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

Re:Xbox Linux

[LostCluster]

Hey, Darl... mind releasing the source for that project under the GPL? :)

A true slashdotter would say....

[jigyasubalak]

a "Beowulf Cluster" without batting an eyelid.

tangential note re: cost of a terabyte

[timothy]

I noticed today on techbargains.com a particular hard drive (pretty sure it was a Western Digital, but I'm too lazy to check at the moment ;)) selling (after rebate) for $150 -- a 250GB model, 8MB cache. Yes, there are larger drives available, but this is the best price I've noticed. A $150/250GB drive means

a) that theoretically (and yes, ignoring the One Rebate Per Household clause I'm sure is in the fine print) one TB can now be had for roughly $600,

b) in a total of four reasonably purchasable (not outlandishly expensive) hard drives, which means they can all fit in one case with two normal IDE controllers,

c) which means a full computer (think $200 Lindows box from Walmart) with a gig of ram and a TB of storage can be had for something close to and on the nice side of $1000. If you can find a gig of RAM for $100 (which I think is easily possible these days), a cheap flat panel would put the price at $1200 or so ... now, a nice time machine to sell that resulting system in 1991 or so ;)

I'd prefer my storage be in external units (say, firewire enclosures) which would bump that price up a bit, but still.

timothy

right.

[twitter]

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

That's true. In fact, just pointing to a DeCSS scheme violates the DMCA. Three days after the shutdown of 321 Studios, that should be perfectly clear. The discussion here itself violates DMCA. I'd like to see that worthless unAmerican law crushed because some moron decides to shut down this conversation.