absolutely no problem supporting menus, multiple audio tracks, subtitles, multi-angle, etc etc. from content in a HD folder...
That is incorrect. DeCSS is for getting at the underlying mpeg stream. If you are going to be ripping complete images, you can keep them in encrypted form. Your player software will legally decrypt the data for you.
Let's see -- you need 10 TB, low bandwidth. The last 250GB drive I bought was $100. That would be $4,000 for 40 drives. If you can buy 10 old (400 MHz-ish) desktop computers for $100 each (should be easy enough -- there's alot of them about), hosting 4 drives per machine, along with a 10-port hub (100 Mbps ethernet) for, say, $100 (probably much less), then that comes to a little over $5,000.
A bit unweildy, perhaps...
Just as the subject says. If you make an iso of it you can just mount it with the above command in linux and you will see it just like the dvd... You could then setup a small mysql database with all the different info like, title, genre, length, rating, ranking, path to mount point, etc., and then write up a little front end program (be it a website with php, or a java app), which allows you to sort/view/select the movie, and then calls the appropriate software dvd player to play the cooresponding dvd. Shouldn't be that hard, just time consuming to create the iso's and input the info into the database (well, not too time consuming if you only have stuff like title, and mount point, in the database table).
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The disc changer is a neat idea if you only ever plan to watch movies in one room. Yes, its cheaper, but you (and your family) can only watch one movie at a time on that.
Anyway, I'm sitting here trying to get Freevo running on an Xbox, so I can watch DVDs over my network. I had it working (briefly last week, before trying to update some stuff and blowing it), and it was pretty sweet. I want to rip my 300+ DVDs to a RAID, then serve them to Freevo (or mythtv, or whatever) clients throughout my house. When I get my system finished, I'll be able to watch 4 different movies on 4 different TVs (i bought 4 xboxes for this project), and each addition client costs about $230 (xbox+dvd remote kit). The server storage will be the expensive part.
Another cool bonus... When I rip the movies to my server, I can copy just the movie, and not all of the unskippable trailers or FBI warnings. Instead of putting in a disc and having to wander off and do something else for 10 minutes (like sit there and curse the movie studio for ruining my Zen), the movie will start right away.
blog
Hey,
Check out the AV Science forums. They have one dedicated to just this. There are lots of pointers and lots of people who will help.
AVS Home Theater PC(HTPC) Forum
kiwi
I tried to get around the expense for a standalone dvd player and used my xbox for watching dvds for a while. A couple of problems though: some DVDs would not play at all (e.g. Harry Potter). Some would have bad video skipping (LOTR FOTR). In addition, the remote sucks a$$.
Now these problems might be related to my particular xbox, but I would strongly suggest you take some of your favourite DVDs to a store and demand to play them on an xbox there. Don't know wether these problems might be fixable byb using Xbmp (xbox media player) instead... good luck.
I asked for a refund - and got my monkey back.
I'm posting this so that you (the moderator) have some context to consider twitter and not mod him up whenever he posts his filler preformatted rants about installing Knoppix or whatever that unfortunately get him karma every single time and allow him to continue posting his trademark toxic crap (read on) day in and day out. You may consider this a troll - I consider it community service. And I ain't kidding.
If you're a /. subscriber, I invite you to look through some of his posting history. I guarantee that you'll be hard pressed to find someone that is more "out there" than twitter. You'll also probably notice he's got quite an AC following. Don't just read his posts, make sure you go through the replies.
For example, in this recent post twitter not only calls the OP a troll but attempts to "tell it like it is" while making some vague argument about "GNU". Yes, if you're confused, you're not alone. The reply (modded +4) proceeds to simply destroy his bogus argument. You will notice he did not reply. This is what some people call "drive-by advocacy". A sort of I'll just leave you with my thoughts here and move on to the next flamebait kind of deal. In fact, he almost never replies because he knows that his fanatical arguments simply do not hold up to any sort of discussion. It's not that he's chosen the wrong cause - he's just going at it in a completely wrong way.
More? Just read though this post and the subsequent replies. I guess this stands on its own.
More? Bad spelling in astounding conspiracy theories, more offtopic FUD and uninformed "I'm right, look at me" rants, promptly proven wrong. Worse even, twitter wants to be RMS, apparently (that first one is a winner). I mean, really. You think?
FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, offtopic FUD, and more FUD. This guy is like the Monty Python SPAM skit, but with FUD and more FUD instead of canned meat. Amazed
I know for a fact that all it takes is two solders to mod an XBox now. I don't know the exact process but I've seen one of my frat brothers do it on pretty much all the XBoxes in our house. It works great, the only disadvantage is that you can't switch between Dashboards like you can with some of the mod chips, but unless you're playing XBox Live that's probably not much of a problem for you.
Anyway, I would google for that before buying a mod chip at this point. If you can't find anything, post here and I'll ask my frat brother for a URL. Hope that helps.
dvd decryptor can make disk images that are identical to the orinal disks with the difference that they are decrypted.
Put thos images on some server (samba?)
A dvd drive emulator (demeamon tools) kan be used to mount the images
windvd can be used to play the disks
DvD decrypter will rip the DVD nicely, menus and all to your harddrive.
Most software media players will not recognize DVD menus, but one called ZOOM Player will, and just happens to be a nice player to boot.
After you have those it is simple a question of hardrive space. Most movies run between 5-8gb so 1000 DVD's going to require something in the neighboorhood of 5-8tb. Most of the newer high end mother boards will hold up to 10 devices (CD/DVD/hardrives). You biggest problem is going to be one of heat, noise, and enough power connectors. You might want to think about is having multiple servers, with one connected to the TV with the absolute minimum required to run in order to keep it quiet, but enough to fullfill any recording you'll want to do. You then would have one or more servers tucked away on a home network where they won't bother you, with their hardrives mapped to your main server at the TV.
Don't forget you'll want to use to use your machine as an MP3 jukebox as well as a video recorder (TV shows).
While it's not a computer solution Sony does make 200+ DVD carasel players. A friend of mine uses two of them to hold his collection, and has them set up to be controlled by his palm top. He has an older machine connected in as well for the mp3 and video recording functions.
I've owned a Prismiq for a couple of months now- and this will do just about anything you need it to in this area- put the VOB files out there, run their MediaManager software (or the GPL'd Linux version from prismiq.org), and you're all set- S-Video and AC3 out, box costs around $200 (it's a little flash Linux Busybox machine itself). Good luck.
RAID 0 is horrible for anything but video scratch. For this application you'll want RAID 5 or 3 (RAID 5 is redundancy spread across the array, RAID 3 has one drive dedicated for redundancy.)
The proper way to do this would be a hardware RAID array but those are expensive $1500 at least for a decent rack + controller. Infortrend make some nice stuff, but it's not cheap. The EonStor range is lovely. I'm mostly experienced on the high end and mac side of things, but there may be software based RAID 3 or 5 solutions for windows/linux. YMMV however, but it's generally not recommended as computing parity is very processor intensive. The controllers the Infortrend stuff uses is a PPC G3 to give you an idea...
ps. I don't work for Infortrend but I just know they make damn good shit.
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
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I use Mac the Ripper and Panther's DVD Player... I also process the entire DVD w/ DVD Requantisizer down to 4.1 gigs for the average movie. Quality is totally your decision; higher quality takes longer to re-master, but as an example the newly remastered Indiana Jones titles ripped gave me a 7.2 gig packet. Remastered at highest quality setting w/ DVD Requantisizer it took about 2 hours to get it down to 4.1 gigs. Pumped through s-video to my widescreen TV it's indistinguishable from the original DVD when the DVD is pumped through an s-video cable... of course component is preferable, but from my current media server it's not an option. My approach to ripping my DVDs has been similar to my approach to ripping my music collection... most movies are perfectly fine to have ripped to a HD, but just like some LPs are better left to listen to on vinyl, some DVDs are better left to view from the original discs. The Indiana Jones DVDs were my benchmark, but when it's time to watch them, I always go back to the original discs. The programs are out there, and they're cheap shareware titles or freeware in most instances. What I really want is an iTunes type front end for movie files, complete with artwork, genres, and ratings...
Yeah, but you are using a program like DVDDecrypter to copy the images to your HD. Which removes CSS.
...
I'll look into that. I believe one of the features of the software I use is that it just makes a pure disk image, suitable for use in producing "real" DVDs (not DVD-R or DVD+R) with the encryption intact. I haven't used it in a long time, so my memory may be playing tricks on me.
Now for the legality of removing CSS, I thought that it was finaly agreed upon that it was not a trade secret.
Of course it isn't. The fool lawyers for the DVD CCA included the full source of DeCSS in an unsealed legal document that is now part of the public record. That makes it impossible to claim it as a trade secret. Those guys make SCO's lawyers look smart. Not that I'm complaining, of course
I've done exactly what you are trying to do. I have even installed VOD in 600+ room hotels. For both I used Main lobby and it's add on DVD lobby though heavily customized for the hotels. This is by far the coolest and slickest software out there. http://www.cinemaronline.com/mainlobby.html I've also worked a lot with Mario and Dan (the owners) and they will answer all your questions. To add a movie you only have enter the UPC code or you can create your own menu system - my preferred method. If you want to save some money on software and want to build it yourself there are a number of linux based solutions. The two best, IMHO, are MythTV and MyHTPC. Both are very powerful and flexible but require a lot of work to set up. http://www.mythtv.org/ http://myhtpc.net/ Two other windows based platforms are Microsoft's Media Center 2004 (that should go over great with /.ers) and a program called SnapStream from a company with the same name.
Lastly you should familiarize yourself with Girder. It's a program that lets you program your remote anyway you want to. It very powerful and you can add logical programming to the remote so it acts differently in different situations or apps. It was free until a couple of months ago but now it's shareware. You can still find the 3.2.9 version(free)and it works great. http://www.girder.nl/
As for remotes I have a lot of success with the StreamZap remote. You can find it in many computer stores such as CompUSA.
Lastly you can find most of this info and anything else you could ever want to know at
http://www.avsforum.com/
This is a hot new field and new things are coming out everyday. Good luck building your HTPC. It'll most likely take at least a week to get it the way you want it but it will be worth it and you will be using it for a lot more than just watching movies!
Ditch both of em. Just grab Xbox Media player (XBMP). It runs natively and has a bunch of different streaming options for playing media off of your LAN.
All your base are belong to us!
I just setup this solution for myself that covers the issues he had. The ShowCenter can play VOBs, MPGs, Divx/Xvid, plus a few more. Its a nice set top solution that looks nice and is quiet. If you don't to use windows as the back-end server, there are two open source Apache/PHP projects that will replace their Windows back-end application.
Pinnacle ShowCenter
OpenShowCenter
OXYL-BOX
Supported File formats:
Music:
- MP3
- PCM
- All incompatible audio files (E.G. WMA) will be converted to MP3 at 128kb/s
Video:
- MPEG-1
- MPEG-2
- DivX AVI
- Xvid AVI
- All incompatible video files (WMV, DV) will be converted to a ShowCenter compatible format as set by the user.
Image:
- JPEG
- BMP
- PNG and GIF files are converted. All "Portrait" oriented image files are rotated by 90 degrees in the ShowCenter database and scaled to PAL or NTSC video resolution. The pictures are optimized for being displayed on a TV screen and stored as a copy in JPEG format, while preserving the original image file.
Video standards for A/V outputs:
- PAL 25fps full D1 720 x 576 interlaced
- NTSC 29.97fps full DV 720 x 480 interlaced
Inputs and outputs:
The ShowCenter box provides all audio and video outputs for delivering the optimum sound and video quality no matter what A/V equipment is connected. The A/V connectivity is equivalent to a premium quality DVD-player and consists of:
a) SCART 21-pin connector (Europe-only, also known as Peritel connector or Euroconnector) with composite, Y/C, RGB, stereo audio
b) Component video output ("YPrPb", 3 x RCA)
c) Composite video output (1 x RCA)
d) Y/C ("S-Video") video output (1 x Hosiden)
e) Stereo audio outputs ("Line-Out") (2 x RCA)
f) Additional stereo audio output (for separate connection to stereo system) (2 x RCA)
g) Digital audio outputs, both optical (1 x Toslink) and electrical (S/PDIF 1 x RCA)
Further inputs and outputs:
a) Ethernet 100baseT (1 x RJ45) with associated connection/data LEDs
b) PCMCIA slot for Pinnacle-approved wireless network card
c) Power cable connector
d) IR receiver
One of the nicest things about Macs is what can save you here. There are multiple proggies out there for making disk images and DVD images, and some even strip the region and CSS encoding for you. Just copy the images using one of those programs, save the disc images to a disk array (or load up an old G4 with a big ole set of 250 GB drives raided)... use a wireless mouse system to menu the DVD player on the Mac, and viola... DVD on demand.. heck, I may end up doign that on mine.... oh, and the menu system works since it's the DVD image...
;-)
Damn linux folks, expand your horizons!
I just recently got something similiar to this working. What I do is use DVD Decryptor to decode the VOB files and dump them to disk. This is a complete backup of the original DVD, without the encryption. I've got an ATI AIW 9600 Pro card that can output the video to my TV. I currently use SVideo out because I have an older TV. The card can output using DVI though, which should give you a digital link to your plasma screen. You can then turn on Theater Mode in the ATI MMC software which will cause any video app to automatically output full screen to your TV. If you have a good sound card, you can then use the optical out on your card to output the DD or DTS signal to your AV receiver. You should be good to go at that point. You will need a lot of drive space though if you are going to store the DVD's, since most current DVD's are dual layered and average around 8.8gb each.
Aych tea tea pea colon slash slash slash dot dot org slash
But that's security through obscurity, we all know how people on /. feel about that.
To understand recursion,
you must first understand recursion.
How fast can the fastest DVD drive read? I'd estimate, that a software RAID's write performance -- 10-16 Mb/sec seems quite achievable on modern hardware -- will never be saturated by the paltry input from the DVD reader.
I'd rather have the other processor available for other tasks, when I'm not writing to the RAID. For the price difference of Infotrend vs. software RAID I can buy a dual vs. a single CPU machine with more memory. The second processor will handle the load of the software RAID and have plenty of cycles left to be useful for other things.
Time and time again resource sharing is demonstrated to be more cost efficient than resource dedication, only to have someone state that the opposite is "generally recommended". It is not.
It only makes sense when you wish to maximise performance -- at any price, and your particular specialized application will not be able to take advantage of the extra resources in any other way. Such as, for example, a database server, which are notoriously hard to scale "sideways", so you try to improve them "vertically".
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Security through obscurity works just fine in any situation where you're doing something totally unique and different. For instance, if you hide something under a towel in your car, that will avoid many theft attempts because the thieves don't know that it's there. However, if some car company tried to implement for all their cars, it wouldn't work because the information would become public and thieves would know that all such cars have valuables hidden under a towel.
The same applies in computers. Obscurity doesn't work if the same implementation is being used as a standard across millions of computers, because once someone finds out about it, all those millions of computers are at risk (and easily accessible through the internet). But if you were to write your own special internet protocol, so you could access your machine remotely, and your implementation had all kinds of holes and buffer overflow exploits, it wouldn't matter because it's only on one machine, and you're the only one with the source code.