200+ DVD collection in 4" x 2" x 1" package

[thestrangebrew]

Nice setup Lou. I may have to look into this!

[AquaMan]

I'm using mostly Seagate GoFlex media players in the house. I bought about a dozen of them a couple years ago for under $40 a piece. They are great because you can search your entire network and not just media library. I'm also using WD media players in camper that have wifi built in and can stream music, photos, mpg's ok, but when it comes to HD video you better have full wifi signal and nothing else drawing from the router. I use a laptop with attached storage for my camper server, and use a portable drive to add new movies from home server. The setup is quite easy and my 7yr old can navigate through the whole thing. I'm looking to replacing the laptop with a desktop for better cooling and reliability. All my movies are listed alphabetically in 4 different folders and a folder for "newly added", and my daughter has her own folder of animated and kids movies.

[ependydad]

I've officially made it through all of the kids DVDs. Here's just a smattering of all of them:



I still have to finish the grown-up DVDs and then we have a handful of complete seasons of various shows that we watch.

[CLT]

We have a lot of those same DVDs. Even the Veggietales.

[ependydad]

The funny part about the pile of VeggieTales DVDs that we have is the fact that we are overly not-religious. It just doesn't add up.

Anyway, we've been using our Roku + WiFi Hard Drive for almost a week now exclusively. There are a few quirks with the WiFi hard drive needing to be restarted and its recaching/indexing of the content periodically, but overall it has worked quite well.

We'll see how time goes if it annoys me, works beautifully, or is good enough.

[whitmw]

I guess to rehash this thread. I took from the original ideal, roku, seagate wireless plus (2TB) drive, anydvd, hand brake and metax. A little time consuming buts works very well. The goal is to have it available for trips and camper. I plan on having a couple of hundred movies stored. Winter project I guess to convert them all. The only problem I have seen is the movie icons don't show up when displayed in the ROKU but do on the computer. I also had an issue with no sound and discovered the ROKU has to be set to Surround sound and not stereo.

[ependydad]

whitmw, I'm glad that this worked for you. My Seagate Wireless will occasionally drop the WiFi (like twice in 2 months or so).

I agree that the movie icons don't show up. Maybe in a later version of the app, it'll work.

I did find with the latest update to the Seagate Wireless app, you could send the video directly to your Roku.

Overall, I'm very happy with it. It worked well for our 3 TVs, entire DVD collection, and many hours of view time over 2 months of travel.

[howzball]

If you don't feel like compressing all of your files, KDLinks makes an excellent media player that you plug an internal HDD directly into, up to 4TB of space.

You can use MakeMKV which just rips the DVDs full sized and dumps them into an MKV file. This eliminates most of the labor involved.

The KDLinks device will play any video format known too, unless your video is corrupt this will play it.
One nice thing about it is that it has the HDMI output but also the component style outputs if you still need those.
It runs off of 12 volt as well so you can likely find a 12 volt accessory plug to plug it in with your TV.

I have a few of the WD TV Live boxes but they're not as trouble free as this unit seems to be.

[AquaMan]

I have well over 3k movies, all on DVD and digital files in DVD format burned onto 4 3TB external drives for the camper, and use the seagate, Sony, and have 2 WD media players. We have a total of 9 media players and three servers. The camper server is still being setup though. The two home servers have a total of 18TB and a couple of raid arrays for backup of important data. We are serious about our movies.


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[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by AquaMan

I have well over 3k movies, all on DVD and digital files in DVD format burned onto 4 3TB external drives for the camper, and use the seagate, Sony, and have 2 WD media players. We have a total of 9 media players and three servers. The camper server is still being setup though. The two home servers have a total of 18TB and a couple of raid arrays for backup of important data. We are serious about our movies.


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You are a "god" among movie watchers.
Have you seen the new 6T drives from Seagate?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822178520


Time to replace your "stack"

[AquaMan]

Originally Posted by Herk7769

You are a "god" among movie watchers.
Have you seen the new 6T drives from Seagate?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822178520


Time to replace your "stack"

I have seen them. Thinking of using a couple in the camper server.


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[iluvlcy]

We as well have over 3000 movies I would love to get onto a few drives. We work on Macs, anyone doing this with a Mac? I have tried MacX DVD but not too happy with it. We did get 1000 dvds into sleeves and in a bin to take to trailer, but that is going to get old real quick. Seems like we always want to watch a movie we did not bring with us.

[AquaMan]

Originally Posted by iluvlcy

We as well have over 3000 movies I would love to get onto a few drives. We work on Macs, anyone doing this with a Mac? I have tried MacX DVD but not too happy with it. We did get 1000 dvds into sleeves and in a bin to take to trailer, but that is going to get old real quick. Seems like we always want to watch a movie we did not bring with us.

That's was the same with us for the longest time, never had the movie you wanted to watch. Now, I can stroll through a folders of movies and not find anything to watch. Usually my wife and I watch old Doris Day movies when we go to bed (and no, we're not that old!). Those always seem to be our "go to" movies. It's nice to have all those movies right at your fingertips, though.


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[Kaadk]

Originally Posted by iluvlcy

We as well have over 3000 movies I would love to get onto a few drives. We work on Macs, anyone doing this with a Mac? I have tried MacX DVD but not too happy with it. We did get 1000 dvds into sleeves and in a bin to take to trailer, but that is going to get old real quick. Seems like we always want to watch a movie we did not bring with us.

Did you try handbrake? I find it's the easiest to use and since it started on the mac before porting to the PC it works pretty good.

It's not going to give you full 1080p & THX surround, but I don't know of any programs that will do that.


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[Herk7769]

So, the last few trips I have been using 3 - 128G USB 3.0 thumb drives (Newegg has them for about 40 bucks each).

I have discovered I never have the movie(s) that everyone wants to watch.

Going back to the 4T USB hard drive.

I most likely will still bring the thumb drives along but only to transfer the movie(s) to the Surface for watching on the projector. Discovered that the wireless router has a tendency to "pause for spooling" at inopportune times.

[ependydad]

Originally Posted by howzball

If you don't feel like compressing all of your files, KDLinks makes an excellent media player that you plug an internal HDD directly into, up to 4TB of space.

You can use MakeMKV which just rips the DVDs full sized and dumps them into an MKV file. This eliminates most of the labor involved.

The KDLinks device will play any video format known too, unless your video is corrupt this will play it.
One nice thing about it is that it has the HDMI output but also the component style outputs if you still need those.
It runs off of 12 volt as well so you can likely find a 12 volt accessory plug to plug it in with your TV.

I have a few of the WD TV Live boxes but they're not as trouble free as this unit seems to be.

That looks pretty neat. I'm curious, though- does this support multiple TVs?

[Herk7769]

Originally Posted by howzball

If you don't feel like compressing all of your files, KDLinks makes an excellent media player that you plug an internal HDD directly into, up to 4TB of space.

You can use MakeMKV which just rips the DVDs full sized and dumps them into an MKV file. This eliminates most of the labor involved.

MKV files are much larger than MP4 (since they are full resolution). I would rather have more choice (a few thousand) rather than a few hundred really sharp high res movies in the same 4T hard drive.

Just a personal observation.

[iluvlcy]

Originally Posted by AquaMan

That's was the same with us for the longest time, never had the movie you wanted to watch. Now, I can stroll through a folders of movies and not find anything to watch. Usually my wife and I watch old Doris Day movies when we go to bed (and no, we're not that old!). Those always seem to be our "go to" movies. It's nice to have all those movies right at your fingertips, though.


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We love Doris Day! Pillow Talk is my fav. We are also big fans of 50's sci fi. I will check out handbrake.


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[offroad]

I use Video Catalyst for our movie conversions for traveling with phone/pad/laptop

Lots of profiles, very user friendly, cheap ($10) and the quality is great.
I've watched some from a USB flash drive on a 60" plasma.

[howzball]

Originally Posted by ependydad

That looks pretty neat. I'm curious, though- does this support multiple TVs?

Not by itself it doesn't but, get an HDMI splitter and your options are endless.
If you're creative you could even utilize the coax in your RV to feed the same movie to each TV. It would not be in HD if that matters.

They're expensive but, I've good success with the wireless HDMI devices they make now. Amazon.com: Nyrius ARIES Prime Digital Wireless HDMI Transmitter & Receiver System for HD 1080p 3D Video Streaming, Laptops, PC, Cablebox, Satellite, Blu-ray, DVD, PS3, Xbox (NPCS549): Electronics