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Good Disk Library Solutions?

First time submitter fikx writes "How do Slashdotters manage large collections of disks? I'm hoping for a way to manage a large collection of movies that would give me menu type access to the content, and the only consumer device left seems to be the Sony disk changer, which is discontinued. I would have thought that handling disks would have been a solved problem and on sale in many forms, but I guess not. Have Slashdotters found or built solutions? Or has this problem gone the way of the typewriter?"

371 comments

  1. I think the generally accepted solution by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... is to rip everything to a large hard disk and set up some sort of media center.

    1. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Local+ID10T · · Score: 1

      ... is to rip everything to a large hard disk and set up some sort of media center.

      Absolutely. Rip it to your format of choice, and put the discs in a box in the garage... in case you have a HD failure and need to re-rip them or want to re-rip them in a different format later. Alternatively, sell/give away/throw out the discs after ripping and when you need another copy buy/download another copy.

      --
      "You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
    2. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 0

      which is why I refuse to buy BD equip or discs.

      they are too expensive (in storage) to rip. and if you bit-reduce them, why even bother? plus, you HELP sony each time you buy that stuff via license fees. I DO NOT WANT TO EVER HELP SONY. EVER.

      dvd and upsampling works great and there is no drm to speak of (funny how that is; 10+ yrs ago, drm on dvd was 'hard' but now its single-click ripping and truly mindless to get working well).

      storing dvd's on disk farms is not so bad. I would never think to do this with BD.

      it amazes me that I still find audio guys who love to have dusty shelves of cd's instead of storing ALL of them in flac on a single hard drive. you can't store all your movies on a single drive but its extremely possible to do that with even huge cd collections and still fit on a TB class single disk drive.

      to save space (and movers costs each time I might have to move) I have thrown out my jewel boxes and kept only the paper inserts and put the discs into sleeved albums. you can tell I never directly play discs anymore. no need to!

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    3. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 0

      Which is why I was confused when it was repeatedly spelled "disk" in TFA. I thought they'd already come to the correct conclusion, and wondered where I could get a disk changer too.

      --
      <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
    4. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by HTMLSpinnr · · Score: 1

      Bit reducing the video, and capturing core audio (DD out of TrueHD, for example) works just fine for most movies. On most displays you won't notice the difference at a constant quality of RF21 or 22 (using HandBrake in an .h264 encoded MKV as an example). I can tolerate a few GB in storage compared to the whole deal. When I want the full experience, then I'll break out the actual disc, but my kids don't care if some of Tinkerbell's finest detail is slightly obscured through compression, when the trade-off is that they can pick any movie we own any time w/o damaging the original disc.

      --
      $ man woman *
      -bash: /usr/bin/man: Argument list too long
    5. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by JustNiz · · Score: 2

      Disc = British English spelling.
      Disk = American spelling.
      Applies to hard drives, CD's, DVDs and every other circular thing.

      The way it is spelt should not imply anything about the nature of the thing itself, only the origin of the person writing about it.

    6. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It takes FOREVER to do this, but is well worth it in the end; just be sure to think about backups; backups backups backups... so you never have to do it again; if I ever have to re-rip my library of hundreds of disks I will cry, maybe literally.

      The only misery with Windows with their damn inability of their built in backup software to back up to disks with 4k sectors.

      It's easy to get 3TB RAID internal and get yourself into a jam for something to back up to. Sure you can buy a 3TB external... with 4k sectors. I'm using Macrium Reflect, I run a full backup periodically and then schedule incrementals nightly, but I am sure there are other products and options out there as well. I suppose you could set up a second internal RAID for backing up to, but that seems even more expensive...

      And on the other hand there is always Linux, but having that on a media PC pretty much writes off Netflix, which I also use; always options... and tradeoffs...

    7. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by visualight · · Score: 1
      --
      Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
    8. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by izomiac · · Score: 3, Informative

      Umm... with computers it does, as they were named by their creators. IBM called them hard disks, so everyone uses that terminology, including the British. Similarly, Philips (Dutch) and Sony (Japanese) called their products compact discs. Before that, the BBC used the different spellings to refer to different types of audio media, so it appears the two terms were always subtly different words rather than just a difference in the spelling of the same word.

      First four hits on Google:
      What's the difference between a "disc" and a "disk?"
      Grammar Girl : Disc or Disk? :: Quick and Dirty Tips
      Spelling of disc - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
      disc/disk (From the book: Common Errors in English Usage)

      And if that isn't enough, skim the article comments. It seems ~90% of slashdotters are using the spellings in this manner.

    9. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by multimediavt · · Score: 1

      Disc = British English spelling. Disk = American spelling. Applies to hard drives, CD's, DVDs and every other circular thing.

      The way it is spelt should not imply anything about the nature of the thing itself, only the origin of the person writing about it.

      That is not the way those spellings work. "Disc" was coined in association with Compact Discs (CDs) when Siemens and Sony developed the original technology. The CD trademark actually specifies that "Compact Disc" be spelled that way. Since neither Siemens, nor Sony are English companies, nor reside in English speaking countries or former colonies, you are dead wrong on that assertion.

      In my experience, "disk" is traditionally associated with magnetic recording technology, e.g. hard disk, floppy disk, zip disk, etc., and "disc" was associated with optical media, e.g., Compact Disc, Digital Video/Versatile Disc, Blu-ray Disc, etc. The only current exception is NAND and SSD devices using the "disk" spelling and are not magnetic technology (although, you can use the electromagnetic effects to describe both, err, all).

    10. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      plus, you HELP sony each time you buy that stuff via license fees. I DO NOT WANT TO EVER HELP SONY. EVER.

      Blu-Ray is a jointly developed consortium format, not Sony only Perhaps you are assuming that Sony's strong support of Blu-Ray and using it in the PS3 meant it was Sony owned.

      Sony is also a member of the DVD Forum and jointly developed the CD format...do you refuse to buy DVD's and CD's as well? Apparently not, from your mention of DVD rips, that makes you a hypocrite doesn't it.

    11. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Rennt · · Score: 1

      Applies to hard drives, CD's, DVDs and every other circular thing.

      Okay, now go and look at every piece of storage media you've ever owned. In the data storage domain, disc and disk are clearly defined, mostly for branding/licensing purposes. IBM named Hard/Soft Disks (and thereafter all magnetic disks), and Phillips/Sony named Compact Discs (and thereafter all optical discs).

    12. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by darguskelen · · Score: 1

      Don't sell/give away/throw out the discs. That's where the "Piracy" thing comes in. However, I believe that translating from a physical disc to an HD should fall under fair use, as long as you have the original discs. Plus it keeps the discs nice and clean and undamaged (I'm currently collecting a series of DVDs and doing exactly this to keep the discs pristine)

    13. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by LocalH · · Score: 1

      The latter is quite illegal and immoral. The former is only illegal.

      --
      FC Closer
    14. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Sussurros · · Score: 1

      So, disc = optical and disk = magnetic according to Apple. Thank you, I've often wondered about the origin of the distinction. In practice however I've found that Mac people use disc and PC people use disk, here in Australia at least. There are exceptions of course, but not too many in my experience.

      --
      I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
    15. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by crath · · Score: 1

      Since when is Apple an authority on the English language? Apple's use of the two spellings is neither authoritative nor applicable to non-Apple contexts.

    16. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by cynyr · · Score: 1

      THIS! 100 times THIS!

      --
      All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
    17. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BULLSHIT

      Format shifting and backups are fair use. Fuck off RIAA shrill

    18. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Vegemeister · · Score: 1

      No.
      Disc = the flat round thing
      Disk = the data storage device

      I.e., one "puts the disc in the drive" or "runs out of disk space".

    19. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The correct spelling of "shill" is "shill". As "shrill" is a completely different word, it'd be worthwhile to look them both up and learn how to use that language you're employing.

    20. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Tastecicles · · Score: 1

      The applicable term here is "backup". Of something you have the original for. Example: Microsoft have/had something in their terms of use for Office that said, basically, you could make one backup copy of the software, but that backup had to be destroyed if for any reason you got rid of the original. Fair enough. I can live with that. **AA say if you want to format shift or have a backup you had to PURCHASE the alternative format or a second copy through one of their retail channels. Remember they own the courts, and remember what happened to DVDXCopy. They had a good thing going there that allowed people to back up their DVDs and remove DRM. **AA didn't like the idea and shut them the fuck down.

      --
      Operation Guillotine is in effect.
    21. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's my method right now, I don't do compression and with 4GB movie files it does present a storage challenge. I recommend RAID 5 with at least 3x1TB drives to get you started. Of course if you do entire TV series and seasons and preserve the menu structure, you'll go through it fast. Also save space, watch the special features off the disc, when you rip the disc I suggest main movie only. Makes the playback experience more enjoyable, MyMovies handles my collection although their software is Windows only XBMC does work with it.

    22. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by LocalH · · Score: 1

      BULLSHIT

      Format shifting and backups are fair use. Fuck off RIAA shrill

      I fail to see how my comment makes me an "RIAA shrill", whatever the hell that is. I never stated whether I agreed with the present situation. Let's talk you through it, since you're obviously too dense to read properly:

      Absolutely. Rip it to your format of choice, and put the discs in a box in the garage... in case you have a HD failure and need to re-rip them or want to re-rip them in a different format later.

      This is the former. This is illegal, by definition, unless you're exclusively ripping discs that have no encryption (which do exist but won't be the lion's share of any movie collection). This is not immoral, however - you purchased the media and are making use of duplication for personal use, not for distribution. This is "format shifting and backups".

      Alternatively, sell/give away/throw out the discs after ripping and when you need another copy buy/download another copy.

      This is the latter. This is illegal since it includes the former. It is also immoral in that you don't have legitimate rights to retain your backups if you "sell/give away/throw out the discs after ripping".

      Please note that I refer to movies here, with regards to legality. There are plenty of software tools, very widespread and popular ones, to meet the OP's needs with regards to audio CDs, and they are never illegal to rip as they don't have encryption.

      Please also note that I have downloaded/acquired pirated software and media for many years now. I don't claim to be on the right side of morality when I get my free shit. Must be nice to use your single-digit count of brain cells to get angry at someone who isn't the enemy. ^_^

      --
      FC Closer
    23. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look up Vortexbox dot org, Then set the thing up next to the couch and feed disks to it while you watch another movie.

    24. Re:I think the generally accepted solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not really. I'm lazy and use disc/disk interchangeably, but that doesn't change my origin. I've found that most technical folks either don't care or don't notice spelling.

  2. Yes, typewriter by somersault · · Score: 3, Informative

    Rip discs. Use media center application.

    --
    which is totally what she said
    1. Re:Yes, typewriter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yes but he still has to store the originals somewhere.

    2. Re:Yes, typewriter by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 2

      No, he doesn't. He just has to keep the receipts for the purchases.

    3. Re:Yes, typewriter by MMC+Monster · · Score: 1

      Same here. Just wish my system could do it faster. The sooner I get rid of my physical DVDs, the better.

      --
      Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
    4. Re:Yes, typewriter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Really Geeky Solution should involve a noisy robotic arm, huge metallic shelves, Raspberry Pi, Linux and Darth Vader voice synth :)

    5. Re:Yes, typewriter by Tomato42 · · Score: 2

      Cardboard boxes with year written on them won't be enough? They will only be needed again if the HDDs fail, just use RAID6 (as you should if you have more than 5 disks) and not only it will become unlikely but you also gain a place to store backups from your regular PC.

    6. Re:Yes, typewriter by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 2

      Precisely. Even at today's prices, it's still pretty affordable to set up a fault-tolerant array with several tb of storage. Most 1080 movies compress to 8-10 gigs without much loss of quality. That's 100 HD movies per tb of storage, give or take.

    7. Re:Yes, typewriter by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Put them in a box.

      Alternately, dispose of original packaging and just keep the inserts and covers. The physical disks themselves can compress down quite nicely.

      Boxed sets also compress nicely. They make special "banker boxes" you can use for this. Get some nice deep shelves and just shove them in a corner.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    8. Re:Yes, typewriter by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Many movies don't do justice to the extra data used to encode a BD version. A lot of content isn't available in high definition to begin with..

      Regardless of how you manage your disks you might want to peruse a review or two before you shell out extra money for a new version of something that you likely already have or can get dirt cheap.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    9. Re:Yes, typewriter by houstonbofh · · Score: 1

      Why fault tolerance? He still has all the disks?

    10. Re:Yes, typewriter by hedwards · · Score: 1

      No, he does, receipts only demonstrate that you've paid for the discs, they don't demonstrate that you still own them. For instance receipts could still be retained if one sold the discs or gave them away.

    11. Re:Yes, typewriter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I am, at this moment, trying to salvage a 2TB drive with a corrupted filesystem, that was almost corked with blu ray rips. I've recovered about 90% of the material so far, but it's clear I'll be employing my encoding skillz again.
      I would say don't get rid of your physical discs just yet; find a place for safe keeping. Hard drives fail, OSes fail, file systems fail. And yes, when the price of hard drives comes back down to something within my financial reach, I'll be soft-RAIDing all those bloody media drives.

    12. Re:Yes, typewriter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      time value of money

      specifically, "price of doubling hard disk capacity for RAID1" vs "time spent re-ripping shitload of discs"

    13. Re:Yes, typewriter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it doesn't interface with a Kinect then no one cares how good your Darth Vader synth is.

    14. Re:Yes, typewriter by somersault · · Score: 1

      Don't use RAID, just run a backup onto another large HDD every month or so. Then you'll only have to rip another few discs if you have problems.

      Personally, I haven't ripped any DVDs or blu-rays, and I'm hoping to just step over the issue by using services like LoveFilm, Netflix, etc.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    15. Re:Yes, typewriter by chill · · Score: 1
      --
      Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
    16. Re:Yes, typewriter by arth1 · · Score: 1

      My main problem with RAID for home use is that by the time a drive fails and you run in reduced mode, drives are no longer available that match the ones you used. And if you predict this, an buy an extra drive ahead of time, it will be dead when you try to add it to the RAID.
      Three times so far, I've ended replacing a RAID with another RAID. Not cheap, but sometimes the easiest solution.

    17. Re:Yes, typewriter by Tomato42 · · Score: 1

      but you just had to copy the stuff from old RAID, not re-create it

    18. Re:Yes, typewriter by Hawke666 · · Score: 1

      You don’t need to use matching drives for RAID. Capacity just needs to be greater than or equal to the original. And with drive capacity continually increasing, it’s not hard to do that.

    19. Re:Yes, typewriter by hedwards · · Score: 1

      I personally use reallyusefulboxes.com combined with those slim CD cases. I rarely need to take a disc out of the case after I've ripped it so it's not too hard to keep organized.

    20. Re:Yes, typewriter by KaoticEvil · · Score: 1

      Or, better still, something more similar to what they had at the TV station in Hackers ;)

      --
      You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.
    21. Re:Yes, typewriter by arth1 · · Score: 1

      You donâ(TM)t need to use matching drives for RAID. Capacity just needs to be greater than or equal to the original. And with drive capacity continually increasing, itâ(TM)s not hard to do that.

      That doesn't help when drives go from SCSI to SCSI2 to IDE to ATA to SATA...

      And also, depending on the type of RAID it's not necessarily true either. If the drives have different characteristics, you can get "RAID stuttering", because the minimal amount of buffering is based on getting the information from the drives in a predictable time frame - if one drive is much faster, it can overflow the first level buffers, and force re-reads. Slowness caused by one drive being faster.
      And, finally, for many hardware RAIDs, drives of equal capacity is required - for software RAID, it's generally no problem, but for hardware RAID, it can be.

    22. Re:Yes, typewriter by cloudmaster · · Score: 1

      ...compared against the risk of enough disks failing to corrupt a RAID. I've never had two drives fail at the same time - a power problem is just as likely to strike at the exact moment I plug in my external USB drive as any other time, and if you say I should use a second computer on a physically isolated circuit, I'll point out that such a solution is just really expensive and slow RAID1.

    23. Re:Yes, typewriter by Tastecicles · · Score: 1

      Nope. From a PRS agent I had dealings with:

      There is nothing stopping you legally (in the UK) running a musical entertainment from a laptop, with the music in whatever shifted format you choose, but the ONLY thing that proves you have a licence to play a particular piece of music in public apart from your PRS ticket is the inlay for the original format you purchased it in.

      --
      Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  3. Jukebox by Osgeld · · Score: 2

    Googling for cd rom jukebox first hit in shopping is a 100 disc cd/dvd jukebox with usb and dasychainable for ~150 bucks each. other than that ISO's and a fat NAS

    1. Re:Jukebox by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      That represents 900G of storage space tops.

      Plus you need the software that can manage that device.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:Jukebox by fikx · · Score: 1

      The first hit I get is to the Kintronics page which seems data center oriented and I couldn't find the prices or ordering info beyond "contact us". I assume I missed part of the site...

      --
      AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
    3. Re:Jukebox by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      Considering the op is talking about commercial cd roms and movie dvd's I fail to see your point my little troll, he is not making a mass storage backup device for personal information, just a way to automate his ridiculous dvd collection

      and it comes with software

    4. Re:Jukebox by Tothwolf · · Score: 1

      I assume I missed part of the site...

      No...they don't usually publish prices for gear that costs as much or more than a nice car or a small house. For a Blu-ray jukebox solution, you are looking at $45,000-$65,000 on up, depending on magazine and drive count. There are not very many companies who make Blu-ray jukeboxes, and the major manufacturers today appear to be DISC, HIT-Storage, and Fortuna PS.

      If you need a DVD-only solution, there are a lot more options and if you are patient, a second hand a 500-700 disc system can be had for under $500-$1000. Nearly all of these jukeboxes are SCSI or LVDS SCSI and most work just fine with mtx.

      For the majority of people, ripping discs is going to be the most cost effective solution, but for those with money and the desire/need to have 100s of discs online, options do exist.

    5. Re:Jukebox by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      A hard drive nicely avoids all of the pitfalls of an obscure bit of speciality hardware including the quality of bundled software and the limited number of available physical slots.

      $150 buys a lot of hard drive capacity even with todays post-flood prices.

      Plus a smaller disk won't waste as much as your total storage capacity.

      That's not even getting into the potential of transcoding.

      You will need as many as 10 of these things to replicate what you can do with a single disk.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    6. Re:Jukebox by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      what about drm and prove you own the disc?

    7. Re:Jukebox by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      DRM is not a problem with a hard drive. In fact, that's yet another advantage that a hard drive has over other solutions that try to retain some sort of connection to the original media.

      With a hard drive, you strip the DRM once and never worry about it again. It never bothers you or gets in your way again.

      Even beats iTunes in this respect.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  4. let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the way o by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    of doing that and if say you have blu rays that like 25-50GB per disk.

  5. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I've watched 720p movies that were compressed down to 400-700 MB and were still an order of magnitude better than DVD quality.

  6. Kaleidescape by LoudMusic · · Score: 4, Informative

    How big is your budget?

    http://www.kaleidescape.com/
    http://www.kaleidescape.com/products/

    Beautiful stuff. Flawless operation. Drains your bank account.

    --
    No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
    1. Re:Kaleidescape by hipp5 · · Score: 2

      Beautiful stuff. Flawless operation. Drains your bank account.

      They gotta make their money now before the business model evaporates in 10 years.

    2. Re:Kaleidescape by tibit · · Score: 1

      About the only problem I have is that they sell exclusively via distributors. I really dislike hardware that I can't simply order online... I mean, you can get a $50k custom-built server spec'd and ordered online, their stuff isn't any different so why can't one buy it directly?!

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    3. Re:Kaleidescape by Kalriath · · Score: 1

      Looks great, but what does it actually cost? I assume it follows the old adage "if you have to ask, it's too much". Seems that you can only get it via stupidly priced "Solution Designer" type folks.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    4. Re:Kaleidescape by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      It costs more than any other available option.

      It's highly proprietary. You can't just use any playback client. You must use THEIR playback client. The same goes for jukeboxes and disk packs for their RAID arrays.

      What you rip isn't portable. It can't be taken "out of the system".

      You can't load your rips onto your phone or tablet.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    5. Re:Kaleidescape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've heard between $10,000 to $35,000 for a complete system.

    6. Re:Kaleidescape by Imbrondir · · Score: 1

      Many distributors requires region monopoly to market and sell your product. Sometimes they will accept you selling the product directly online on your website if you set your prices ridiculously high

    7. Re:Kaleidescape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Potentially $20,000-$30,000. And according to this, you still have to have Blu-ray discs in the tray to watch them even though it doesn't actually access the disc.

    8. Re:Kaleidescape by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      What you rip isn't portable. It can't be taken "out of the system".

      Well to be fair, that's the way it has to be if you want to retain a DVD CCA license and sell product in a country with DMCA-like laws.

    9. Re:Kaleidescape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What other "available" options exist ?? And by available .. I mean. A "Normal" techy guy who does NOT want to touch a piece of code.. Will edit a conf file or something .. but does not want to DIY anything , can go to the store. Buy it , plug it in and use it. ( Reasonable set up of an hour.. )

      If its within reason ( Say $200 ) for the "brain + Import drive" and 25% or so over raw disk prices for storage Bonus points if it could use network storage. .. I would love to go buy one tomorrow. ( In my case it would need to support SD tvs also .. so cant be hdmi only front ends. Which is where I always had the problems with my DIY tries )

    10. Re:Kaleidescape by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Your options are a lot of manual work, some scripting, or a solution that's along the lines of "if you have to ask the price, then you can't afford it".

      The markup on their gear is more like 400% rather than 25%.

      Products in this area tend to run afoul of the DMCA the MPAA or both. Even companies that try keep content locked away still get smacked down (Real).

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    11. Re:Kaleidescape by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      I don't care about "fair".

      I am the customer and if I am paying $50,000 for the thing then I want it to be able to do anything and everything.

      I should only ever have to touch an optical disk once. It should integrate with everything else including my mobile devices.

      Otherwise, I am far better off in the long run with "cobble-ware".

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    12. Re:Kaleidescape by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Raise your hand if you have iTunes ...

      Raise your hand if you have a FireWire port ...

      Raise your hand if you have both ...

      Raise your hand if you have $400 to spend on a cute Apple device ...

      There is Apple's market. Pretty slim, eh? I don't see many sales in the future of iPod...

  7. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Handbrake takes care of DRM for DVDs. For Blu-Ray use MakeMKV to extract the disc from DRM, then Handbrake to bring the file size down to 5 to 10 GB depending on the quality you want.

    I'm amazed anyone DOESN'T rip their discs. Who wants to be forced to wade through stupid menus and messages that you can't skip?

  8. R.I.P. discs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    rip them all to a RAID5 (recommend RAIDZ with separate intent log disk) or similar array then get a giant trashbag and put all your worthless discs in the landfill where they belong

  9. A hash of stacks of Least Recently Used disks ... by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... sitting on the living room floor. The system is managed by an ugly bag of mostly water.

    Surprising efficient and effective.

    Low tech for high brows.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  10. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    wow. so wait a couple months for prices to come back down and THEN rip them.

    even with a worst-case scenario of 50Gb/disk, a 3Tb drive is going to hold 60 disks.

    OTOH, if you're ripping dvds as the question implies, then figure 8Gb/disk which is about 6x as many or call it 350 movies.

    That's with zero compression too.

    /unless you're just trolling
    //then carry on.

  11. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ThorGod · · Score: 1

    of doing that and if say you have blu rays that like 25-50GB per disk.

    That's a really good point. BD movies would fill a tb drive in 20-40 movies. That's bad, but not crippling. I doubt a carrousel BD changer for 20-40 disks would be much cheaper (and you can always expand a FS).

    I still think backing physical content up on HDs and then long-term storing the physical copies wins.

    --
    PS: I don't reply to ACs.
  12. XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by GWBasic · · Score: 5, Informative

    In March of 2011 I bought an HP desktop that has a media center remote. (It also has a TV tuner, BluRay, and HDMI.)

    I installed XMBC, which supports the remote. It provides a great menu to navigate EVERYTHING, isos, avis, mkvs, mp3s, aacs, flacs, and some of those other whacky DVD rip formats.

    The only problem is that my hard drive with about 500 gigs of DVD rips crashed! Just make sure to back up everything on a regular basis!

    1. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by Local+ID10T · · Score: 1

      The only problem is that my hard drive with about 500 gigs of DVD rips crashed! Just make sure to back up everything on a regular basis!

      It's easier to re-rip/download than it is to backup media (movies/music).

      --
      "You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
    2. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by sirsnork · · Score: 1

      I already have a file server, I wanted my media center to be small and silent. So I bought an Apple TV gen2, jailbroke it and dropped XBMC on it.

      It's low power, damn near instant on and completely silent. The single only down side is that it'll only play H.264 HD since that's all that's HW accelerated, but I can live with that

      --

      Normal people worry me!
    3. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      > It's easier to re-rip/download than it is to backup media (movies/music).

      No. It is much more of a bother to rip stuff again.

      Backing up your media can be as simply as "cp DiskA/* DiskB".

      Messing around with any number of optical disks is going to be more bother than that.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    4. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by yodleboy · · Score: 2

      "It's easier to re-rip/download than it is to backup media"

      depends. If you're just ripping DVDs and playing the VOB's in some media center that can stream them, then yeah, it's not toooo big a problem. If, however you rip, then re-encode, that's a big pain. I can re-encode most DVDs to MKV in handbrake and get a file size of around 1.5 to 2GB w/ 5.1 and the resulting file is pretty much indistinguishable from the DVD on my 65" DLP. On smaller screens it looks even better. Unfortunately, it runs 45-60 min per encode plus time to rip. I don't have a bleeding edge system, but it is Core i5 @3.2 GHZ w/ 6GB of RAM. It's not really something you want to do more than once (i've got 800+ DVDs) if you can avoid it.

    5. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by Kjella · · Score: 1

      It's easier to re-rip/download than it is to backup media (movies/music).

      No. Handling hundreds of discs or torrents to recreate a collection is a lot more job than hooking up another 2-3TB disk and keeping two copies. That is, if you're insisting on keeping a collection, I know more and more that don't at least for movies. They download, watch and delete and if they want to see it again, they'll download it again. Music is different, there you can play it many many times in playlists but movies you see a handful times tops, most actually just once or twice.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    6. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      5,5 YEARS if it takes 60 min/disc 24/7 work. 16.5 YEARS if it takes 60 min/disc 8/7 work.

    7. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by jonbryce · · Score: 1

      You can create a bash/powershell script to re-encode all the stuff and leave it to get on with it. Feeding a computer with plastic discs every few hours is a pain.

    8. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by yodleboy · · Score: 1

      precisely why i have only a 100 or so, mostly kids stuff, ripped to server. Now handbrake supports queueing, so you could conceivably run 24x7, but yeah it's not going to be fun. I'd love to be able to get an old rack server with 24 cores and a shit ton of RAM and try it there.

      The ideal situation would be to take advantage of cheap storage prices and just rip the dvd's in a few minutes each as raw VOB files. The problem i've run into is on the playback end, unless you are transcoding on the fly on the server, a lot of playback devices can't handle VOBs (PS3, WDTV are the ones I tried).

    9. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      Your math appears to be wrong. 800 discs at 60min/disc is just over one month. It looks like you screwed up and calculated 60hrs/disc.

    10. Re:XMBC + HP Desktop with Media Center remote by GWBasic · · Score: 1

      I used to use a Mac mini. What I found is that my parents are able to figure out how to use my home theater PC because it has a "live TV" and "recorded TV" button on the remote.

  13. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MightyYar · · Score: 1

    At 50GB/disk, you can still get 40 movies on a single 2TB drive. Even with the hard disk shortage, this is an affordable solution. In reality, you can delete all the extras when you rip and get far more movies on the drive, or you can even re-encode. Though I use FreeBSD with ZFS to add disks in pairs for redundancy, a Windows Media box can also work well, as it has a way to add capacity... a co-worker of mine goes this route, though I think ZFS has him intrigued.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  14. Laziness by Time_Ngler · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Leave it in disc format and get up and browse your movie collection on a bookshelf for 5 minutes before resuming your sedentary lifestyle sitting motionless for the next 2+ hours. Geez.

    1. Re:Laziness by icebraining · · Score: 1

      I agree if it's just a matter of laziness, but DVDs in their boxes take a whole lot of space. My books already take a whole wall, if I stored music CDs and DVDs on their boxes I'd have to move out.

    2. Re:Laziness by fikx · · Score: 1

      It's not so much laziness as clutter. the bookshelves take up needed space and I'd hoped discs being common format, someone would have had a solution by now. Just hoping anyway...

      --
      AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
    3. Re:Laziness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you don't have a portable media device like an ipod then and think every single on of the owners of 1.5 billion such devices are lazy? Fucking wanker trolling cunt.

    4. Re:Laziness by brentrad · · Score: 2

      Compromising halfway between yours and the previous poster's points, here's what my wife and I do with our 4000+ DVD collection:

      1) Removed all the physical discs from their cases, removed the insert and saved it in a box in case we ever want it later (I doubt we will but all the inserts take up only one small box.) Throw away all the jewel cases.
      2) Get a bunch of empty DVD and CD cake boxes (2 garbage bags full free from Craigslist.) Have a separate cake box for each letter of the alphabet (some common letters like S will have more than 1 box per letter.) You can alphabetize within each box, but I've found that's way too much work when within a couple months they'll start to get out of order. YMMV.
      3) Put the cake boxes on shelves in alphabetical order. When you want to see a movie, grab that letter and rifle through it until you find it. Time to find a movie: depends mostly on luck depending on several factors, I'll leave that as an exercise for the readers, but it's generally between 1 and 10 minutes.

      This method has lowered our storage space needed for our discs from 8+ entire shelving units to only 2 (with plenty of space to grow still.) I think it strikes a decent balance between convenience (it's not search-click-watch easy) and the facts that it doesn't cost anything extra and doesn't take all the effort and cost that ripping everything to large hard drives does. Of course this method presupposes that you have a computer with a DVD drive everywhere you want to watch a movie, which I do, so again YMMV. I feel my time is better used actually enjoying watching a movie rather than ripping every movie or TV show that honestly, I might never watch again. I do like another poster's idea of identifying the movies that you actually watch over and over, and ripping only those and utting the rest in easily-accessible storage.

    5. Re:Laziness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, you sound like a father complaining that their kids want xyz technology more refined than what exists.
      "who needs a car? hop on your horse out there and it only takes 30 minutes to get 10 miles"

      Also, enough with the thought that everyone lives a sedentary lifestyle. It's JUST you, geez.

    6. Re:Laziness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jesus Christ. You are the terrorist funder of the RIAA and MPAA

    7. Re:Laziness by sootman · · Score: 1

      A couple suggestions...

      Step 1: replace "throw away" with "give away". Your local library or school would probably be THRILLED to get a bunch of empty DVD cases. Or, there's also craigslist (as mentioned in #2) or freecycle etc. (Speaking of libraries, also consider donating anything you watched but didn't love. DVDs typically have low resale value but you can claim the full value or close to it (note: I am not a tax accountant) as a deduction.)

      Step 2: Binders cost more but are WAY easier to flip through. We have a couple hundred discs and it's typically a minute or less to find one.

      Step 3: In addition to alphabetizing, arrange y category. It's tough with some things that span categories (and the more specific your categories are, the harder it gets) but a basic breakdown of action/comedy/romance works pretty well.

      Other than that, I'm curious (in a nice way, not an area-man-doesn't-watch-TV kind of way)--how did you get/what do you do with 4,000 DVDs? That's one DVD every day for eleven years! My family (for the most part) quit buying DVDs a couple years ago when we realized there's plenty of good stuff on and we've only watched about half of what we own. Pretty much all we get now are kids' DVDs (most of which are gifts anyways) which DO get watched heavily. Even things we got into late and love, like Boston Legal--we bought Season 1 two years ago and I said we wouldn't buy Season 2 until we finished watching Season 1. I think we got partway into Disc 2 and we haven't touched it in over a year.

      --
      Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
    8. Re:Laziness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's much more of a pain, but you can also scan, or find, electronic copies of your books, too. The compression of text and images is much more pronounced than audio/video.

    9. Re:Laziness by brentrad · · Score: 1

      1) Agreed, I don't think we actually threw them away - just wanted to keep my post fairly short and not go into all the specifics. Since I'm big on recycling and I don't think you can recycle those using curbside recycling, we may have gotten rid of them using Craigslist, or they might still be in boxes in the garage. Re-using is much better than recycling, I agree, and I have donated books and music CDs to my local library before.

      2) I'm wary of binders. I had several hundred CDs in binders for about 5 years, which we moved from house to house for several years. I looked at them recently, and the vast majority of the discs were pretty much ruined by having big scratches and scuffs over a section of the disc. Possibly because the pocket didn't cover the entire back of the disc. I find though, that having anything physically touching the entire back of the disc (even if it's plastic) tends to scratch the disc over time. I realize storing in spindles also has each disc touch the disc next to it, but I don't find much scratching happening when stored this way - possibly because there's a lot less jostling around in a spindle.

      In addition - remember I said we had 4000 DVDs - I don't have enough money to buy that many binders. :) Also, with binders if you get a movie that belongs alphabetically in between two others, you have to rearrange the whole binder.

      3) We considered and rejected organizing by category, except the broad category of separating movies and TV shows. Not only because of the added complexity and the fact that many movies fit into more than one category, but so that I didn't have to look up any movies I'm unsure about. I'm going for least amount of work on my part (i.e. efficiency) vs ease of finding movies.

      How did I get 4000 DVDs? I bought them all of course! Just kidding. I have a fast internet connection and a monthly subscription to a premium newsgroup provider (Giganews.) I've been using newsgroups for over 15 years and never saw the benefit of bittorrent. Have I downloaded many discs that I probably won't ever watch? Sure, I admit there's a bit of hoarding/collecting going on. There's some TV shows that I was downloading for years and never watched. I pretty much stopped doing that though, and now I only download movies or TV shows that my wife or I actually intend to watch.

    10. Re:Laziness by icebraining · · Score: 1

      I probably will, when I get an eink reader. I don't like to read novels on my laptop.

    11. Re:Laziness by godefroi · · Score: 1

      I have a fast internet connection and a monthly subscription to a premium newsgroup provider (Giganews.) I've been using newsgroups for over 15 years and never saw the benefit of bittorrent. Have I downloaded many discs that I probably won't ever watch? Sure, I admit there's a bit of hoarding/collecting going on. There's some TV shows that I was downloading for years and never watched. I pretty much stopped doing that though, and now I only download movies or TV shows that my wife or I actually intend to watch.

      You know, people like you who act in the physical world are known as kleptomaniacs. You're just a copyright violator, but that doesn't make it less (technically) against the law. The upshot, of course, is that kleptomania is classified as a mental disorder. You could probably get yourself a pass for parking in the best spots!

      (Note that I'm not making a moral judgement here, just pointing out the obvious facts)

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    12. Re:Laziness by brentrad · · Score: 1

      Of course the obvious reply to that is that by downloading a copy of a copyrighted item, but then never watching it, what exactly have I deprived the rights-holder of? I never would have bought the item in the first place, and since I never watched it I never got any value from it. How has the rights-holder been wronged - in other words, where is the damage that the rights-holder has suffered?

      I don't steal real-world items. I do violate copyright. I do not consider these to be equivalent acts. YMMV.

    13. Re:Laziness by godefroi · · Score: 1

      Again, I'm not making a moral judgement. I've certainly spent a lot of time subscribed to services [Easynews, among others] that facilitate this sort of behavior. I didn't really want to get into the debate with you, because I don't think this sort of behavior makes you a bad person... I was just making a joke.

      However, you've got a few misconceptions here in your reply:

      1. 1. Being guilty of copyright violation requires one to deprive the rights holder of something. It doesn't. The law says you can't have a copy without the permission of the rights holder, and you don't have permission, so you're in violation.
      2. 2. You wronged the rights-holder by illegally copying the material. Whether you got any value from that act is irrelevant. This is where you are similar to a kleptomaniac, who rarely, if ever, steals something of value. Paperclips, pieces of paper, and other valueless items are common. The rights-holder doesn't have to suffer any "damage".
      3. 3. I was very careful to make a distinction between "stealing" and "violating copyright". I don't believe that copyright violation is theft, and I don't like the moniker "pirate". I am absolutely against things like DRM, as well as the insane penalties that are handed down to casual violators (commercial violators are another thing entirely).

      I've done it, but I don't pretend I'm in the right because the music/movie/book/whatever industry has some sort of "failed business model". The law in the country where I live provides them exclusive rights to their creations, and no matter how unfair it may be (in my opinion), it's (currently) the law.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    14. Re:Laziness by brentrad · · Score: 1

      Fair enough. In my personal code of ethics, just because something is illegal or a violation of some law or rule, that doesn't mean it's wrong. I wasn't arguing that what I do is legal. If the laws in the US were just, and followed hundreds of years of legal precedence, you would have to prove a loss to be able to extract a penalty. However, the laws have been tilted so far in the rights-holders' favor that I don't feel any guilt downloading a copy.

      However, I do buy media when I know the artist themselves is going to get a large part, or most, of the purchase price. If I know that the majority of the cost is going to the record or movie company? I don't bother, but I do try to see recording artists in concert and buy their live recordings if they sell them directly. Again, YMMV.

  15. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by sirdude · · Score: 2

    While the price of HDDs have gone up only recently, it's a temporary "action-of-god" hike which will dissipate shortly (January?). Besides that, HDDs are dirt cheap. It's unlikely that the OP is talking about blu-rays as people who want a disc database usually have multiple (usually ripped/leeched/home) movies on each disc.

  16. Disks types by Tomato42 · · Score: 1

    It wasn't until the middle of second line that I noticed that the poster was suggesting optical disks.

    People actually use optical storage for anything but backups?

    1. Re:Disks types by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      optical disk == disc.

    2. Re:Disks types by icebraining · · Score: 1

      People use optical storage for backups?

    3. Re:Disks types by mmcuh · · Score: 1

      They aren't useful for backup either. Hard disks are cheaper and easier to handle, and often last longer.

      The only reasonable use for DVDs is for when you need to send a couple of GB to someone with a slow or capped internet connection.

    4. Re:Disks types by RobbieThe1st · · Score: 1

      And they aren't even great for that, when you can get a 4-16GB flash drive for just a few dollars($1/GB recently at best buy), and the drives are far faster, less likely to get scratched in transit, and re-usable.

    5. Re:Disks types by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

      Sure, people with small volumes of data to backup. Anything more than a couple becomes clumsy without a robotic loader. The same can be said for hard drive and tape backups, but with obviously higher per-unit volume.

  17. RAID 5 (or RAID 10) in a Custom Built Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you set up a RAID 5 or a RAID 10 system (redundant array of internal disks) in a custom built PC you can get mass storage going for under $1000 (5-8TB). The menu concern can be solved with software. I am not sure what that software is, but you might want to try giving weezo a shot. (weezo.org)

    1. Re:RAID 5 (or RAID 10) in a Custom Built Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SORRY SORRY Weezo.net

    2. Re:RAID 5 (or RAID 10) in a Custom Built Server by dltaylor · · Score: 1

      RAID is not backup.

      For that price you can buy two 6TB consumer NAS and use one as the backup of the other (rsync, if they have it). The 6TB will either be multiple sharable (DLNA, too) volumes or a Linux "LINEAR" MD, LVM or BTRFS span of the media.

    3. Re:RAID 5 (or RAID 10) in a Custom Built Server by omnichad · · Score: 1

      RAID isn't a backup, but the original optical discs are...

    4. Re:RAID 5 (or RAID 10) in a Custom Built Server by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Holy cow - what nutty-ass vendor would be shipping a product using btrfs storage? I mean, I'm using it right now, but I'm pretty sure there's no way I'd be basing my product line on that just yet.

      Linux MD, yes - but probably not linear. RAID5 can easily be adjusted in size and performance is certainly beyond adequate in a purpose-built machine..

    5. Re:RAID 5 (or RAID 10) in a Custom Built Server by cloudmaster · · Score: 1

      RAID certainly is backup if your original media is a bunch of optical disks. And it's probably the best way to get a large amount of storage with some reasonable level of reliability. Doing LVM with striping and mirroring would also work, but performance is nowhere near RAID10 (or even RAID5) on Linux. And I only say "on Linux" because I've not tried a comparison on other platforms which have the option to compare.

  18. Dacal changers for 150 disks,supported under Linux by D4C5CE · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://dacal.com.tw/ with Windows disk database, stackable with USB through ports.
    Robot arm optional by DIY ;-) if you take a unit without internal drive (which reduces capacity by 50 disks).

  19. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Encode to h.264 before copying to hard drive. SD movies range from 800 Mb to 2 Gb each. HD range from 2 to 5 Gb -- Lord of the Rings notwithstanding.

    A pair of 2 Tb hard drives and XBMC ot the OpenELEC variant and problem solved with more than enough room for all your music, too.

    The price of the drives is nothing compared to the replacement cost of all the movies.

  20. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DRM is broken. Rips of the main movie, depending on compression/resizing/length can be done in 1GB - 5GB. Disk prices are higher than they used to be, and I don't know where you are, but a 3TB disk is not unreasonable in my neck of the woods.

  21. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by PktLoss · · Score: 2

    Is there a good option (for mac preferably) that will rip a DVD after looking it up in some database (like CDDB) to get the names and indexing information correct. Ripping is easy enough, but I'm tired of choosing all the chapters for each episode when ripping season 3 of whatever. The last time I let RipIt have a go at a DVD I ended up with Battlestar Galactica disc 2 starting half way through the third episode.

  22. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Florian+Weimer · · Score: 2

    I'm amazed anyone DOESN'T rip their discs. Who wants to be forced to wade through stupid menus and messages that you can't skip?

    The two are unrelated, actually. There a players which offer unconditional skipping and which use the disc directly.

  23. KISS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Just put all your movies on a shelf in alphabetical order. If you have LOTS of them, then use a more orderly system. For the 5 seconds it takes to manually swap out a disc to watch a one or two hour movie, anything else is massive overkill.

    1. Re:KISS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I kind of agree. While physical discs take some space, all the time arranging disc jukeboxes, ripping movies to HDDs, babysitting a RAID NAS... it's not really worth it.

    2. Re:KISS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I used to do this but it was a PITA when I'd fill a shelf and have to shift masses of disc. Then having to crawl on the floor to see the bottom disc kind of sucked too. The deal breaker came when guys came in to clean carpets and stopped dead in their tracks mouths agape..... "That's ALOT of discs man!". It was then that I became aware of just how tempting my hundreds of DVD had become. I've now ripped them ALL to a server and added tons of BD. The disc all reside in boxes now and the media is served up by XBMC on low power ion hardware. Issue solved!

    3. Re:KISS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you swap discs more than once it becomes a lot more than 5 seconds, and btw - if you swap discs that fast then I bet you have lot's of scratches on them, not to mention the time you spend trying to finding the one you want. Also, I you haven't really decided what you want to watch you're going to spend even more time staring at shelves and wading through your disc collection. Fact is, media center solutions are VERY convenient. The only real drawback is the time it takes to rip something - usually it takes less time to download something you already have on disc so that's typically the route I take.

      I get the whole low-tech approach, but once you've gone media center you won't go back.

  24. intriguing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    would have bought one of those CD-ROM wurlitzers for the computer i saw at a comp-expo a few years back ...
    unfortunately, still being a virgin at the time and in an asian city ... well, good memories and less crap hardware lying around now.
    anyways, the future is a better compressor and bit-torrent methinks?
    p.s. @MAFIIA: if you would invent a nice way to "share" data, by putting a serial-number per disk in a database were we PAYING people could register our legit copy .. maybe legit could share legit on the "alternative" MAFIAA bit-torrent? who would then care if my legit DVD is scratched if i can get it(read:DOWNLOAD) from someone who has also a legit copy (that's a funny word)?

    1. Re:intriguing by Tastecicles · · Score: 1

      I have it straight from the horse's mouth: **AA would rather you went to HMV and BOUGHT (read: LICENSED) another copy. They DO NOT LIKE people to be able to back up their own duplicates. That's in violation of their ideal license restrictions and hurtful for their bottom line. This is why we have Macrovision et. al.; why Macrovision go mental at people who sell region-free players exclusively, and why **AA spend SO DAMN MUCH money that isn't theirs, on advertising trying to convince people that copying media that they bought hence to any right-minded individual, own, is a more heinous offence than rape or possibly infanticide.

      --
      Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  25. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by tibit · · Score: 1

    Huh? ripit, in its basic mode of operation, creates a decrypted, clean copy of a dvd, without any bogus sectors etc. That's it. Why would it do what you claim is beyond me, perhaps it's a bug. I haven't used ripit's compress feature, so perhaps you're referring to that?

    --
    A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
  26. Manage Collection with ripping by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I also manage my DVD collection by ripping to HD and then playing of HD with a media center. It's really frustrating that I cannot find a legal way buy the media in format that would allow me not to even buy the DVD.

    I honestly only use the DVD's once, after that they sit and gather dust. What a wast of precious earth resources. Quick calculation (40+ Tons ) annually because a couple of movie execs cannot embrace change.
     

  27. Mymovies by CrackP0t · · Score: 1

    http://mymovies.dk/ installed on a windows home server serving up entire collection to any windows media center client http://slysoft.com/ AnyDVD HD for aiding the ripping You can skip the windows home server and put it on any old machine, but if you are going to use windows at home, it is the best backup/restore/server solution

  28. Shelves? You want shelves? by overshoot · · Score: 1
    These have a single row for disks, but it's just a matter of rearranging the spacings to make a few hundred feet of disk shelving.

    http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f104/tsudhonimh/bookcases/bookcase_4unit.jpg

    --
    Lacking <sarcasm> tags, /. substitutes moderation as "Troll."
  29. Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Buy for every dvd one of these http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=420 and daisy chain them through usb hubs with your computer.

  30. Unraid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have 22TB under my unraid storage box with Plex being the front end to it. It's awesome, low maint, reliable and MOST importantly, wife friendly.
    I know lots of people stream or whatever, but I too had 500 or so DVD's that I felt weird tossing in favor of Netflix. So I just ripped them and stored them.

  31. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    $50+ for a 1 TB drive currently. Easily put 40-50 films on a single drive if blu-ray, way more than that if DVD. I have a 10 TB setup that serves up all media. Most people won't need even that close.

    DRM - easily defeated now.

  32. Digital Media Library by Venner · · Score: 4, Informative

    I wanted a home theater PC with instant-access to all of my films. My solution was as follows:

    (a) Rip all discs to hard drive,
    (b) Index and link to files with software solution

    In detail:
    (a) I chose to go with MakeMKV for most of my ripping. It rips the mpeg2/4 video directly to an mkv file, without reencoding, and you can choose all the tracks you want to go with it. (I.e., some titles I rip multiple audio streams and subtitles, some I take just English 2.0). For me, I just ripped the main title from each film; if I want to see the special features later, I'll take the box down off the shelf and pop the disk in. (Special features don't really matter to me that much.) Each rip averages 3 to 6Gb. Now MKV, while a great file format, isn't compatible with some (especially older) consumer electronics. You can always re-encode, if you really need to make a particular title portable. And for my Blu Ray / HD-DVD titles, I re-encoded anyway. I found a 1080P 6Gb-target-size h.264 two-pass re-encode to be indistinguishable on my 52" TV from the original. In fact, it's probably quite a bit of overkill.

      For storage, I have a couple of 3Tb drives in an external enclosure, with a duplicate unit for backup. (Got them for a song before the manic price gouging going on now started!.) So far, it's holding over 500 titles and several TV series, and plenty of room to grow. And I can always increase capacity.

    (b) For keeping track of everything, I eventually went with Collectorz.com Movie Collector. I've tried many solutions, both free and payware, and Movie Collector was the one that fit my needs the best. (There is a lot of good software out there -- look around!) As I ripped my collection in my spare time, I simply scanned in the UPC on the back of each film using an old CueCat barcode scanner. The software then populates all of the data for the film. Once the film was ripped, I simply linked the title in Movie Collector to the video file on the hard drives. Now I can visually browse my entire collection and watch any title at the click of a mouse. And it's nice to be able to go, "Hey, how many Humphrey Bogart movies do I own?" and find out with a simple filter.

    What worked for me might or might not fit your needs, but hopefully it gives you ideas.
       

    --
    A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
    1. Re:Digital Media Library by CronoCloud · · Score: 1

      Why not keep them in MPEG2/4 containers if you're keeping them MPEG2/4 codec, that way commercially available consumer electronics media devices can play them as well.

    2. Re:Digital Media Library by Venner · · Score: 1

      I've used vob2mpg, etc, in the past. However, I like the MKV format, and for my application, MKV is fine as the prime (really, only) use is from a home theater PC. MakeMKV was a simple, easy to use solution that just worked. If I want to put a movie on my phone, I'd shrink it anyway, so I'd convert it to MP4 at that time. (Likewise, it is simple to rip an HD disc to MKV, then Handbrake* it to a smaller h.264 MKV.)

      As an aside, I've have TONS of issues with MP4 -- compatibility, non-seeking files, invalid streams -- and none with MKV. My BluRay player supports MKV too, for that matter.

      *VidCoder, actually. Less headache, more options.

      --
      A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
    3. Re:Digital Media Library by wagnerrp · · Score: 2

      1080P 6Gb-target-size h.264 two-pass re-encode

      For future reference, the only thing multi-pass encoding gets your is accurate quantizer scaling to precisely hit a target filesize. If you don't have any filesize constraints (because you're storing this crap on a disk several hundred times larger than the file), just set a static quantizer or quality target and forget about it. The codec is much better at deciding just how much data is needed than you are.

    4. Re:Digital Media Library by evilviper · · Score: 1

      A static quantizer will waste space, as it doesn't really correspond with quality. And there are still a few optimizations in x264 which require two-pass encoding and don't work with crf mode.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    5. Re:Digital Media Library by omnichad · · Score: 2

      That's worthless if you want 5.1 AC3 audio - that doesn't fit in an MPEG2 container in any way that consumer electronic devices like. If you have a home theater receiver, that matters.

    6. Re:Digital Media Library by godefroi · · Score: 1

      The question, then, is what bitrate to choose? I currently encode all my stuff using CRF set to 18, which produces (in my opinion) high quality encodes, when paired with all the other settings I use. This lets me target a certain output "quality", regardless of input material.

      If I were to, as you suggest, target a certain bitrate, then what bitrate should I choose for a given input? Should I encode my animated shows for my kids at the same rate as my live action movies? Should I use the same bitrate for low-action chick flicks as I do for special effects movies? What if I don't have a good understanding of the "cost" of the frames in a given input?

      It is my understanding that crf, while not "perfectly optimal", takes pretty much all the guesswork out of it, and gives you a constant output quality, if not the best-possible file size for the chosen quality level. That doesn't matter to me, as disk space is cheap, and a few more MBs doesn't make a lick of difference to me.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    7. Re:Digital Media Library by evilviper · · Score: 1

      I'm not suggesting everyone use a fixed bitrate, just hoping to clear up a couple misconceptions.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    8. Re:Digital Media Library by godefroi · · Score: 1

      So you agree that if I'm looking for constant "quality" and I don't give a whoop what the filesize ends up being, I'm better off with one-pass crf?

      I'm not trying to argue here, I'm looking for advice. Generally, what I find says "do 2-pass", but I have reason to believe that that advice is more generally for "the scene". The same scene that continues to release files using an .avi container. Obviously, not dedicated to rigorous quality.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
    9. Re:Digital Media Library by evilviper · · Score: 1

      There's nothing wrong with CRF, it will do what you want, as long as you understand you're giving up a little bit of quality/size to use it. The same is true of multi-threaded encoding. I expect the overwhelming majority of people are perfectly fine with both trade-offs in exchange for the convenience they provide. Only when storage space or bandwidth is very tight do the amounts we're talking about really matter.

      What's more, the most basic video encoding tips can make a far, far larger difference in quality/size... cropping video to dimensions which are multiples of 16, eliminating edge noise, cropping off black bars, etc.

      If you really want a solid basis in audio/video codec fundamentals, I suggest the MPEG-1 article on Wikipedia.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  33. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 1

    BluRay jukeboxes aren't exactly cheap either. Plus the software isn't very widespread. DVD jukeboxes had the exact same problems which is why it became more common to see people rip everything.

    Furthermore, the DRM of your disks is still going to limit you with a physical jukebox solution. It's still there and getting in the way.

    The only way around that really is to just get rid of the DRM to begin with.

    People have put together hard drive based solutions specifically because they don't like DRM limitations and are cost conscious.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  34. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ternarybit · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Because as much as I hate and disagree with it, breaking DRM is illegal in the US under the DMCA, and there are still some of us who grudgingly but respectfully honor the rule of law.

  35. Disk catalogue software.. old school by ajo_arctus · · Score: 1

    Gosh, disk cataloguing software brings back memories of software we used to keep track of floppies back in the early '90s. I can't find any examples specifically from the Amiga (I definitely had some PD utility to do just this though), but this Windows shareware from the late 90s is a suitably crummy example: http://equi4.com/catfish/

    When it comes to CDs and DVDs, I now rip them and store the originals in the loft. They go in to iTunes and that make it easy to find them again. It stops the children wrecking the actual disks too. When we're low on space I either upgrade the disk or delete stuff they've lost interest in.

  36. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Handbrake takes care of DRM for DVDs."

    For *some* DVDs. It doesn't handle all of them because the producers of the DVDs keep updating their bogus DRM techniques and thus it is a constant arms race. And it is genuinely bogus, because that's what most of these techniques do: insert bogus sectors and other trickery that trips up a simple ripping program but not most DVD players (and the ones that don't work are collateral damage). Why the media producers bother to keep throwing money at a problem that people will just find a way around in order to use the product they have already bought is beyond my understanding. Do they really think they're stopping anything by spending all that money on DRM? And, no thank you, I don't want to disclose all sorts of unnecessary personal information in order to activate a digital copy that isn't ripped the way I want it anyway.

    These days it's easier for a pirate to set up a movie library than a legitimate purchaser, and that situation *sucks*.

  37. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Informative

    He's asking for more than just a decrypted copy of a DVD.

    He wants the same thing that is commonplace and expected for a music CD: something that detects all the tracks and matches them up to content titles. Clearly he wants something that can sort out a pile of Buffy DVDs, correctly label season, episode and title names and possibly fetch extra metadata.

    A simple ripper doesn't do that.

    Besides Kaledescape, I am not aware of anything that does.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  38. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by symbolset · · Score: 1

    Like many commodity shortages this one is aggravated by hoarding. The hoarders will likely suffer as they usually do, by overpaying. Some few will make a killing by gouging late hoarders. Eventually things straighten out.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  39. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by hedwards · · Score: 2

    That only applies to copy protection and CSS isn't copy protection. Moreover it only applies to effective copy protection and CSS definitely isn't effective at controlling copies by any definition one might want to apply.

  40. rent... don't buy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    People have DVD collections and claim they like to watch their movies many times.
    But if you do the math they'd have to spend a crazy percentage of their time watching movies over and over again to make it worthwhile.
    And if they did that, they'd be missing out on the other million things they actually would rather be doing, but don't realize.

    Don't be a hoarder... just rent a movie once in a while.

    1. Re:rent... don't buy by stickyboot · · Score: 1

      I would say renting is probably the best advice. People are arguing that ripping the disks to hard drive would be effective, but holly molly, that is going to take a long time, and a crap-load of space, or an even more insane amount of time if it includes encoding the rips, especially if you your collection includes blue-ray discs. If people must hoard, you are better off leaving the ripping to the professionals. They will do a better job, and its an immense waste of time the same way media capturing is. DRM and hoarding mix terribly, so basically your only effective option is getting onto a good semi-private movie torrent site and get your movies for long term storage there.

    2. Re:rent... don't buy by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      The disks rip themselves. It's not like you've got to sit there and ferry the bits across the SATA cable. All you have to do is wait for it to finish. If you have multiple disks, just check your PC every once and awhile.

      The same goes for transcoding. You start it. It handles itself until it is finished. You are not scribbling numbers by hand on paper or other similar nonsense.

      It takes 5 minutes to type in the titles for an entire season of something so names can be properly sorted out. That is the extent of the "manual futzing time".

      The rest is just letting the computer do what it's supposed to do: automate things and crunch numbers.

      It's nice to have tons of uncut commercial free stuff at your fingertips. It's cheaper than iTunes, more complete than Netflix, and potentially cheaper than cable in the long run.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    3. Re:rent... don't buy by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

      Renting isn't that great of an option if you want to watch something that came out more than 4 or 5 years ago. >99% of the titles at blockbuster - which is the only nationwide rental chain left with brick-and-mortar locations - are less than 5 years old. And the 1% that is older than 5 years consists mostly of things you see on cable every week anyways.

      And don't tell me redbox or netflix are any better, because they really aren't. Netflix can get you some older stuff through the mail, but then you're waiting for it. Redbox ... forget it, they only do stuff that is less than 5 (in their case more like less than 2.5) years old.

      So really if you want good depth, you have to pay for it. Thankfully older titles pop up for sale online with fairly regular frequency if you know where to look.

      --
      Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
    4. Re:rent... don't buy by foniksonik · · Score: 2

      I follow this for all except kids movies/shows. They actually do watch them over and over and there are tons of shows.

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
    5. Re:rent... don't buy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have found that it quite often is cheaper to buy old dvds than it is to rent new ones.

      Last sunday I bought 4 dvds for $14.68(100Sek). I have rented one of these dvds a couple of years ago and I think that it did cost me ~$8.66(59sek). That was from a bargain bin, but online retailers/mail order companies have similar deals. Some dvds only cost $1.43(10sek)...

    6. Re:rent... don't buy by dskzero · · Score: 1

      Did Blockbuster go out of business, anyway?

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
    7. Re:rent... don't buy by dskzero · · Score: 1

      erm *didn't

      --
      Oblivion Awaits
  41. Rip, store, and XBMC it by pak9rabid · · Score: 3, Informative

    Rip it, store it on a network storage system that XBMC can access (there are many), and stream it to your display device. There are many thin-clients you can use as an XBMC box. I personally use an old Acer Aspire Revo (which have since been discontinued). Probably the cheapest device you can use as an XBMC box that's currently available and doesn't look hideous is the Apple TV 2. For $99 with a remote that works out-of-box, you can't really beat that (granted, it can only output up to 720p).

  42. Homebrew Raid by plasticpixel · · Score: 1

    I struggled with this problem too and ended up building a homebrew raid using OpenSolaris and a large CoolerMaster case full of drives. The ZFS filesystem has been bullet proof on this box since 2005. I ripped all my DVDs to ISO format so that I could preserve the DVD menus on those discs. The box sits on my network and is shared via NFS and Samba.

    To play back all those movies on my TV, I put my older Mac Mini on it and have it boot up into a default user and start VLC right away. I use VLC Remote on the ipad to access the library that is NFS mounted on the Mac Mini.

    The overall experience has been great! Using the iPad, I can browse hundreds of ISO images, select one and it plays within a few seconds.

    The iPad remote solution was the final peice to this puzzle as I was previously using a mouse and keyboard to navigate the movies.

  43. Discgear storage units by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Informative

    Hard drive solutions are all well and good. But if you are using discrete disks (CD, DVD) for storage, then I highly recommend Discgear Selector products. While not automatic like a disk changer, finding and getting a disk out is as simple as sliding a knob and lifting the lid. I have several of the larger models.

    And you can use the included software to maintain your library index, and print index labels for the containers.

  44. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm glad more 18th century Bostonians didn't think like you.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  45. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The main problem is the storage requirements you need when you start treating your DVD/blu-ray discs like CDs and rip them all. You very rapidly need several TB or storage through something like a NAS. You'll want that with some kind of RAID, now look at the costs! Just not going to happen for all but the enthusiast for many years yet.

  46. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 4, Informative

    Anything that Handbrake can't handle, AnyDVD will.

    There are really very few DVDs that you will need to use AnyDVD for. There have been a few failed attempts at extra copy protection on DVDs. However, for the most part it's mainly Disney disks that will give you trouble.

    The vast majority of DVDs won't give you trouble.

    However, since you're going to need AnyDVD for BluRays anyways you've got that as a backup option.

    +...yeah. It's easier to pirate than use modern video media to it's full potential.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  47. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Niether Blu Ray or DVD are compressed for storage, they are compressed to fill their respective discs. Please keep this in mind for all future conversations involving home media theaters and internet streaming.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  48. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by PopeRatzo · · Score: 4, Funny

    and there are still some of us who grudgingly but respectfully honor the rule of law.

    Citation needed.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  49. Use a search-engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think the best solution to keep track of my movies is a search-engine. Just download some documents about your movies and put them in a directory. I use rottentomatoes, imdb and wikipedia as my datafiles. This is dependent on taste. You could actually also take down forum-articles about the movies as well if you want, I did that for Firefly and some other important stuff. Then just insert your favorite local search-engine into that directory. I use the built-in engine in Windows because it's not so many files I have to search. If you hypothetically of course have media-files, do a DIR-command and pipe it into a textfile with a dir textfile.txt command. This can be automated so you can do a total listing of more then one disk. This can go into a different search-engine so you can get which disk a file is on if you archive is large. But, because the Harddrive-prices are so high now, I reccomend patience with new purchases. And, always buy disks in 2. Then you can have one disk offline as a backup. Perhaps this solution is overkill, but just wanted to share it.

  50. Old-school - shelve them by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Do it old-school.

    Have bookshelves and sort by whatever works best for you, e.g. genre, title, etc.

    OK, so you only get one sorting key, but at bookshelves/DVD-shelves won't be discontinued any time soon.

    Oh, and you may want to rip anything you'll watch more than once in the next 12 months and put it on your favorite media player.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  51. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

    That law isn't kicking in until you give those files (or discs) to someone else.

    However, I don't blame you for not wanting to be seen downloading the tools to do it.

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  52. Homebuilt DVD carousel by Tastecicles · · Score: 1

    but I'm retiring it out (at my own pace) for a stack of hard disks which have far higher data density.

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  53. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by _0xd0ad · · Score: 1

    Anecdotal, but my brother does.

  54. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Totally wrong. DeCSS is illegal in the US. Circumventing anything protected, no matter how weak the scheme, is illegal thanks to the DMCA. There are tiny exclusions for cellphones, but that's it.

  55. DVD Fab - Handbrake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I use DVD Fab to remove copy protection, then Handbrake to transcode it to make it watchable on an apple tv, or an ipad (or Windows 7 media player, or VLC). Works great, but some stuff is not automated (titles, pictures, etc). I keep all of my dvds in boxes in the closet, so when the Sony police knock on my door, I have the disks to show them. I don't do blu-ray, though, so I don't know about those issues.

  56. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 1

    RAID can be done in software. So it doesn't have to be inherently expensive. You aren't trying to be Pixar. You're just (maybe) trying to make multiple disks look like one disk.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  57. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    3 TB of hard drive is roughly 270 euro here. With ripped movies, that's 300+ movies, less than one euro per movie. And having the entire media collection available with XBMC directly on the TV/projector using a 2,4 GHz mini-keyboard to control the computer is nothing short of amazing.

  58. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm amazed anyone DOESN'T rip their discs. Who wants to be forced to wade through stupid menus and messages that you can't skip?

    The two are unrelated, actually. There a players which offer unconditional skipping and which use the disc directly.

    What player would this be?

  59. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apple's prohibited programs fulfilling some of those requirements from being sold in the AppStore. Off the AppStore, however, there are some solutions. You might look into iVI, though it seems targeted at the anime audience. http://www.southpolesoftware.com/iVI/iVI.php

  60. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If it's wrong, I ignore it. I don't care if it's illegal. Pussy.

  61. some more detail after reading posts by fikx · · Score: 2

    Just to fill in some detail, I have the collection alphabetized on shelves, and yup, I can walk over and get them easy enough. Just trying to declutter the movies (and possibly games, CD-ROM's, blue ray, whatever) like I did the audio CD's a while back. I ripped the audio CD's to disk easy enough, and was looking to do same with others but ripping movies I kept running into little issues. Nothing that would make it impossible, just was hoping that since discs were common for several generations of media, there was something out already to just drop the discs into. The Sony player looked promising, but it's depreciated by Sony and got lack luster reviews. Sometimes, even with unlimited HD storage, it's just nice to have the disc available for any media...

    --
    AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
  62. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    A surprisingly little known case (MCE UPS systems inc. vs. General Electric) made it clear that the DMCA applies only if the underlying action is an infringement of copyright. If a 3 judge panel can rule that cracking a dongle is not a violation of the DMCA, then ripping your DVD collection certainly cannot be.

    Rip with a clean conscience.

  63. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Because as much as I hate and disagree with it, breaking DRM is illegal in the US under the DMCA, and there are still some of us who grudgingly but respectfully honor the rule of law.

    This is a classic example of stage 4 morality on Kohlberg's scale. Both stage 3 [social conformity] and stage 4 [obedience to authority] appear to be common in modern societies. Luckily, your Constitution was written by people operating (perhaps temporarily, and just for that purpose) at stage 5 [social contract], and who recognized that laws which are counter to the general welfare should be changed.

    --
    Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
  64. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    VLC

  65. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by toejam13 · · Score: 1

    BD movies would fill a tb drive in 20-40 movies. That's bad, but not crippling.

    You can easily double that capacity by recoding both the video and audio streams at lower bitrates.

    For my own Blu-ray archival, I convert all of the Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD audio tracks to AAC 5.1-channel 640kbps or 2-channel 224kbps using eac3to. Next, I convert all of the H.262, H.264 and VC1 video tracks to H.264 using a constant quality value of "16" and the "slower" encoder preset using x264. Lastly, I convert the graphical PGS subtitles to text SRT using SupRip. For a two hour 1080p movie, I average around 11GB.

    There are a few dark grainy movies where I had to use a higher CRF value of 14 or 15, but the resulting file is still smaller than the original M2TS file.

    Maybe in six or seven years when 6TB and 8TB drives are the norm and I've upgrade my 42" 1080p plasma, I'll go back and grab the original streams. Until then, I'm fine watching the recodes.

  66. Disc, not Disk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's important, because Disk libraries are easy enough to get (e.g. Drobo). Disc libraries, on the other hand, less so.

  67. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Belial6 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Are you saying that you have never performed an unauthorized public performance of "Happy Birthday"? You always keep the car complately under the speed limit? Never do 58 in a 55? I have yet to meet one of these mythical people that even grudgingly honor the rule of law in real life. While you might be that rare exception, I highly doubt it.

    What I do see every day are people who see the law as shades of gray, and see anything darker than the shade they chose to draw their line as being criminal, and anything lighter not counting. This includes me. I consider raping, murdering, and eating your neighbors to be criminal. I don't consider copying the DVD you purchased to a hard drive that you purchased so that you can watch a movie on the TV you purchased without jumping through hoops to be criminal.

  68. Cheap And Automatic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Discgear Selector 100 Auto Disc Retrieval System

    $27 at Amazon

    1. Re:Cheap And Automatic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your mom is cheap and automatic.

  69. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    with only two manufacturers of 3.5in form factor hard drives (seagate, wdc), don't expect prices to fall to pre-flood prices this year OR next (if ever)... much easier to conspire and collude with only two players than with 5+ this market once had...

  70. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why the media producers bother to keep throwing money at a problem that people will just find a way around in order to use the product they have already bought is beyond my understanding. Do they really think they're stopping anything by spending all that money on DRM?

    It's called greed. They're trying to get the vast majority of unsophisticates to buy the DVD, then a separate version from the iTunes store, then another copy when they get an iPad, then another when they want a copy of the DVD for their car entertainment system or vacation or something...

  71. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Is there a good option (for mac preferably) that will rip a DVD after looking it up in some database (like CDDB) to get the names and indexing information correct. Ripping is easy enough, but I'm tired of choosing all the chapters for each episode when ripping season 3 of whatever. The last time I let RipIt have a go at a DVD I ended up with Battlestar Galactica disc 2 starting half way through the third episode.

    For the Mac, I use MetaX can write tags to ripped movie files, which gets data from tagchimp.com. But it's user-contributed data, so duplicates, errors and typos can creep in.

  72. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by LocalH · · Score: 1

    Too bad the people in positions of power are infested with stage 3 and 4 (most damagingly, stage 4). If there was suddenly a law passed making it illegal to consume yellow apples, a large portion of the population would roll over and throw out their yellow apples.

    --
    FC Closer
  73. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by chill · · Score: 3, Informative

    Give it to XBMC, then point it to thetvdb.com and imdb.com. Name the files correctly, "Farscape 1x2" for example, and let the magic of the media center software do the rest.

    --
    Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
  74. It depends on the item itself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I found the "one size fits all" actually "fits none". So it depends on the format.

    Everything: In Delicious Library. Useful for lending and knowing what you got.
    Everything Ripped: In a "Ripped" section. Otherwise, it follows the same order than non-ripped.

    Movies: Most are on my shelf, by approximate alphabetical order (At least the first letters are somehow OK).
    TV Series: By alphabetical order, in its separate section.
    Music Videos: Ripped using Handbrake.
    CDs: By approximative style, and by order of artist.
    Vinyls: A freaking mess! Erm ... I meant: by approximative style, and by order of artist.
    Books: By collection, and in no particular order inside a collection.
    Games: By console, by major collection and then by name.
    Wine: In a 200-pages book, with etiquettes when the wine was drank, and commentaries. Otherwise, by Y-X position in the cellar.

    Good luck!

  75. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MightyYar · · Score: 1

    Unjust laws with no repercussions don't bother me. Or rather, they bother me and so I don't obey them.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  76. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    I'm using dvdbackup. It uses libdvdread and creates a VIDEO_TS folder on the hard disk that looks just like the DVD filesystem. It will rip anything that VLC can play (because they use the same code for reading the disk) and the result contains everything from the original disk, including videos and so on. When you can fit over 100 DVDs on a 1TB hard disk, there doesn't seem much point in transcoding unless it's for playback on a mobile device.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  77. Easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "How do slashdotters manage large collections of disks?...

    In alphabetical order in a large box!

  78. Professional DVD Autoloader by khilghard · · Score: 1

    http://goo.gl/nYP9z http://goo.gl/lZhul http://goo.gl/SNHh2 Search Amazon or Google for "DVD JukeBox" or "DVD Autoloader" just watch out for Duplicator systems. Most, hint all, aren't library style systems. Most are expensive. Have fun!

  79. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MightyYar · · Score: 1

    with only two manufacturers of 3.5in form factor hard drives (seagate, wdc)

    Samsung?

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  80. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by catmistake · · Score: 1

    Apple's prohibited programs fulfilling some of those requirements from being sold in the AppStore.

    Yes, it is well known, and well documented, and actually part of the developer agreement. Apple pans any software that tries to do what Apple's own software already does compentantly.

    If you try to submit software that is superior to Apple's solutions, generally, Apple just buys you.

  81. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

    I bought 3 2TB disks for about £150 a few months ago. In a RAID-Z configuration they give 4TB of usable space for backups. I could dump my entire DVD collection on it without recompression without making a significant dent in the space. BluRays are a bit different, but I don't own any of them yet, and I'm not really interested in buying them.

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  82. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 1

    The vast majority of DVDs won't give you trouble.

    simpsons dvd's are notorious for doing strange things. you can get a copy, but 'things are broken' inside. the simpsons intro logo where it shows 'the simp' and then adds 'sons' to the right - that shows up 'wrong' on my anydvd copy. the 2nd part of 'sons' does not show up (or something like that; its been a long time since I watched that copy).

    when I tried cloning some 3 stooges (nyuk!) and they had dual b/w and colorized versions, one came out but the other did not. i think they played some game like alternating sectors or something goofy like that. the copy never worked.

    I have legal copies of anydvd and clonedvd (I support slysoft with my dollars). so the program was fine, but copies didn't always come out.

    I think the latest snafu was copying some family guy dvd's and only the commentary audio track got copied. that was more annoying that no sound at all, to be honest. you really have to verify that things worked and you can't just assume they did because the program completed.

    --

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
  83. You're thinking of it the wrong way... by Zadaz · · Score: 1

    Your circular discs of media are offline backups. As soon as you think of them like that a multitude of other options opens up to you, many of them mentioned here.

    Doing this will also make it easier to add more modern (non-physical) media to your collection since it is all managed in one place.

    I don't bother to back up. That's what the spindle of disks in the closet it for.

  84. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    THIS. A THOUSAND TIMES THIS.

  85. Ripping Software by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 2

    I am a fan of DVDCatalyst (www.tools4movies.com). It will rip and convert DVD files to various formats; has batch renaming so you can use various databases to pull information; experimental Blu-Ray support; and is inexpensive. The developer responds fast to questions (sometimes I wonder if he sleeps). I've been a fan of it for many years.

    --
    I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  86. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by kilo_foxtrot84 · · Score: 1

    I've used Handbrake in the past, and like their software. I tried using it recently on my new laptop, though, and was having trouble with playing the output. Probably I tweaked some setting wrong... whatever it was, VLC didn't like it. Instead of slogging through and trying to figure it out, I went looking for alternative software. I tried Freemake Video Converter, and it worked pretty well for my needs (i.e., giving me disc-free Wrath of Khan on-the-go).

  87. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    samsung hdd business being bought by seagate in a deal announced last april.. one month after western digital's purchase of hitachi's hdd business was....

    toshiba (through its acquisition of fujitsu's hdd business in 2009) does make 3.5in form factor drives, but only for the 'enterprise' / server market...

    so basically two global players in the mainstream desktop storage market...

  88. Boxes are best. by Demonoid-Penguin · · Score: 1

    I use boxes to manage my disk collection. But bags or shelves will work equally well.

    First rip the contents to hard drives then put the disks in boxes.

    Is "a slow day on Slashdot" oxymoronic?

  89. Be realistic. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Funny
    Of the hundreds of movies that you own, how many are you going to watch? Go through your collection and make three piles:
    • Movies that you have watched in the last one year
    • Movies that you were planning to watch but did not get around to
    • Movies that you did not even know you had, especially the second and third copies that you bought without realizing you already had a copy or two

    Store those movies in these file folders with plastic pockets. Buy the kind that will let you also store the jewel case printed material.

    Figure out how many hours a week you are planning to watch movies from your collection. Figure out how many years it is going to take to finish what you already have. Finally realize the only reason you have such a big collection is to brag about the size of the collection. So save some money on the techno solutions and buy more movies to enhance the bragging.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Be realistic. by fikx · · Score: 1

      Did that, do that (go through the list every once in a while and get rid of the ones I don't watch anymore). The collections is not catching dust. I use the disks currently. After giving up cable (realizing that most of the stuff I actually watched I already own) it's now just easy to hit the collection when I want to watch something. Granted I don't go through all them every week, but I also don't buy more every week. only a few on the shelves sit there for "gotta have 'em all" urges and don't get played much.

      --
      AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
    2. Re:Be realistic. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

      When you take your movie collection this seriously, do not go for these techno solutions that puts all your movies in one device. You plan your viewing, you probably have a good video/audio set up. You really don't want everything you own at the finger tips, you are not going to watch movies at the spur of the moment. So invest in devices that will protect the disks and preserve them for a longer period. Temp/humidity control of the original disks is probably a better investment than a 500 disk carousel, made of plastic, that might scratch the disk or allow dust to settle on it. Just my two cents. You seem to know what you are doing.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  90. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by 6Yankee · · Score: 5, Funny

    I consider raping, murdering, and eating your neighbors to be criminal.

    So as long as I don't eat them, it's cool? Cool.

  91. PlexApp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I use Plex Server+Client on OS X. It is increasingly becoming available for other platforms as well - including mobile devices. Very nice media center.
    http://plexapp.com/

  92. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by bensode · · Score: 1

    DVDCAT is cheap and works well and gets blueray down to a reasonable size. Also converts existing formats to mobile devices with nice presets for Android and iProducts.

    --
    "Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt
  93. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    What I do see every day are people who see the law as shades of gray, and see anything darker than the shade they chose to draw their line as being criminal, and anything lighter not counting. This includes me.

    You are mistaken. The law is not a shade of grey. It is generally black and white. Get caught doing this illegal act and pay this penalty. The speeder, when caught, will pay a fine or lose their license. They are aware of the law and know that they will be
    forced to pay the penalty, if caught. However, they have decided that the expense of the penalty is worth the risk.

    I like how you start off with a scofflaw attitude and then try to imply some sort of moral superiority by declaring murder as criminal. Going back to the cost versus risk I was talking about. Most people are will to pay the $200 fine for speeding, if caught. But, they aren't willing to risk permanent incarceration or execution for murder. If there were only a $200 fine for murder, you'd do it too.

    The fact of the matter is that DRM circumvention, like speeding is illegal. But, most people still do it anyway because the risk of being caught is low, as is the penalty cost. The law is not a shade of grey and it is rarely a moral decision.

  94. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by epine · · Score: 2

    Yeah, I upgraded my FreeBSD 8.1 box to 9.0-RC2 so I could start playing with ZFS v28. Madly sacrificing chickens in triplicate, after a Gentoo-like recompile of 400 ports, freebsd-upgrade left me a somewhat hosed system where basic services (startx, portupgrade) won't run complaining that libz.so.5 is missing. I guess I'm looking at a fresh install.

    As far as I got with ZFS, it totally rocked. In my test I set up a three drive mirror (which I think of as a plain mirror with a presilvered hot spare). Seeing 35MB/s copying over the LAN with rsync/ssh. A test involving recursive scp starting following symlinks recursively on a 20GB file set, which put the gears to deduplication. It ran great. I finally killed it at a duplication level of 7.8. Doubt dedup will do much for me in production on my little LAN.

    My biggest worry is that you really need ECC to protect the long-duration content in the ARC cache, not to mention critical ZFS memory structures themselves. On the Intel side, for ECC you're looking at an X3400 chipset, or an expensive Xeon chip. Apparently there are somewhat cheaper solutions on the AMD side. For the ZIL cache, people recommend mirrored SLC.

    For a while we enjoyed 60% annual drive capacity growth rate, but this is projected to fall to 20% annual growth as we head toward bit patterned media. I wouldn't assume vastly greater capacities in the near term.

    Here is a nice paper, sans authorship date (which the author will regret when his time comes in the Beetlejuice afterlife lobby) :
    End-to-end Data Integrity for File Systems: A ZFS Case Study

    He cites a recent analysis of Google server farm metrics:
    DRAM Errors in the Wild: A Large-Scale Field Study

    It's a little unclear how to translate this for a home-use ZFS box. Error rate is usage dependent and seems to depend on the quality of the mainboard memory access path.

    A feature that might help ZFS outside of the enterprise is an ARC cache scrubber using the ZFS checksum data.

    I'm still figuring this stuff out, but my impression so far is that ZFS makes the most sense where data preservation must coexist with high availability and there are fall-back measures in place on the preservation front.

  95. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by brantondaveperson · · Score: 1

    "Name the files correctly"
    That's exactly what he *doesn't* want to have to do. We don't have to do that with cds, and it's about time that a similar solution for dvds showed up.

  96. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Ster · · Score: 1

    with only two manufacturers of 3.5in form factor hard drives (seagate, wdc)

    Samsung?

    Actually, it's Hitachi. And Toshiba has (re?)entered the 3.5" space, at least on the enterprise side of the world - I have no idea if they make consumer 3.5" drives.

    -Ster

  97. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AnyDVD-HD for the DRM, DVDShrink to rip DVD to iso uncompressed and eac3to to extract BD. BD go through a front-end for x.264 to compress down to around 10gigs each. I've done 1300 movies this way and I store them on two unRAID severs. One for system backups and TV shows, the other for movies and music. XBMC is my front-end of choice on ion Atom hardware although the ATV and WDLive boxes are also interesting. HDD are expensive right now, they won't stay that way and they weren't when I populated my systems...

  98. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Personally, I just want to know if he meant in that order. Perhaps if they weren't in that order?

  99. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by thesh0ck · · Score: 3, Informative

    He wasnt saying the law wasnt black and white. He said that peaople see the law in shades of grey and they do.

  100. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by thesh0ck · · Score: 1

    You cant update dvd drm without it causing it to fail on dvd players, and dvd players that worked 10 years ago still work with dvds that come out today. Thats called a standard.....

  101. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Anecdotal, but my brother does.

    As far as you know, he does.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  102. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by _0xd0ad · · Score: 1

    Trust me... I know.

  103. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by rrohbeck · · Score: 1

    Anything that's fun is illegal in some way so you have to be a complete sourpuss to obey every single law in existence. I doubt if it's even physically possible.

  104. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by rrohbeck · · Score: 1

    with only two manufacturers of 3.5in form factor hard drives (seagate, wdc)

    Samsung?

    Hitachi?

  105. Binders and software by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I keep the discs either under my coffee table, or in the entertainment stand drawers, in 320 disc books.
    They are in no natural order. Based on the discs ID, I can usually flip within a page or 2 of it.
    Doing a modulus 8 in my head lets me know which corner to look in.
    I use WhereIsIt to scan each disc as its burned. It can output your catalog in a variety of formats, and also track lending.

  106. MyMovies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    works like a charm for me, and completely free unless you want some "upgrades" (really not essential for use of the program!).

    I have this running as a service on my WHS, two 1.5 gig drives and i just hit movie #213. automatic full rips using slysoft anydvd if you want, .avi or .h264 if you use the software on the side. really for $300 bucks in hard drives i figure its worth it to have full backups!

    www.mymovies.dk

  107. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    They are uncommon and not easily run across without extensive research.

    I'd love it if region coding and disc lock-out features were ruled illegal for being anti-consumer (as they have been in some places).

  108. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I consider raping, murdering, and eating your neighbors to be criminal.

    What about 2 out of 3?

  109. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Cruciform · · Score: 1

    Being "let off with a warning" is quite common for speeders. Police often completely ignore anyone going less than 20km/h over the speed limits on the 401 highway in Ontario. Plea deals and overlap on types of charges create the very grey areas that you deny exist.

    Any one law, in complete isolation from reality, might be "black and white" but you don't live in complete isolation from reality... do you?

  110. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by cynyr · · Score: 1

    mplayer as well.

    --
    All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
  111. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by guruevi · · Score: 2

    There is no such service (as CDDB) to get DVD chapters. DVD "chapters" don't really exist outside the menu-software of the DVD (a random software or hardware DVD player will never enumerate chapter names), Handbrake can handle CSV's if you really want to name them.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  112. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Interpretation and enforcement of laws is typically a shade of grey though. There is not a single law that says do x and pay y, there's always exceptions, loopholes and if you have enough money to afford lawyers, judges and lawmakers you're typically going to be on the white side of the law, if you don't have enough money you're typically on the black side.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  113. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by RobbieThe1st · · Score: 2

    Also, software raid is plenty fast, and typically more robust than consumer-grade "hardware" solutions.
    Very happy with MD raid-5.

  114. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ultranova · · Score: 2

    Because as much as I hate and disagree with it, breaking DRM is illegal in the US under the DMCA, and there are still some of us who grudgingly but respectfully honor the rule of law.

    "Rule of law" usually implies that laws were written by some other criteria than "he who has the gold makes the rules" (since otherwise they just become rule by the strongest, or dictatorship). Since copyright laws were written based on what Disney wanted with no regards to anything else, obeying or not obeying them has nothing to do with the rule of law.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

  115. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by cynyr · · Score: 1

    does AnyDVD-HD have a linux port yet? around 2 years ago I looked and it seemed to be windows only.

    --
    All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
  116. Mythbuntu? by InspectorGadget1964 · · Score: 1

    I import my DVD's into Mythbuntu, then, I don't need to touch them again. They are gathering dust, I just watch them from the recording.....

  117. Data disks? by identity0 · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know if there's a way to keep directory structure and metadata from data disks saved to a local computer so you can search them or browse them in a regular file browser without physically going through discs?

    In Windows or Linux.

    1. Re:Data disks? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not quite sure I understand the question, but I think what you want is to make ISO-format copies of your discs. Most OSes have a way to directly mount ISO that's indistinguishable from the physical disc.

  118. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    HandBreak .. Removing DRM ... Are you stoned or something ?? Really , you should share whatever it is that you are smoking.

    HandBreak can RE-Encode the video , but it will not "CRACK" the encryption. It does NOTHING to remove drm.

  119. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Informative

    That only applies to copy protection and CSS isn't copy protection.Moreover it only applies to effective copy protection

    It most certainly is copy protection. And why would you think the DMCA only applies to "effective" protection? I know of no such distinction in the law. You'd be surprised how many times the DMCA has been invoked during lawsuits: printer cartridges, garage-door remotes ... even data streams that were not by any stretch of the imagination "encrypted" have still fallen under the DMCA.

    Regardless, you could take your data, XOR each byte with 0xFF, call it copy protection, and anyone that tries to recover your data by flipping the bits back is in violation of the relevant DMCA provisions. Period.

    and CSS definitely isn't effective at controlling copies by any definition one might want to apply.

    Sure it is. It's extremely effective. The reality is the bulk of people who buy DVDs will never bother to make a copy, and for those that do, CSS stops them in their tracks. Sure, it's not effective at controlling decrypted copies disseminated via the Internet, but that was never the purpose of CSS. It's intent was to raise the bar sufficiently that only the most knowledgeable individuals would be able to make physical copies, to make it too inconvenient for Joe Average. And you know what? That's still true today.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  120. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ScrewMaster · · Score: 4, Informative

    That law isn't kicking in until you give those files (or discs) to someone else.

    However, I don't blame you for not wanting to be seen downloading the tools to do it.

    You have the legal right to make copies for personal use, but the media companies got around that by making the requisite software illegal. Your basic Catch 22.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  121. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by DaveGod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Kohlberg's scale has it's uses as an academic model but it's far too naive to apply in the real world.

    Take the Heinz dilemma from the wiki. It is implied that stage six (universal human ethics) should be the only consideration despite there being 6 valid points made. Saving a life seems a clear win only in such a sharply defined, stark and simple example.

    Conformity is implied to be little more than obedience to perceived expectations, while respecting law-and-order is obedience to a rule book. Obedient people who cannot or will not make a true ethical decision. Putting aside this ignorance for the true value of society and law, both of these are things which have evolved between a lot of people and a lot of time to be protector of rights and a shortcut for morality.

    People can seek "universal human ethics", accept that it is impractical for them to make a fair judgement and default back to social expectations/law. People can accept they are ignorant of the full facts and implications, or that their stance on rights and ethics in the situation is too heavily influenced by their personal bias.

    A justification based on rights or ethics does not make it a valid or true justification. Usually when politicians and people of power start gesturing excitedly and talking of rights and fundamental values I get concerned about what shit they're trying to pull now. These are the justifications and rationalisations given for decisions that were really made in self interest.

    People can also accept that the ethics/rights issues at stake are truly pedantic and accept the law issues as more important. On more important issues, people can take a stand for rights and ethics yet still observe a law that runs to the contrary. Where is the category which said Heinz found a flaw in law and society therefore should seek to address it?

    I notice comments promoting the constitution have been heavily upvoted, while the post supporting the rule of law is actually downvoted as flamebait. Anyone else pondering the irony, and just how conformist Slashdot is?

  122. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are doing something wrong ..

    RipIt works fine for me. on ANY dvd I get ( rent / borrow / steal ) I rip it. I dont tend to use its "compress" functions. But the regular rip functions work fine for me. Beyond the rare dvd that it wont rip. Which is indeed rare.

  123. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

    Screw IMDb. They don't want us there. They make an effort to keep us out of there. TheTVDb and TheMovieDb have much better artwork anyway.

  124. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by blueg3 · · Score: 1

    VLC and Mplayer are uncommon?

  125. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by geminidomino · · Score: 1

    You think so? I'd be surprised if more than a token percentage of legislators in the country had progressed beyond stage 2...

  126. Sounds like a Lego Mindstorms project... by mark_reh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sounds like a Lego Mindstorms project... Start building!

  127. Matching Drives for RAID by Cheech+Wizard · · Score: 1

    It depends upon the enclosure if it's external. I have two 12TB enclosures with Firewire 800 running RAID 5 with parity so each "drive" (enclosure) holds about 9TB. Prior to buying I called the company's tech support folks and confirmed that should a drive go down I would need another drive of the same manufacturer and model *and* the same firmware version (and the same capacity, obviously) if I wanted to reconstruct the array myself should a drive fail. In short, buy an extra drive at the time I purchased the enclosure and specify that the extra drive *has* to be matched to those in the enclosure. The support person said that should the drive fail within the warranty period I would have to copy the data off the enclosure and send it to them. He told me they would have to replace all 4 of the 3TB drives and that they would charge extra if I wanted *them* to copy data from the drives onto the new drives. I can not speak to all RAID enclosures, but in my case the drives have to be the same right down to the same firmware version.

    1. Re:Matching Drives for RAID by cloudmaster · · Score: 1

      That's why I stopped using "external" RAID solutions (for home use, which is what we're talking about) a while back. Linux software RAID has a near negligible performance impact on the system. With LVM running on top of a RAID5, you can individually replace disks in the array with larger capacity models and readd them to the array. Once they're all the larger size (or "a" larger size), you can increase the size of the array to use as much extra space as possible. Then you're just a pvresize and lvresize -r away from the space being available for use. The RAID5 storing my media in my file server at home has gone from four 256G drives to four 512G drives to four 1G drives to five 1GB drives. Each of those space increases has happened without even restarting the daemons on the system, let alone any kind of power cycle. As soon as resizing RAID 10 works properly, this'll be even more flexible (the drives don't even have to be the same size).

      I do this for a few arrays at home. My "enclosures" are just SATA hot-swap drive bays which go in the 5.25" spaces on a regular system. I got rid of the last SCSI cage a few weeks ago; I'll have to remember to get that up on eBay before it's a complete museum piece. :)

      The important thing to me is that using software RAID like that means you just need a linux boot disk and way to get all the drives onto a machine; you're not tied to a specific controller or drive. I had a multi-disk drive controller with some smaller drives in a RAID die a while back, so I ended up using a USB-to-IDE converter to individually dd each of the small drives to specially-sized (the default mdadm format inconveniently puts metadata at the end of the partition) partitions onto a couple of bigger drives, and then reassembled the "array" of about 6 partitions across 2 disks on the new machine so I could recover the data. You haven't really lived until you've run mdadm --assemble /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda3 /dev/sda4 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdb2. :D

    2. Re:Matching Drives for RAID by Cheech+Wizard · · Score: 1

      You've given me food for thought. But for now, I'm pretty well set. I have data going back to 1986. Over the years I've done conversions as new stuff (like DVD drives) came on the market. Floppies to CD and then CDs to DVDs. Then it was cheap 300 to 350GB hard drives which I copied the DVDs to. Then to 1TB drives. Then to 2TB drives. Now everything up to 6 months ago is on 2TB drives (I threw floppies, CDs and DVDs into the fireplace after I had them on HDs. I gave the 300 and 350TB drives to my cousin after I cleaned the data off of them. I have a bunch of 1 TB and 2TB drives in a "climate" closet I built here. Since this is technically part of my business, and I'm in my 60's, it's easier for me to just buy external enclosures. The web sites I have online run on FeeBSD or CentOS, so I have some command line knowledge seeing as how I have dedicated servers and I manage them myself. But for here at my home office I'm lazy. The less I have to use a CLI the happier I am. So - I have two identical, bought at the same time, 12TB OWC "Mercury" drives. It will be another year, at least, hopefully 2, before they're filled and I have to buy another enclosure. At that time I'll see where technology is and go from there. (Yes, I'm a data hoarder). As a last "observation" - I've only had 2 hard drives fail in the last 10 years, and I was able to recover all the data from them, so I have a probably optimistic view with regard to the probably of a drive failing being low. I do have hardware RAID 1 mirror with fail-over on my internet servers, but even there - Only once, about a year ago, has a drive failed. The data center swapped out the bad drive and if I remember correctly they didn't even shut down the server (CAUTION: OLD MAN with poor memory - I think it was just a hot swap, but I could be wrong...)

  128. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

    Interpretation and enforcement of laws is typically a shade of grey though. There is not a single law that says do x and pay y, there's always exceptions, loopholes and if you have enough money to afford lawyers, judges and lawmakers you're typically going to be on the white side of the law, if you don't have enough money you're typically on the black side.

    More to the point, we have judges in the loop, because not everyone should receive the exact same punishment under the law. For example, I got nailed for making a left turn in front of a school bus at an intersection. I stopped and waited for the bus to go, since it pulled up first. The bus driver waved me on, so I made my turn.

    Five blocks later, I get pulled over for passing a school bus with its sign out (I mean, wtf?) by a fat cop with coke-bottle glasses. I doubt he could have seen ten feet in front of his nose, much less five blocks away. Regardless, a couple of weeks later I show up in court. The judge told me that according to a new statute, this particular offense carried a mandatory six-month suspension of my driver's license. My jaw dropped, and I remember saying "Six months, Your Honor." She said if I were to be convicted of the charge, there was nothing she could do, but recommended that I come back in a month with an attorney.

    So I came back in a month, with my lawyer, and ended up in front of the same judge. She asked me how long it had been since my last moving violation. It had been about seven years, and I told her that. So she has the prosecutor poring over a huge tome, looking for some way to reduce the charge. Turns out that the law did allow the judge some discretion: the ticket was plead down to "making an illegal left turn." So that's what I was convicted of: a relatively minor violation. The judge wanted to throw the case out (I think she knew that cop pretty well) but the law didn't allow her to do that, apparently. Yeah, it cost me a $100 plus $250 for my attorney, but at least I walked out of there able to drive my car. She also gave me court supervision, so it didn't end up on my driving record.

    Yes, traffic tickets are a money-making system for the State, but that's not the point. That judge was able to perceive some shades of grey, and while justice was hardly served (I had actually done nothing wrong) the punishment ended up not being ridiculously out of line with the crime. I commute sixty miles a day: not being able to drive for half a year would likely have cost me my job.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  129. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ScrewMaster · · Score: 2

    Anything that's fun is illegal in some way so you have to be a complete sourpuss to obey every single law in existence. I doubt if it's even physically possible.

    It's worse than that, really. An innocent man is hard to control: make him a criminal, especially if he isn't even aware that he is, and you have him by the short and curly any time you want him.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  130. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Plus on the bright side you won't lose karma.

  131. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

    Also, software raid is plenty fast, and typically more robust than consumer-grade "hardware" solutions. Very happy with MD raid-5.

    Yes, my Debian servers run software RAID. For what I do at home it's more than adequate, and it is damn fast.

    --
    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
  132. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MMC+Monster · · Score: 1

    Not to be TOO pedantic, but Handbrake uses the libraries in VLC or DVDCSS to decode DVDs. Not a big deal, since they're both Open Source and (fairly) easy to find.

    --
    Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
  133. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

    You are mistaken. The law IS a shade of grey. Circumvention of DRM for personal use was made illegal in writ by the Legislative branch with the DMCA, but will not be illegal in fact until it passes muster with the Judicial branch in court. An end user is going to actually have to be brought up on charges, criminal or civil, and lose, before the law has any merit.

    Companies and programmers have been brought up on charges for distributing tools to circumvent DRM, users have been brought up on charges for subsequent distribution of previously DRMd content, but in its 13 years of existence, not one individual has gotten so much as a threat for breaching it for personal use. Until that happens, and is upheld in court, the law is just as likely some text on paper in violation of your Constitutional right to personal property.

  134. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

    It's less about updating the DRM technique (since CSS is statically defined) and more about making a non-compliant or broken DVD in such a manner that most DVD players don't notice or care, but stricter PC ROMs choke on trying to recover what it thinks are damaged sections of disc.

  135. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Imagine the same scenario but you couldn't afford the lawyer or time off work to go to court.

    That's exactly what I meant with "if you're rich enough to afford a lawyer, judge or lawmaker" you'll be on the good side, the rest (of us - depending on the severity) is going to be on the bad side.

    It seems if you have money for someone to pour over enough tomes of law you will win or get a massively reduced sentence. These tomes are huge, some large lawyers offices have a small library (the size of a community library in some small towns) with only law text and interpretations on it.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  136. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Bob9113 · · Score: 1

    breaking DRM is illegal in the US under the DMCA

    Actually, in the case as described, it is not illegal.

    1201(c)(1):
    Nothing in this section shall affect rights, remedies, limitations, or defenses to copyright infringement, including fair use, under this title.

    Fair use covers copies for personal use, including media and time shifting.

    The closest they have come to making circumvention for fair use purposes illegal is making distributing tools intended for non-fair-use purposes illegal. See DVD X Copy. Neither possession of the tools nor using them for legal purposes have not been found to be infringing, and the DMCA is actually pretty clear that neither case is covered.

  137. How many discs? by geminidomino · · Score: 2

    You didn't specify how large your collection is. If it's just a few hundred discs, then I personally agree with whoever it was way up there that just recommended one of those big honking disc binders. One or two 320-disc binders, while weightier than you might imagine, are nice and easy to keep in alphabetical order, if you've got a fairly static collection.

    Once the numbers get much above that, though, yeah, I'm not sure, either. Six of those binders can break through a cheap ikea-type shelf (true story), and anyone who pipes up "rip them" can go suck on a tesla coil... I'm still trying to find a solution myself, maybe something like a DIY Redbox Kiosk, though I don't know how much those actually hold...

    1. Re:How many discs? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      the best way I have found to rip dvd's is with my XBOX ... yea its another stupid box but it does it flawlessly every time ... though if your one of those who thing 1080P on your (LOL YEA RIGHT more like 18 inch XGA if your lucky) 42 inch TV is a big fucking deal then your stuck without blue ray

    2. Re:How many discs? by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      When you're talking about hundreds of discs, "ripping" isn't even a "good" way, much less the best one.

      Firstly, not all discs are movies. Between movies and console games (not even counting computer software), I'm looking at over 1000 discs.

      Secondly, not every video disc is 1 movie. Probably a quarter of my video DVDs are TV show collections, which can contain anywhere from 2 to eight episodes per disc, so besides taking forever to rip each title, you then have to go through and rename all the damn files.

      Thirdly, if you ARE going to rip, you need to have a horribly old computer in order for it to be any more mind-meltingly slow than doing it with an XBox.

      Really, so many people spewed this all over the thread, and I even said it wasn't a solution already...

    3. Re:How many discs? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      sorry I did not know we were talking about you mr self important, if you have hundreds of disc's buy a fucking jukebox like I already suggested or quit your bitching and sit down and do something productive besides rotting your life away on jackoff mindcandy

      the op never specified how many disc's and not all of us are in the contest to be "first to own every dvd ever made"

      besides it takes 8 min to rip a dvd on an XBOX ... fastest I have seen on a sub 1ghz computer since it has dedicated hardware decrypting

    4. Re:How many discs? by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Did you really think you were the first one to suggest just ripping the DVDs? You weren't. About 100 people beat you to that punch, you clever thing, you. And since you were replying TO MY POST, it might have occurred to you that it would be taken as a reply TO MY POST.

      And I am well aware that the OP never specified how many discs (note: no apostrophe), which would be why my post specifically said "How many discs?"

      And, once again, it doesn't fucking matter how fast an XBox rips discs when the discs aren't movie discs.

      In the future, perhaps you should try reading more than every fifth word. You'll look like less of a tool.

    5. Re:How many discs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Suck on a tesla coil, I love it..

  138. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by evanism · · Score: 1

    you'll just need to resort to priatebay to get good copies then.... the universal law of supply and demand.

    --
    Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
  139. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

    No they aren't. They are compressed to meet a certain quality point. Most Bluray disks don't even top 40GB, and the feature content is generally only 20-30GB. Disks are (were) cheap, and asymmetric compression is expensive and lossy. Better to just store the original data, and only bother transcoding if you need to meet the requirements of some specific device.

  140. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

    Still Windows only, but it will work in a virtual machine on a Linux host.

  141. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by styrotech · · Score: 1

    I'm glad more 18th century Bostonians didn't think like you.

    Why exactly?

    What would your life have been like otherwise? Would the US now be more like eg Australia instead?

    Frankly these days I'm struggling to see how that exactly would be a tragedy for your rights and freedoms.

  142. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MightyYar · · Score: 2

    Cool. I'm still on FreeBSD 8, just because I'm redoing rooms in the house and don't have time to experiment :)

    Like most home users crazy enough to run their own basement server, I use it for several jobs. It's a time machine target, it's a music server, it's a pictures repository, it's a CrashPlan target (thanks to Linux emulation), it's a web server, and probably things I'm forgetting. For me, the main appeal of ZFS is the data integrity. A few years ago, my backup scheme involved Unison, and it caught a bunch of corrupted pictures on my main drive trying to overwrite the good backups. So I learned - almost the hard way - never to blindly backup, to always do some kind of checksum. ZFS is even better, checking the data integrity all the time. I also happen to love the ease with which I can swap in larger drives, but that's secondary since I've always managed using other methods. Snapshots have proven to be just awesome debugging tools - but again, this is not really anything new (shadow copy, time machine, etc). I also like that I can move the drives all over to another machine and import. Actually tried this between an old Mac and FreeBSD and it works as advertised.

    To deal with the ECC issue, I bought a used HP workstation from eBay. Then I stuffed a 5-disk cage in it and it hasn't had a hiccup yet. Of course, right after I did this, a coworker pointed me to an AMD-based server with bulit-in 5-disk cage on Newegg for the same price, but my timing is always awful. The OS runs off a USB stick, and every once in a while I clone the USB stick.

    This is my first experience with FreeBSD, and I must say it is a very nice OS to work with. Haven't tried freebsd-upgrade yet, though :)

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  143. Stop consumerism. Why have a "collection"? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How many DVDs can you watch?

    7 a week? Really? Haven't you got a life?

    I suggest a normal person with varied interests and in employment won't watch more than 2 DVD's per week on average (and with TV, movies, music, gaming, Internet and other exotic activities like going to concerts, doing sports, or reading a book requiring our time, I reckon the number may be smaller. Have you got kids? You watch more than 2 DVDs a week, but I guess you are tired by now of watching Toy Story yet again).

    So lets say you will watch 100 DVDs this year. All of them only once. And most of them, perhaps all, will never be seen again ever, because you have other 100 to watch next year.

    At this time of the year if you have a DVD "collection" what I suggest you should be doing is to get rid of half of it in order to make space for next year 100 DVDs.

    The situation does not change much if these DVDs are in your computer (or server farm, whatever).. YOu won't watch most of it ever anymore.

    So my solution is keep a collection of 100 and be scrupulous about this: a new disk gets in one gets out. It is that simple. Eventually you build a real collection of movies that you may watch sometime again. Keep the collection in a shelf, alphabetically, and forget the bloody computer and ripping: you have better things to do with your life (I hope).

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
    1. Re:Stop consumerism. Why have a "collection"? by jedidiah · · Score: 1

      Some stuff I might watch over again at varying levels of frequency depending on the level of interest. If it's all in one big giant iPod, then it's always at my fingertips whenever the mood strikes.

      This could be today, tomorrow, next year, or 5 years from now. It doesn't really matter.

      Once the "horrendous bother" of ripping something has occured, that's the last I have to think about it.

      It's rather like music CDs really.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    2. Re:Stop consumerism. Why have a "collection"? by Osgeld · · Score: 1

      reminds me of an roomate, so many fucking dvd's we could never find anything we wanted to watch and rented them off the tv ... when he actually went though them we found out he bought 2 or 3 copies of many movies, but couldnt cough up the money for the phone bill

      when he got fucking irate over the fact that a 20$ dupe dvd would only net him 2 bucks at the game store I ceased to be roomates with him, then he accused me of theift over MY playstation 2, then his mommy gave him a house, while I struggle to make rent in a small apartment on a concrete slab

      moral of the story is that the stupid win, while the smart bust their balls for nothing ... I own 3 dvd's now ... and my dvd player is broken, but I need a new vaccume cleaner, and belts for my car

      That will teach me for being responsible

    3. Re:Stop consumerism. Why have a "collection"? by fikx · · Score: 1

      Let's estimate a collection of about 400 movies. To be conservative, say stick one in the player 4 nights our of 5 weeknights (how often does an average person watch TV? couple of hours a night? substitute a movie instead). Add say 3 movies for the weekend. That's about 14 hours a week. 400 movies (at 2 hours each) is enough for 57 weeks or so. Just over a year. Doesn't seem like I'm dedicating my life to sitting in front of the tube then. Also take into account that putting on a movie doesn't mean stopping all else. The TV makes good background to other stuff. I just don't watch much live TV...

      --
      AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
    4. Re:Stop consumerism. Why have a "collection"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Excellent point Sir!

    5. Re:Stop consumerism. Why have a "collection"? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1
      Sorry about your nitwit ex-room mate. Looks like he was spoiled rotten by his parents who made money but did not raise a responsible adult.

      But moral of the story is not "responsible behavior is for the suckers". Responsible behavior will pay, sometimes in money, sometimes in nicer relationships, sometimes in lowered stress levels and general happiness, but usually in a combination of these things.

      Ultimate thing you should be angry about is the general stereotyping by the political parties. Republicans broadbrush like this: "All rich people are successful because of hard work and initiative, all poor people are poor because they are lazy, dimwitted or both". Democrats broadbrush like this: "All rich people got rich by wheeling and dealing and having the system stacked in their favor. Or they inherited from their wheeling-dealing parents. All poor people are poor because of bad luck, exploitation and discrimination."

      In reality, there are some rich people got there by hard work, others inherited it, or were simply lucky. There are definitely poor people who are lazy and who made bad choices in life. But not all the poor are like this. Please do spend sometime paying attention to the politicians. And become politically active. It does not matter whether you become a Democrat or Republican. We need more responsible people in both parties.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  144. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And why would you think the DMCA only applies to "effective" protection? I know of no such distinction in the law.

    He or she presumably thinks so because the DMCA uses the phrase "effectively controls access". But the word "effectively" is used there to mean "in effect", not "in an effective manner". And the common meaning of the word is irrelevant, since the phrase is explicitly defined (17 USC 1201(a)(3)(B)):

    a technological measure "effectively controls access to a work" if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

    It doesn't matter how well the measure works at keeping people out, only that some additional steps are necessary in order to gain access to the work.

  145. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

    VLC isn't a "DVD player" (in the sense that 99.99% of the public would take that phrase if you said "I'm going to get a "DVD player."

    Not to mention that on Windows and such, it will still be region locked by the OS, so even if we accept you as right, you are still wrong. Yes, they are common, but they do not have the necessary features of being able to play DVDs (as they have no lasers in the VLC program) and the decoding is still limited by OS limitations, which in most cases is Windows. You might as well have answered "crows are common." It's a true statement, but unrelated to the discussion at had.

  146. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is no such service (as CDDB) to get DVD chapters. DVD "chapters" don't really exist outside the menu-software of the DVD (a random software or hardware DVD player will never enumerate chapter names), Handbrake can handle CSV's if you really want to name them.

    the chapters are generally keyframes i've worked with enough dvds to know that chapters are not usually separate files, but rather metadata for the player to seek from a menu. the chapter titles are generally stored as a still or looped video, but none of this is required to master a dvd so technically the metadata has to look up a copy of the script's chapter titles based on user inputed title data. bluray discs are different and i haven't worked with them.

  147. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think I remember the iso import plugin or something in a base install of freevo ( mythora I think I used ) did this. It may have even been the player front end. But something in that would go and pull the move info. Including cover art.

    I recall even having it set to always rip any disc that was inserted. And spent a good portion of the day making iso's of my many many dvd's .. But then I ended up getting a real tivo for my dvr and left the self built set top box thing for the kiddies to play with and prefect. Always did want that "dvd on demand" type system.

    I do rip a good amount of my dvd's. Mostly to allow me to watch on my phone or tablet. And personally just having them in two directories is ok .. TV and MOVIES.. But then again , I never asked myself the "how many bogart movies do I own" .. Might be a cool thing to know.

    And actually .. If its a "dvd" rip .. As in .. its a rip thats an actual copy of the dvd. All of that information is still there. As it is just a copy of the disc. Which .. Is how I always copy mine. And all that meta data should be out there someplace. Or at the very least I would think that 'someone' would have a db of imdb numbers to some sort of combo of file names

  148. Re:A hash of stacks of Least Recently Used disks . by slcdb · · Score: 1

    Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those!

    --
    Despite what EULAs say, most software is sold, not licensed.
  149. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by foniksonik · · Score: 1

    Vocabulary tip: "Accept" means to receive and is commonly used to mean agrees with, "Except" means to exclude from a set. These are not interchangeable terms.

    --
    A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  150. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 1

    Typically, there is a single bit of content per title on a DVD.

    One title might be the main feature or all of the episodes looped together. The rest may be different things including special features or individual episodes.

    Once you have a list of the titles, it's pretty easy to guess what is what and automatically pull the appropriate bits off.

    You still have to sort out that "track 3 is episode 7 of season 6" and whatnot. THAT is the part where a CDDB equivalent is needed.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  151. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by i.r.id10t · · Score: 1

    And, when your local debian mirror apt-mirror machine stops booting and just flashes the power button LED, you can take your array drives out, put them in a new machine, do a quick OS and apache reinstall, copy backups of configs in, and be up and running again in about 30 minutes...

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
  152. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by blueg3 · · Score: 2

    Except that the discussion was clearly about DVD playing software. Otherwise the qualifier "which use the disc directly" would be unnecessary. Plus, it's in the context of access to the contents of the DVD from computer software. (That is, after all, what TFQ and essentially every substantive comment is about.)

    VLC isn't actually limited by the operating system's region restrictions. It will ignore DVD regions as well on Windows as it does on Linux. It can, however, be limited by the DVD reader firmware.

  153. SOLVED by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out Serviio Media Server. It works on both *nix and Windows systems. I use this extensively with my Samsung TV and it works great. http://www.serviio.org/

  154. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 1

    If the disc isn't defective, AnyDVD will handle it.

    I have ripped a lot of stuff. If the disc is a problem, then it's likely defective rather than being encoded with some special extra attempt at copy protection. Movies are far more likely to have extra special copy protection on them.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  155. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by cloudmaster · · Score: 1

    ..says the person afraid to tie an identity to a post.

  156. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm quite confident that I could kill someone without getting caught; the penalty isn't what's stopping me. I'm disappointed in the society in which you live where the penalty for murder is the only thing stopping people from killing.

    Then again, I'll be paying a visit to court later this month to deal with a speeding ticket, so maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am. :)

  157. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    Trust me... I know.

    Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  158. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by sound+vision · · Score: 1

    Indeed - DVD quality is limited by its reliance on MPEG-2 video codecs. I haven't done any testing, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could compress Blu-Ray movies down to 5 GB or less with no noticeable loss in quality, considering (1) the higher efficiency of modern MPEG-4 codecs, and (2) the high quality of the source material (your 50 gig Blu-Ray).

    Now, you'd still want to keep the plastic circle around, just as a backup. You could have your 5 GB encodes on some type of media server, and just play them off that. You'll be able to get 400 movies on a 2 TB disk.

    Ripping and transcoding the movies will take a while if you have a large collection, though. Personally, I don't watch enough movies for the 60 seconds it takes to load a disc to bother me... but if you absolutely must have all your movies "on demand", there's really no other option besides putting them on a media server.

  159. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Hey guys, is there anyway to automate boring task?"

    "Sure! Just manually perform boring task first and this program will perform irrelevant task for you automatically!"

    Thanks. Really.

  160. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Tastecicles · · Score: 1

    Similar distinctions are made in the qualification of terms in the Computer Misuse Act here in the UK. A password does not have to be strong to be covered under Statute as a device intended to protect a data stream, to encrypt a data stream, or do anything else to make it *legally* secure (even if it isn't that well physically secured). The fact that such measures are in place is enough to define intent (to let others know that that data will be aggressively protected not by technological measures but by legal measures).

    That said, weak passwords and the state and speed of data networks these days are mutually attractive; once the cat's out of the bag, you ain't getting it back in no matter who you prosecute.

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  161. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Tastecicles · · Score: 2

    Trust me... I know.

    Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?

    Women.

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
  162. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by RobbieThe1st · · Score: 1

    Heck, better than that, if it's hardware that failed? Just stick it in a similar box(i.e. same arch) and it'll usually just boot right up!
    With software issues, I've had great luck just installing mdadm and being able to auto-detect/assemble my raids, without needing any config file.

  163. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nah, eating them's criminal. It's the murdering that makes it bad. Rape `em and eat `em and you're fine, just don't murder them as well.

  164. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by skids · · Score: 1

    Even better yet, if the stakes are higher, you are more likely to get a lawyer, and if you are rich, you are more likely to be in the position to commit some high stakes crime. Witness people who find it profitable to lie (with plausible deniability) on their taxes, let the IRS sue them, then hire a lawyer and get their tax bill reduced below what it would have been in the first place. For them it makes more sense to do it this way, because they save more money than the lawyer cost.

    As such, we see low level crimes sentenced heavily, while people who steal millions, if they ever even see justice, can expect to at least stave it off for years.

    Some system.

  165. Good answers. thanks all! by fikx · · Score: 1

    I got some good links and lots of suggestions. Thanks for the input!

    --
    AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
  166. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Pieroxy · · Score: 1

    Indeed - DVD quality is limited by its reliance on MPEG-2 video codecs. I haven't done any testing, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could compress Blu-Ray movies down to 5 GB or less with no noticeable loss in quality,

    And you would be wrong. DVD is limited by its resolution, not by its codec. At some point, enough bitrate makes older codecs as good (in terms of quality) as the new ones. The DVD specs allows that much bitrate.

    Blu-Ray movies can be easily encoded down to ~8-10 GB. Further down you'll start to see artifacts, banding and other stuff noticeable if you know where to look.

  167. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I believe the Intel C204 chipset supports ECC with desktop processors. (newer I3 CPUs like the I3-2100T.) Supermicro makes a few boards that support this (I think the X9SCsomething series.)

  168. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is not conformism when it is good judgement.

  169. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have the legal right to make copies for personal use,...

    In the US maybe but not here in the UK.

  170. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by subreality · · Score: 1

    ... promoting the constitution have been heavily upvoted, while the post supporting the rule of law is actually downvoted as flamebait. Anyone else pondering the irony ...

    I don't find it ironic. It's just a visible example of how far modern law has deviated from the principles of the Constitution.

  171. Working Solution... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AnyDVD, Windows 7 Media Center & MyMovies (free, Google-it) running on your HTPC. Add a Logetech Harmony remote and you've got a one-touch media library. I've tried multiple different solutions and this method has been pretty solid. Don't bother with Handbrake or otherwise ripping-down. HDD's are so cheap it's not worth the time or effort if you've got a large collection. This method gives you everything you need to catalog and even keep the DVD title menu's if you want them. Hook up a Synology DiskStation for TB worth of redundant data backup to keep it all safe (best at-home equipment purchase I've ever made, hands-down). Anything less and you risk losing all your hard work to a drive failure. If you love your cinema library it's worth the cost and there isn't a better solution out there that gives you full control over your entertainment content.

    Cheers!

  172. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by khellendros1984 · · Score: 1

    I think the point is that older codecs *need* the extra space to contain the data. DVD's quality to bitrate ratio is limited by the codec used. Taking that meaning, DVD can be easily be compressed to around 1GB and lose little to no quality, using an MPEG4-based codec.

    --
    It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
  173. I always liked... by kaizokuace · · Score: 1

    this solution. Though a bit pricey these days.

    --
    Balderdash!
  174. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Plex does thus well for Apple platforms. I guess XMBC will also do it, but I've never used it.

  175. NAS Box by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's what I do. Massive collection of films (circa 3,200) of which about 500 are discs I purchased, 200 are caps of old hard to find VHS material I want to keep, and the other 2,500 are recorded off cable TV using my DVD recorder and temporarily transferred to DVD-RWs. Time constraints mean I record more than I have time to watch, and I need to pull them off the drive.

    After much playing and experimentation around I stayed XVID in AVI, which I know is an older less efficient format but is supported by almost every player etc out there, and compress purchased discs to 1.1 GB and recorded DVDs/VHS caps to about 900MB. Rip the discs to ISOs on my machine, then let a batch encoder run overnight to make the AVIs. Copy to NAS box, networked to two WD TV Live Hub machines. Massive choice, available in either room, whenever I want something to watch.

    Over the Christmas break I will upgrade to enable HD capturing (HDCP stripper + HD Capture card already purchased, just need a matrix splitter and some cables). NB: for the US commentators who will immediately say "illegal...DMCA..... blah blah blah", (1) I'm not in the US and not subject to the DMCA; and (2) it is legal in this country.

  176. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by bjwest · · Score: 0

    For the point and click Windows potato, if it doesn't come pre installed, it's uncommon and hard to find.

    --

    --- Keep the choice with the user..
  177. Re:There's a brand new invention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shame someone modded you down. "Redundant" in that on the surface you're saying the same thing as a bunch of other "rip the disks" threads, but insightful because you alone explained why it's the right answer -- and you even stressed the Last Word in media tech: the file manager. I have tried out so many "media system" apps, and not a single one of them is half as good as Thunar, Konqueror, Finder, etc (even Explorer!). The more they try to make people think "it's an entertainment system, not a computer!" and I scroll through menus and long lists with fucking arrow buttons on a remote, the more I remember why we invented computers. ;-)

  178. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Tim+C · · Score: 1

    I've not had a lot of sleep, but I don't see where he's used "accept" incorrectly.

  179. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Tim+C · · Score: 1

    I don't consider copying the DVD you purchased to a hard drive that you purchased so that you can watch a movie on the TV you purchased without jumping through hoops to be criminal.

    Well you can argue all you want as to whether or not it should be criminal, but the law itself seems pretty clear to me.

  180. Throw away the discs, but keep the boxes... by pat75 · · Score: 1

    It's all very well ripping to Hdd and so forth, but it doesn't meaningfully equate to the reasons for having an achingly hip shelf of subtitled Dvds in the first place. Same with the Kindle, really, and all those pretentious books the careless might replace - if they want to become celibate, that is: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/e%11readers-'a-threat-to-impressive%11looking-bookshelves'-201105163819/

  181. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Gr8Apes · · Score: 0

    You are incorrect - DeCSS is legal, due to being grandfathered.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  182. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by whatisthisstick · · Score: 1

    Then the problem isn't just pulling information, it's matching some signature of the disc to that information and building that database of disc signatures.

  183. I love Ask Slashdot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love Ask Slashdot! I can have it Google for me, do my job for me and even think for me!

    Isn't the IntarWebs great?!?

  184. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What sucks about that situation?

    Just order the DVD and download it from bittorrent anyway - that way you get the best user experience (bittorrrent gets you the files quickly, generally pre-named and in a consistent, reasonably-sized and usable format, with no DRM) and still support the creators to the extent currently possible (because you have paid for the DVD - admittedly the creators probably only get pennies but at least it's something).

  185. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

    Not true - you can still make a reasonable copy via component inputs if you so choose. There is no DRM on those, and the equipment is readily available.

    So then the real issue becomes, if I can effectively do A but not B, when the net effect is the same, is B really illegal? (I know that the DMCA says it is, this is more a philosophical question) For instance, if I fill a water barrel from my tap versus capturing rain water it would seem insane

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  186. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

    You don't need AnyDVD.

    MakeMKV works just fine.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  187. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by asc99c · · Score: 1

    Agreed. Last night I tried to watch a Blu-Ray I had ripped to a plain image (I do usually use MakeMKV, but this was the 'Life' documentary series with various features that don't quite get captured right in MKV). First, PowerDVD insisted I needed to update it, which took a while. Then it told me a variety of error messages before crashing. In the end Blu-Ray is just such a pain to use on a PC that I can imagine why no one wants a disc loader type system.

    Rip everything to MKV - it is way easier.

  188. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

    You don't want RAID, except to increase volume size or create a hot redundant system. What you really want is offline backups, in case you do something like "rm -rf *" or something similar in the wrong directory, like the root of your media library....

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  189. Sony 400 disc changer by DedTV · · Score: 1
    Sony has 400 disk changers for CD, DVD and Blu-Ray. I had the DVD one for a year or so before I switched to ripping. It could be a pain entering info for a movie that Gracenote didn't have and there were a few lockup issues on menus with some bargain bin disks but it well for the most part. And I've seen setups with several of them racked together for huge movie collections.
    The Blu-Ray one is on Amazon for ~$610.

    They're listed as discontinued in the US store but I don't know if that's because there's something wrong with them now or if they just stopped being profitable. It might be worth looking into though if the "ripping to a server/media center system" doesn't appeal to you.

  190. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    There is an even easier solution: The Pirate Bay. Buy the disc, download the torrent, no need to worry about DRM. Also works with games, magazines, music, books etc.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  191. rip it all by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1

    As someone who has like 500 DVDs I understand the idea of ripping all of it is not something you want to look forward too but rip it all. It'll make it much easier to use your media anywhere and ensure you get to keep it and use it longer.

  192. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Thing+1 · · Score: 1

    Fourth paragraph, seventh word, is what GP is (incorrectly) referring to. It caused me to double-take as I was reading it because "except" would fit that structure; however, my brain then decided that it was correct as written, and I would have forgotten it had I not seen your response. So I read the hidden intermediate post and saw that foniksonik (573572) is lacking in reading comprehension skills, and seems to be overly blessed with the condescension skill.

    --
    I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
  193. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by blueg3 · · Score: 1

    Having tried to "fix" the Windows systems of many people who wouldn't know their ass from a USB port, I can assure you this is not the case.

  194. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by antdude · · Score: 1

    Is there a way to avoid ripping BRs and just play videos directly from them like older disc formats? I noticed VLC, Windows Media Players, and other free media players don't play them natively directly? Hence, why I still haven't bought a BR drive.

    --
    Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  195. bruden of proof, receipts and disc retention by pbhj · · Score: 1

    >*receipts only demonstrate that you've paid for the discs, they don't demonstrate that you still own them* //

    Isn't the burden of proof on the copyright holder to demonstrate that you didn't purchase them and so unlawfully copied? In copyright cases I think (in the UK) it's on the basis of "balance of probabilities" rather than "beyond all reasonable doubt" but still. It would be interesting to see how the defence "I purchased the discs, downloaded a digital copy to save time ripping them and then disposed of the discs" would fare? You purchased the license to view the work, created a local digital copy (soon to be legal in the UK too!) ... why should this be deserving of punishment and in what way is it [will it be] tortuous infringement?

    For example you could have disposed of the discs. Aren't the media companies the ones telling us that it's not the article we're purchasing but a license to use the content of the article, the data (music, game, movie, etc.)?

    1. Re:bruden of proof, receipts and disc retention by hedwards · · Score: 1

      The proof you have that you own the discs is the discs themselves. If you just have the receipts then you don't own them anymore.

      Yes, the burden of proof is on the part of the plaintiff, but if you haven't retained the discs then they're almost certainly going to be able to convince a jury that you most likely don't own the discs. Especially if you've disposed of the discs.

  196. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by bjwest · · Score: 1

    Believe me, I've had to do my share of family and friend fixes, not to mention taking care of a small county courthouse. Malware and viruses are one thing you don't need to go out and find, and they seem to be drawn to the potato like a moth to a flame.

    --

    --- Keep the choice with the user..
  197. Still choices by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just do a search for "DVD Jukebox" on amazon - there are still companies that make these.
    Pioneer : http://tinyurl.com/bwuaood
    Sony (w/ Blu-Ray support) : http://tinyurl.com/cmdr3w3

  198. SOLVED by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 1

    Called a shelf system, check out Ikea. Perhaps you have to address the problem of why you need to buy every movie you watch opposed to figuring out how to manage it. Realize how much money you are wasting buying a movie that you will most likely watch once. In fact unless you watch a movie say more then 4 times, you will never recover the cost vs renting. Also Netflix and iTunes and other services offer acceptable quality for a large majority of movies. I save the big blockbusters for my Blu-ray 7.1 surround viewing experience, but there are a ton of movie releases every year that really don't benefit at all from that kind of set-up, so I just stream them. You can be a movie buff but not obsess about owning every movie you watch, address that issue first and you will find you don't need to invest thousands in disk management systems, or the disks themselves.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
  199. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by dave420 · · Score: 1

    Like providing a downloadable version of their entire database? The bastards!

  200. papyrus by nazsco · · Score: 1

    Hi, i have over 9000 rolls of papyrus and i want something to sort them all without me having yto read it. And Sony papybox is not made anymore.

    man, just rip it and file under a decent dir structure.

  201. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    of doing that and if say you have blu rays that like 25-50GB per disk.

    I haven't looked in a while, but are there any Blu rays that are realistically taking that much space on disk? Just because they can in theory, I understood the practice was that they were typically more like 10 GB apiece. And since the OP was referring to Buffy episodes (SD source material), they would likely be even less.

    That's a really good point. BD movies would fill a tb drive in 20-40 movies. That's bad, but not crippling. I doubt a carrousel BD changer for 20-40 disks would be much cheaper (and you can always expand a FS).

    I still think backing physical content up on HDs and then long-term storing the physical copies wins.

    So the Blu-Ray carousel changer I know about, Sony BDP-CX7000ES, is about $600 and stores 400 discs. 400 x 10 GB = 4 TB, which is about $300 in drives + computer (no parity). If we assume the upper level, 400 x 50 GB, we are at 20 TB, about $1,500, + computer holding 7 drives. (8 assuming minimal RAID 5 parity). You could of course re-encode them to be smaller if you can accept the quality degradation.

    Carousel: Easy, fast setup, insert disc & go. Stuck with Sony indexing system and each disk's quirks (forced preview watching, etc)

    Media Center: uses more power, discs have to be burned one at a time, even if software exists to automate the indexing (what the poster was asking about). More flexible, since a real media PC can do a lot more than a simple player. Possible to customize the content to bypass previews, welcome screens, etc. There is the backup aspect as well, the vulnerable discs can be stored elsewhere.

    For me, the Media Center is just not worth the hassle right now, I consider few movies "re-watchable" enough that I'd go through the hassle of loading them in, though my baby will soon be at the age where I might need one for the Yo-Gabba-Gabba (etc) episodes.

  202. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    We don't have to do that with cds, and it's about time that a similar solution for dvds showed up.

    Well, I usually have to manually name CD tracks, but that's because most of my CDs were originally records and tapes. Occasionally I'll be surprised and FreeDB will find a CD I've sampled from tape, but not often, and never with LPs.

  203. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by wagnerrp · · Score: 1

    Yes. While that 800MB of compressed flat file text database (about 3.5GB uncompressed) might be nice for non-profit research purposes, it's simply not practical for use with any sort of end user application. Besides which, it only offers text, no graphics, so its really of little use to gussy up applications like XBMC. Chances are if XBMC did make the IMDb database their primary source of information, resulting in hundreds of thousands of users all needlessly pulling new copies each week to ensure they had the most recent data, IMDb would shut down that very quickly.

    They decide not to cater to our needs, so we take our load elsewhere. It's that simple. So yes, screw pulling data from IMDb.

  204. No special care required by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

    I just pile the Frisbees in a closet.

    --
    Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  205. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    I notice comments promoting the constitution have been heavily upvoted, while the post supporting the rule of law is actually downvoted as flamebait. Anyone else pondering the irony, and just how conformist Slashdot is?

    It's neither ironic nor conformist. The constitutionalist will ask "is this law legal?" I see no point in accepting a law that's clearly illegal, and I see nothing in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to pass a DMCA. And any comment saying "you should OBEY YOUR MASTER" is clearly flamebait, especially if they say something like "only assholes smoke pot or download movies."

  206. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by mcgrew · · Score: 1

    Anything that's fun is illegal in some way

    That's an incredibly naive statement. How is playing catch with your kids in any way illegal? How is my having a beer illegal (yes, it was in my grandfather's time). How is your having sex with your congressman's wife illegal (unless you pay her for it)?

  207. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1

    Then the problem isn't just pulling information, it's matching some signature of the disc to that information and building that database of disc signatures.

    Right, which is what CDDB, FreeDB, et. al. do. There must be some reason this has never happened for DVD's. One factor may be that CDDB existed before DMCA.

    --
    My God, it's Full of Source!
    OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
  208. Media Carousel by agrisea · · Score: 1

    There is always the Ziotek Media Carousel that stores 150 discs per device and it includes software: http://www.cyberguys.com/product-details/?productid=10670

    --
    Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
  209. Everyone says rip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm interested in the same thing, but for data CDs. I have most of the important ones as iso files, but we have all these disks we need to have around just in case. One of our customers has a discontinued product that acts as a giant CD library. You put the CD in, it asks you if you are returning a previous CD, or inserting a new one. You fill out some basic information, and it stores it. The software lets you stack the the devices on top of each other as well so you can expand the storage.

    Most of these disks are garbage, and I want to toss them, but my boss insists we keep every CD that has ever existed in either stacks, on spindles, in books, or in some cases, their original packaging, so it would be nice to have a more organized way for my less than organized boss.

  210. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You failed to mention that in the law suits for printer cartridges and garage door openers the defendants were completely successful in escaping liability under the DMCA.

  211. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    Name the files correctly

    Umm, wait, wasn't he asking for software to do all of that automatically, not manual file-naming?!?! That sounds like a lot of drudgery.

  212. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That makes no sense. When something is made illegal, it doesn't mean the now illegal things that already existed can stay. When Prohibition was passed there wasn't a big announcement of, "drink what you have left slowly!" No, it was all dumped in the sewers en masse.

  213. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    These days it's easier for a pirate to set up a movie library than a legitimate purchaser, and that situation *sucks*.

    Wouldn't a software pirate have said the same exact thing, even 20 years ago?

  214. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 1

    >> These days it's easier for a pirate to set up a movie library than a legitimate purchaser, and that situation *sucks*.
    >>
    >
    >Wouldn't a software pirate have said the same exact thing, even 20 years ago?

    A software pirate would have been right then too.

    Some of us did that very thing: downloading pirated copies of games we already owned to avoid the intrusive copy protection.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  215. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    I speed in my car. I am breaking the law. I have gotten 2 speeding tickets in my life. I deserved those tickets because I was breaking the law.

    How does that not make me incapable of being a person who "honor[s] the rule of law in real life"?

    I am honoring it -- knowing that by breaking it, I may get a ticket and be punished for the breaking of it.

  216. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

    Your mistake is thinking that law is rational or logical.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  217. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    Fair use covers copies for personal use, including media and time shifting.

    [citation needed]

    I'm serious. If the citation is the Sony vs Universal case (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.), then I'm not sure that that covers this issue. IANAL, but that lawsuit specifically covered time-shifting, as you say, but specifically did NOT cover what they called "librarying" (meaning to record for keeps and not time-shifting for one-time watching). It seems to me (again, IANAL) that copying, onto another hard drive, is effectively the same as librarying.

    Maybe there have been other cases that covered this in terms of "back ups", though again, that would also require you to delete your back up if you sold/gave away the original disc, and you'd have an illegal copy if you used the version off your server AND someone used the disc at the same time.

  218. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by jedidiah · · Score: 1

    MakeMKV doesn't leave you with a decrypted copy of the original.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  219. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

    Depends upon what you want. I just want the movie. MakeMKV does that perfectly.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  220. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whatever you do, avoid dedup unless you have lots of RAM or a relatively small dataset. I'm too lazy to post a link, but you should be able to google for yourself and find countless horror stories.

  221. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Western Digital has signed a deal to buy Hitachi GST, and IIRC Seagate bought Samsung.

    Try google, here are a few hits:

    http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/19/samsung-sells-hdd-division-to-seagate-for-1-375-billion/

    http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/23/western-digital-purchase-of-hitachis-hard-drive-business-approv/

  222. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also, add years to filenames. XBMC uses that to distinguish those that are ambiguous.

  223. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by cffrost · · Score: 1

    Anecdotal, but my brother does.

    As far as you know, he does.

    Furthermore, as far as _0xd0ad's brother knows, he does. I'm curious how self-proclaimed (or brother-proclaimed) "law-abiding" citizens comply with America's secret laws.

    --
    Thank you, Edward Snowden.

    "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
  224. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by godefroi · · Score: 1

    +...yeah. It's easier to pirate than use modern video media to it's full potential.

    Well, as long as you're unwilling to pay for AnyDVD, it's easier to pirate. Once you've covered that hurdle, however (and I did, because I got tired of navigating the mess of tools required to rip my wife's collection of >150 DVDs), it's incredibly easy to use AnyDVD to rip to the HDD, and Handbrake to encode. That way, I get full control over what gets ripped and how well it's encoded (I have Handbrake set up for a very high quality encode, because time is not a premium). It was worth it for me.

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  225. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Bob9113 · · Score: 1

    [citation needed]

    Pardon if this sounds glib, but, umm, you only need a citation for the right to personal use copies if you haven't been tracking copyright for the past decade. I don't recall, offhand, specific cases where it has been addressed, but it has been tested repeatedly. I wouldn't be surprised if the one I mentioned, DVD X Copy, touched on it.

    It is a little painful for me to read this thread. We've been talking about this stuff on Slashdot since the late 90's. Yet in this thread I see several early fallacious arguments of the RIAA lawyers creeping into the common wisdom, despite having been discarded at court years ago. Is this what is going to happen to our judges? Will the MAFIAA poison the minds of future generations and lead us to losing what little protection we still have from the execution of these fiat monopolies? Will future judges, steeped in monopolist propaganda, simply assume these protections never existed?

  226. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Bob9113 · · Score: 1

    [citation needed]

    As an aside, it just occurred to me how rude you are being. I offered some information which is based on years tracking copyright. I pointed out that fair use covers copies for personal use. That has been tested extensively, and is the reason you can still buy an iPod, and the reason that iTunes has not been wiped from the face of the Earth. Your response was not, "Thank you for the information, I am interested to learn more, do you have specific details on where this has been covered in code or at court?" Instead, your response was, "Give me a citation, you're wrong, and here's a red herring that pretends to prove it!"

    Seriously, think about it: I offered some info to the general public -- info which, on further reflection, is observably true because making copies for personal use is pervasive and has not lead to a single successful infringement case -- and you, rather than showing some mental adventurousness and probing the answer space, simply demand that I give you more, like Henry VIII waving a drumstick in the air. That is not very nice, not to mention intellectually lazy.

    that would also require you to delete your back up if you sold/gave away the original disc

    Most definitely. You lose the rights to the work that you purchased (or otherwise acquired) if you transfer those rights to another party...

    hmmm ... I think I get it. You're new to this, aren't you? OK, let me try to be more convivial: If you are nicer when asking for details on subjects that you are learning about, it will be more likely to yield a positive response.

  227. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then why can i buy DVD ripping software from staples for 29.99?

  228. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by MightyYar · · Score: 1

    By the way, here's the cheap ECC/4-drive bay box that I was talking about. For my setup, I would need to buy an external SATA dock to do my drive shuffle, but it's still an awesome looking box.

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    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  229. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by cynyr · · Score: 1

    must need pass through access to the blue-ray drive, or do you just rip an ISO and feed it to anydvd?

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    All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
  230. Re:let's see DRM, high cost of HDD's get in the wa by ScrewMaster · · Score: 1

    Then why can i buy DVD ripping software from staples for 29.99?

    Probably because they haven't been sued yet. A number of software companies have been put out of business because of the copy-protection provision of the DMCA. Possibly an exception was allowed for that purpose, I don't know. But I doubt it.

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    The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.