Modding How to Build a DVD Server

Torrentflux

As for the article, an interesting way of doing it. I do like the way that you have your RAID mind. Shame its not for me at the moment. Ill stick with RAID 5 and my always-on beast. But then it does a lot more than just share files to my network.

 

Very nice! I now have a reason to resurrect my E8400/X48 platform.

 

My implementation is much sweeter. I have two PCs that I use a laptop and a gaming PC, both are networked to a Optiplex GX520 which I've converted into a server with around 5 TB of space dynamic JBOD with Windows Home Server. I run MediaBrowser on both PC's complete with Media Center Master (getting all the <meta>data you can find on x movie) and StarkCovers to make the folder.jpg appear to be a DVD case for standard conversions (<1.45GB) and a BluRay case for HD (720P, 1080P). I have 426 standard movies 40 HD movies and about 11 TV Series (every episode of curb your enthusiasm, south park, and battlestar galactica). I'll even provide a few screenies.
http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-32-13-88.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-32-25-46.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-32-51-28.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-32-52-92.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-32-55-76.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-33-04-57.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-33-14-99.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-33-17-88.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-33-26-71.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-33-31-03.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-33-49-08.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-34-05-92.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-34-13-56.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-34-15-36.jpg http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x283/jadawgis732/Media Broser/thehshell2009-12-3103-34-18-79.jpg

 

Come on this has been covered, he made a system that works for him, how he wants it to. It's not about whats better its about what works for you. Also if you want people to look at those pics, just post a few in IMG tags rather than a million in a badly formatted lump

Personally I found it a great read, this is something I've long been tempted by, but being a student I can't stump up the cash. Great read have some rep.

 

Now that is something to aspire to!

One of my friends from school had something like a Kaleidescape system - I don't know what it actually was but is was very nice. Once you highlighted a film it would re-arrange all the others around it to similar ones, the most similar being the nearest and biggest. The remote control was a touchscreen tablet running something that looked like it was based on Window CE. You could go on Facebook whilst watching the film

The entire set up was fairly drool-worthy, there was an HD TV on the wall, that when you wanted to watch a movie was covered by a projection screen that came down from the ceiling.

Out of interest, do you have no desire to be able to watch TV through this system or be able to record stuff on to your server? We have just got a PVR at home (I know, behind the times ) and I love it! You can also offload anything it records onto an external disk which is rather nice.

 

so how much to have one made?

 

i'd do it for 10 million in sterling!

 

or just buy a 400 disc bluray carousel....
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs...10551&langId=-1&productId=8198552921665945153

tho sadly not on sale in the uk yet...

 

Actually with those tags all images are in their orig res. 1920x1080 it would take 30 seconds to scroll through. I was able to do this for the cost of 4 hard drives, a $100 desktop from craigslist, and a ton of time torrenting.

 

Sounds like a Kaleidescape system being controlled by something like a Crestron or AMX automation system. Serious money

Nope, I have a separate cinema room with projector and screen that I use for watching films and playing games. The TV is in the living room with a Sky+ HD box that I use to watch TV programmes.

 

i just jizzed my pants! £400 for a 400 disc autoloader, yes please!!

 

When your ripping the dvd's, are you able to keep the menu and special features as well?

 

It is possible to rip the whole disc structure, including menus and extras, I just choose not to because I very rarely watch the extras more than once.

 

Similar setup

I use a similar setup to this. I have Blu Ray ripped as iso and use VirtualCloneDrive to mount disc. Mediabrowser will auto mount iso to virtual drive and ask to use PowerDVD or TMT whichever is installed.

I like to use full Blu Ray discs for picture and sound quality as that was the point in having it in the first place. Only problem is storage.

 

Sounds like a system that you could sell professionally, I guess it would really start to shine when used with more clients ;-)
thanks for the great read!

With storage beeing so cheap, I've stopped encoding and just rip uncompressed (DVD's).
Especially when upscaling to full-hd, your source can't be good enough (IMHO).
A 1TB disk will hold about 200 DVD's so...meh ;-)

Haven't done this for BluRay's yet though (no player in the PC), how big are the files?

 

BluRay uncompressed movie only weighs in at around 30Gb

 

Great article. I've tried the various incarnations of HTPC front-end/file server backends and I ended up using an old Mac Mini running XBMC/Plex and Linux on the back end serving the movies and television shows. Has enough to push my 1080P H.264 rips with DTS Surround sound and doesn't take up too much space. The file server on the other hand...

@Xir: Depending on what your target is for BluRay, you can get them down from 20-30GB (uncompressed) to around ~9 GB (compressed, H.264, DTS at 1536 kbps) and keep the 1080P goodness. The issues are more along the lines of it being tedious to decrypt/demux/encode/remux. That and playing anything more "pure" than DD/DTS 5.1 requires a secure digital path from the player to the speakers. My rips tend to re-encode surround into DTS, Dolby, or AAC so it's a non-issue here. I tend to take DVD and encode them to around 700 MB to 1.5 GB depending on what they are.

 

The only thing is, it isn't so useful with a Love Film subscription. Not that anyone would take advantage of one of though though

And you can't share things round the house.

 

woot thanks, going to try this out now ^_^

Edit: Works pretty well, have a few tweaks to do and what not to get it down and looking right but overall for free not to bad at all. Now to get hulu to integrate into media center and I shall be set.