Build Your Own DVD Movie Server

[Suhit Gupta]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/archives/000546.php' target='_blank'>http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/archives/000546.php</a><br /><br /></div><i>"A couple weeks ago I got around to playing with “DVD Shrink” and “DVD Decrypter,” both of which are DVD decoding tools that strip DVDs' of their Macrovision copy protection but leave in all the menu functions and extras for on-demand playback, and found that either of the two could be used as the foundation in creating an inexpensive DVD movie server ... First backup all your DVDs using the above mentioned software to either your computer's hard drive, NAS (network attached storage) server, or central (always on) PC home server – last two being the best options."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/spiderman_dvd.jpg" /><br /><br />To find out more on how you can create your very own movie server, this article describes the full workflow you will need. It not only includes instructions on which software to use to actually back up your DVDs, but also what you will need to play them back. This article also covers bugs you may encounter as well as how you would get this to work over a wireless network. Personally, my stack of DVDs is getting a little bit out of hand (i.e. I can't hide them efficiently behind my TV anymore) so this kinf of setup would be a good idea.

[JTWise]

Perfect Timing !!! I just received my Linksys NAS in the mail yesterday and was about add my 250G drive to it. I was always planning on doing this eventually. Nice to see an article that saves me the time to figure it out.

[ojlittle]

I love DVD Shrink! I make back-ups of all the movies I BUY and they seem to look as good as the original to me. I haven't noticed any pixelation or sound quality degredation when playing back on the computer or the TV. However, I'm neither an audiophile or videophile & those that are may notice a quality loss.

[Gary Sheynkman]

wow and I thought I was bad when I went to Eastern Europe: pirate heaven. This is a brillian idea... :wink:

[dean_shan]

Or instead of running it off of a NAS just burn it to DVD with Burnatonce (http://www.burnatonce.com/).

[sbrown23]

Or instead of running it off of a NAS just burn it to DVD with Burnatonce (http://www.burnatonce.com/).

I thought the whole point was to get away from having tons of DVDs in your living room.

[Gordo]

I have a 160 gig hard drive that is full of video, both mine, and rented. I find that it fills up very quickly. I use DVD Shrink to “re-author” the DVD. I strip all of the extras, and then trim the start and end of the movie, that way I get the least compression that way. Usually around 97%, this is good enough for me.

I then burn the rented copy to a DVD-RW for time shift viewing. I have three RW disks that I re-use, and once I have viewed I delete the source from my hard drive.

I know that disk space is cheap, but it seems to fill up very quickly with video projects, so I question the value of putting my entire DVD library on disk. They are not MP3’s yet.