How big is your digital video collection?

Quite interested in ripping all my DVDs to disk. Do you guys who rip your DVDs take a direct copy, or transcode them to H264, etc. to save space? If the latter, what do you consider to be a sufficiently high bitrate/filesize for TV viewing?
 
easyrider said:
Windows Home Server.

You stream content from it to your windows 7 HTPC or PS3

Costs about 65 quid...But it backs up your network and backups all your media content even if a drive fials your films and photos music is still safe.

I used to have a HTPC in my cinema room.But I chnaged it to WHS and stream to my PS3

I had a 1TB drive fail on me in my last HTPC and I lost 1TB of DVD rips...Ok it wasn't the end of the world as I owned the disks but they took along to rip and I never wanna have to rip more than once ever again

Works flawlessly
Click to expand...


do you do the actual ripping on the server also just out of interest?

Always thought a NAS was much less hassle than WHS myself - no updates or anything to worry about, after setup it just works (and possibly a lot less power usage also), no virus scanner blah blah blah

No difference at all in the disk space either way (well apart from the marginal space used for WHS itself which Im ignoring)

If you have old hardware laying around then for the licence fee alone it would probably be worth it, but buying a brand new WHS - not so much imo of course :)
 
i have had several drives fail on me, the latest one, a 2TB WD Drive, bought it - Loaded it up in a nice and clean folder structure, into thr HTPC, worked for a season of 24 and then... NOW... the Access is screwed, it will read and start to work for around 5 mins and then it just locks up, so, now its going to be a pair of NAS boxes, one will backup the other.
 
I always scan new drives with the manufacturers own testing software once I get them, sure it takes a while but reduces the chances of an early fail.

Also, Hard Disk Sentinel is an excellent bit of software that has warned me of two impending failures before they happened! It uses SMART data and these days I always install it
 
Mattus said:
Quite interested in ripping all my DVDs to disk. Do you guys who rip your DVDs take a direct copy, or transcode them to H264, etc. to save space? If the latter, what do you consider to be a sufficiently high bitrate/filesize for TV viewing?
Click to expand...

I just rip mine in to a .MKV.

No loss of quality and it takes 20 minutes (40 for Blu-Ray), compared to hours of encoding.
 
I've gone down the WHS for data storage (duplication enabled) and Acer Revo R3610 running Windows 7 Media Centre with Media Browser. Currently I've got about 400GB but am expaning all the time as I rip my DVD's.

For those with large collections what are you using as your end user interface to select and play back your media?

As I say I'm using Media Browser but am wondering when my collection grows how best to organise / browse it.
 
ppersonally I swear by popcorn hour equipment with internal storage (as its so cheap currently for a 5400rpm drive) and a nas to extend that when it comes to it

Im just not a fan of having a pc on all the time - not so much for power or noise reasons even though I think an a200 would pay for itself in power saved within a few years (depending on how much you watch of course lol) , more managability, ease of setup and use and elegance for want of a better word :)
 
I have about 2TB of films/TV shows and I struggle to catagorise them, what are you guys using? browsing through folders of hundreds of films with just the title makes it impossible to choose something.

thanks
 
Last edited:
i've amassed about 800gb but there are no films on the Shuttle under my TV. All episodic TV or mini series. Currently working my way through converting Buffy and Angel :)

The largest files are about 1.1gb for 45 minutes, but there are a LOT on there at 400mb (when my HDD was tiny :() which havn't yet been replaced.
 
wonder_lander said:
I've gone down the WHS for data storage (duplication enabled) and Acer Revo R3610 running Windows 7 Media Centre with Media Browser. Currently I've got about 400GB but am expaning all the time as I rip my DVD's.

For those with large collections what are you using as your end user interface to select and play back your media?

As I say I'm using Media Browser but am wondering when my collection grows how best to organise / browse it.
Click to expand...

XBMC, no competition.
 
About 10gb down from about 2 Tb.

I didn't see the point in the end I was doing it for the sake of it, to make it look good. i realised 99% of my dvd collection I never watched again. In the end sold most of my dvds and want to get rid of them all.

The few I have where free from blinkbox.
Once a Hd download service comes out It will expand but even then, it will only be favourite films and not any old junk, will keep using lovefilm or similar service for the rest.
 
I have about 3.5Tb on my media server at the moment, 3Tb used on HD Films and TV. Probably won't need to get another disk for a while. Hopefully when I do, 3Tb drives will be out!
 
Have assorted TV shows in SD and HD on about 500+ discs i have a massive RETAIL collection but for convenience sake ive been converting them to anamorphic x264/AC3/MKV format ready for the 4Tb NAS i will be getting shortly.

Not decided what im going to do with my bluray film collection, shrink them using BDRebuilder to 25Gb or all the way down to 8Gb x264/AC3/MKV.
 
3TB made up of:
DVDs with the main video and audio muxed into .MPG, no quality loss
Blu-Rays with main video and audio (HD + SD) into .MKV, no quality loss
I have a lot of TV DVDs ripped where each episode is an individual .MPG

Use Media Browser to browse through my collection :).
 
I'm still on 1TB, used about 600GB. I dont see the point of keeping most stuff, there's only a handful of movies that I want to watch again and again, and these I keep. For TV series, I just watch em and then delete them. Most of my space currently is taken up by recorded tv (mostly cbeebies!)

I recently bought a 1.5TB NAS, just to backup these and the other PCs using Windows Backup. I'm totally paranoid about losing my photos and home movies more, these I do want to keep forever so I copy them everywhere (including offsite)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom