Slashdot Mirror
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?"
... is to rip everything to a large hard disk and set up some sort of media center.
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?
... 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!
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!
No, I will not work for your startup
"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*.
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
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.
I consider raping, murdering, and eating your neighbors to be criminal.
So as long as I don't eat them, it's cool? Cool.