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?"

Comments

Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?

Re:Legality?

[Monx]

Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?

Nope.

The DVD playing software will legally decrypt the ripped images. No illegality there. I do that with my DVDs so that I don't have to carry them with my laptop. I can leave them at home on the shelf. This also means that I don't have to find my DVDs when I forget to put them back on the shelf.

The whole problem is easily solved:

Get a cheap PC.
Get a video card with tv-out.
Get lots of HD space.
Get a usb infrared receiver.
Get a remote with directional controls.
Make the computer treat the remote as a keyboard.

Rip the DVDs to disk images.
Run a file manager

Now just select the file you want with the remote and press enter. The image mounts and the dvd software starts up.

If you don't like the interface, get another file manager and try again.

Done.

Re:If he's got plasma...

[timeOday]

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.

Maybe the best idea is to find him a high-quality DVD player and nice storage rack so that he can organize his 1000 DVD collection and show it off

It's digital data, the whole point is you can copy it losslessly! I realize DRM is supposed to wreck everything, but that's what we have tools like mencoder for, to break down the barriers.

As for doing things the hard way, I suggest he set up an automated system that rips when you pop in a disk. Then, instead of ripping all 1000 dvds, just rip a show when you want to watch it. This way, you invest no more effort than it would take to place the dvd into a player to watch it on the first viewing, and subsequently it's already on line for you.

Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for a car CD player which will automatically archive all the CD's I play through it. Is there such a thing?

Add a hard drive to your APEX DVD player...

[SethJohnson]

There's a pretty simple hack for some of the APEX DVD players. You can simply remove the DVD drive and replace it with a hard drive full of SVCD files. It can mount the drive and then provide a menu for selecting what movie you want to watch.

Caveats:

Have to yank the hard drive to add more movies. These are SVCD files, not full DVDs with extras and menus, etc.

The huge plus is that it's a real easy solution for this need. Grab a 250 gig HD for a hundred bucks and rip around 250 DVDs to the drive. Swap it into your Cyberhome player, then you've got a quick solution that has a proper remote control and doesn't require a noisy, hot computer in your house.

Here's a link to a how-to. It talks about adding a different power supply, but I've heard you can get away using the original ps.

Re:What about

[ack154]

Instead of just "jukebox sort of setup", why not just convert an actual jukebox? That may be what you were getting at though. One of the CD ones obviously. But it seems like a perfect match. It's meant to hold discs, and read those discs based on selection. In theory, if you could replace the reading device with that of a DVD player and get audio AND video out of it... Sounds like one hell of a case mode project if you ask me... But damn that would be so cool.

xBox + EvolutionX

[sirket]

This is _exactly_ what I want to do with my 300+ DVD collection.

I am planning on picking up an xBox, modding it, and running EvoX on it. I get the hardware for approximately $200 (soon to be less) including the remote and you get a spare S controller with the xBox. Add in a few dollars for the mod chip and you are set.

Besides being cheap, EvoX looks good and the xBox itself is small and the case is easily modded. It also starts up quickly which is nice. EvoX will read DVD files off the network as well as a few other file formats.

-sirket

Re:If he's got plasma...

[rworne]

I found the answer. Not only can you store it all, but you can rip all the data in a single afternoon! I've been working with this toy at work, it's wicked fast and has several terabytes of storage, nothing like RAID 0 with 16 drives!

Forgive the marketing spiel:

How Fast Is 200 Mbytes/Second?

One copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica (2619 pages per copy) is one (1) Gigabyte of data
StreamStor can record the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in 5.12 seconds

The Library of Congress (20 million books, not counting pictures) is 20 Terabytes

StreamStor can record the entire Library of Congress in 29.13 hours

A typical video store with 5000 videos is 8 Terabytes
StreamStor can record an entire video store in 11.65 hours

A copy of your favorite mystery novel is 1 Megabyte
StreamStor can record a mystery novel in five thousandths (.005) of a second

One hour of music is 535 Megabytes
StreamStor can record one hour of music in 2.675 seconds

Twenty four hours of music is 12.54 Gigabytes
StreamStor can record 24 hours of music in 1.07 minutes

So you can rip your entire collection in 2 1/2 hours (not counting swap time). Too bad the bottleneck's not the StreamStor...

The Constitution and laws of the United States forbid all interference with the religious or political concerns of other nations.
-- US President Millard Fillmore 1850-1853