home theatre via pc

[BrettChaotix]

Originally Posted by xchen

Right now, I am obtaining Blu Ray rips of movies, converting them from .mkv to .mpeg (I've got a really beefy system). I then stream them using an ethernet cable (wireless was not buffering quickly enough) over to my roomie's PS3 and we watch them on the 1080p TV. It's really great. My roommate was talking about building a massive Blu Ray collection but I think we've decided against that as this is a much better approach, IMO.

What's your average conversion time for a blue ray rip? Any quality loss?

 

[Jumbie]

Originally Posted by BrettChaotix

What's your average conversion time for a blue ray rip? Any quality loss?

If you are just ripping it, there will be no quality loss but since you're talking about a conversion (and therefore an encode) then there will be. There is always a quality loss when encoding a file.

 

[turboman808]

We better not have issues because we have bought around 20 of the seagate drives in the last 2 months.

But yeah we bought 10 of the one terrabyte drive last month and did an update and also had to change some jumpers. So far so good.

We are dumping our entire media library onto servers. I said it before I work in Appreciation. We just sold a huge list of stuff to Penthouse. What used to be this long process of dupping tapes is now a 5 minute process of dumping it to a external drive to send them. Just let it transfer overnight.

Really you have no idea how the drop in price for harddrive space has been putting money in my pocket.

 

[xchen]

Originally Posted by BrettChaotix

What's your average conversion time for a blue ray rip? Any quality loss?

I'm sure there is some quality lost as Jumbie said, but it still looks great, especially for what it is.

Average conversion time is about 2 hours, but you can set up several movies to convert in a row and leave it going over night. Did about 6 movies one night while I was sleeping.

 

[A Y]

Originally Posted by turboman808

We better not have issues because we have bought around 20 of the seagate drives in the last 2 months.

Have you read these:

http://storagemojo.com/?p=383
http://www.usenix.org/events/fast07/...tml/index.html
http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.pdf

I'd start with the Storage Mojo one as it's kind of a summary of the other two, but they all have interesting info about hard drive failure. I imagine that in your industry, digital storage reliability is a really big deal.

--Andre

 

[bkk]

PS3 + TVersity works well for me. If you have Apple lossless files, you can use Winamp Remote on the PS3. I'm not sure how the PS3 or TVersity deals with BR rips.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[xchen]

Originally Posted by bkk

PS3 + TVersity works well for me. If you have Apple lossless files, you can use Winamp Remote on the PS3. I'm not sure how the PS3 or TVersity deals with BR rips.

Just my 2 cents.

I am using TVersity, PS3, and BluRay rips and it handles them fine, but we had to switch from wireless streaming to wired streaming to avoid lagging like crazy.

 

[Jumbie]

My parents don't live in N America and don't have access to a DVR. I was trying to figure out the best way to build one for them and decided on a Mac Mini (with 30% Live Cashback) + the Elgato eyeTV 250 plus as it's small and easy for me to carry when I go visit them for Christmas (as opposed to the ridiculous sum of money I had to pay to mail them a computer; which was still tons cheaper than then buying it there).

I'm hoping I can get Netflix streaming to work there using a proxy and the good thing is that they can use the machine as a backup computer in case anything happens to their own again.

 

[otc]

+1 on the original xbox with XBMC

I don't know about HD stuff (I have a standard TV and the normal bittorrent stuff still looks way better than OTA broadcast) but it plays everything from TV/movies to music. It connects to a shared folder on my desktop (which is the same folder all of my torrents go to) so I can just download and watch.

I think they are working on an XBMC for the xbox 360 which would let you play your torrented stuff but I could be wrong.

 

[tiecollector]

Get an Apple TV or Mac Mini with a Netflix membership and be done with it.

 

[stills999]

It seems you are in good hands here.

However, if you want very detailed information about home theater PC, check out avsforum (audio visual science). The community is very helpful (simlar to Styleforum). I think they even have a section dedicated to home theater PC.

Be careful, though. Like here you might end up deciding to spend a lot more money on things then originally planned!