[srhoades]

I'd like to relocate all the DVD's that are taking up tons of space in my entertainment cabinet and go to a media server. What is the best way (if there is such a thing) to do this?

My thought was to get a NAS, move my iTunes library to the NAS, rip the DVD's and import them into iTunes, and then get an Apple TV to stream them to my TV. Thoughts?

[cgwahl]

Do you have a game console? If so, you might be able to do this without needing to get Apple TV.

I've never used iTunes so can't help there, but I do use Twonky. Can access the files through XBox 360 and watch them that way. Also lets me streaming music, movies and photos on my phone.

In case of my regular XBox, I have XBMC on it and access the files on my NAS through that.

PS3 is also able to do this, I believe.

Windows Media Center might also work, but I have issues with codecs to the point I rarely try anymore.


As for getting DVD on the system, Handbrake should be able to do what you need. I haven't used it much myself since I usually torrent the DVD's I have for streaming purposes. Saves time/less work.

[Drjones]

Yes, definitely get a NAS. I've taken a very strong liking to the Netgear units....have three of 'em in my office alone. :-)

Installed several for clients for both business use and personal, they are fantastic. I could drone on for hours about all the features, but I suppose their website would do just as good a job.

As for the Apple TV, they are cool and my GF just got me one, but you may be better off with something else. I have a WD TV Live and it plays *everything*; ISO, mkv, avi, wmv....you name it, it plays it on your TV directly from your NAS or PC - no need to import to iTunes first and worry about whether you've encoded it properly.

If it's a media format, it will play it, all the way up to 1080p, flawlessly.

I'd just rip your DVDs to ISO and get the WD Player....

JMO...since you asked.

[Drjones]

Originally Posted by cgwahl

As for getting DVD on the system, Handbrake should be able to do what you need. I haven't used it much myself since I usually torrent the DVD's I have for streaming purposes. Saves time/less work.

I was going to say it but deleted it....but since you went ahead & said it.....this is also what I do....for copies of DVDs I already own.

I can get the same or higher res (DVDs are 480, I'll try to download 720 or 1080 when possible) with a couple mouse clicks, and no shuffling discs around, etc. The only thing is when you torrent a movie, they almost never come with any of the special features/DVD functions - its just the movie. If you care at all about that, it's something to consider.

Anyhow, much easier & faster to download them rather than rip yourself...again, unless you need/want the special features.

[srhoades]

Well at least I know I am headed in the right direction. I'm glad you threw out the WD TV Live because I was somewhat dreading the two step process of ripping and then importing into iTunes.

[Drjones]

Another thought is do not cheap out on the NAS. My first was a Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, and while it's been a great unit, it doesn't hold a candle performance wise to my new Ultra 6. Granted they're two totally different products targeted for totally different users and purposes, but still....

Right now, I'm streaming a movie to my iPad from the Netgear Ultra 6, my girlfriend is watching one on hers, AND I'm moving a 7GB DVD rip to it from my old Duo....smooth as silk, you wouldn't even know all that is happening. My girlfriend hasn't said a thing and my movie is still streaming just as it was before I started the file transfer.

With the Duo, there were a few times when we'd be watching a movie from it on my WD Media player and I'd try to copy some files to it at the same time, and the movie would start skipping badly. No way would it be able to stream TWO movies simultaneously AND handle a file transfer....

I also notice a big performance difference streaming movies. I stumbled across this sweet app called AcePlayer that streams just about everything perfectly to your iPad/iPhone....its much faster, smoother and better overall streaming from the Ultra 6 vs. the Duo.

Go for a higher-performance unit. The Duo write speeds are up to around 20mbps over my Gig network with all Cat6....the Ultra 6 has hit 125...and I haven't even tweaked it for performance.

Also, there have been lots of threads here about FreeNAS, and I gave it a lot of thought. It's very tempting, but at the end of the day, I was afraid I'd spend more time tinkering with it and still not end up with as nice a product as the Netgear ReadyNAS.

[Drjones]

Originally Posted by srhoades

Well at least I know I am headed in the right direction. I'm glad you threw out the WD TV Live because I was somewhat dreading the two step process of ripping and then importing into iTunes.

It's really not THAT big a deal....you could, for example, rip all the movies into a folder, then add that entire folder to iTunes. It would sit & chew on it for a while, but your job would be done. I just really think ripping the DVDs would be quite the chore....

But the other thing that I think would become somewhat annoying is that the Apple TV is tied to your iTunes account, the software on your PC, etc. In order for it to stream stuff from your library, the computer has to be on and running, with iTunes open.

Personally, I leave my PC on all the time, but sometimes iTunes is open, sometimes it's not. Would be annoying to plop down, ready to watch a film only to realize you have to walk into the other room, wait for your PC to boot up, open iTunes, etc.....

And then if you wanted to "borrow" films from friends....you again run into the file format issue. What if they have .mkvs or .avis, or..... You get the idea.

My GF just got me an Apple TV, I've been wanting one for a while and I know I'll love it, but not for movies. Sure we'll use it for Netflix, but I'm more stoked to get to play my iTunes library & playlists over my big stereo, also it does photo slideshows really well.

The newer WD has gotten better with photos, but the iTunes integration is still lacking...and of course I can't use my iPad or iPhone to control it like I'll be able to with the Apple TV.

For movies you rip/download, IMO, the WD TV Live is king.... But the Apple TV has lots of great features too.

[IndyGunFreak]

I'm a big fan of building your own. There's a host of Linux distros that could do what you want.

Built my NAS, set up all the services I want (dlna, ftp, torrent, daap and a few others). Use my TV as the "display" for the NAS. Installed XBMC on my server, and it starts automatically when I boot my NAS. When I want to watch movies on the NAS, I just switch the TV to the "PC Input" and watch them locally with XBMC. If I want to watch them on other devices in the house, thats what DLNA is for.

It's actually worked out better than I'd hoped.

[Linux3]

I have a home built NAS with a couple of TV tuners and mythTV.
http://www.pchdtv.com/
So I can record TV and get rid of the Time Warner DVR.
All my DVDs are on the NAS.

I run Mediatomb on the server, as a media server.
http://mediatomb.cc/

I connect to my TV via a WD TV Live Plus box.
http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=320
You can easily hack the firmware on this box and then also connect to hulu, not just hulu Plus and also many other websites.
http://forum.wdlxtv.com/viewforum.php?f=62

Some other stuff;

How to Connect Asus EeePad Transformer via USB in Ubuntu - YouTube

How to Connect Asus EeePad Transformer via USB in Ubuntu - YouTube

[srhoades]

Since I just built a new system I have my old system that is more than adequate to run Free NAS or some other variant. Definitely cheaper than a NAS. I'll take it into consideration.

[Drjones]

Just a very few of the features of the ReadyNAS that I love/couldn't do without and couldn't figure out if any sort of free variant has:

- Throw in a disk, the NAS automatically formats it and either expands your volume or adds further redundancy - you can configure a 6-bay Netgear to have dual-disk redundancy so that your data is safe even if two disks fail.

- Email alerts for everything; backup jobs completed, disk failure, new firmware available, SMART errors detected on a disk....you name it.

- Easily configure backup to USB disk.

- Easily configure it to backup/mirror to another, offsite NAS to safeguard all your precious data.

- All sorts of streaming services, such as UpnP, DNLA, etc. built in.

- Open the box, be up & running within about 15 min.

Not bashing the free stuff, but you really have to think about how much time you want to spend managing/tweaking/hacking the NAS vs. actually managing & enjoying your content.

Isn't the purpose of the NAS to house & enjoy your content??

JMO.... The 6-Bay ReadyNAS Ultra is only like $730 without disks....add a couple 2TB drives to start and you're up & running for under $1K....how much is your time, sanity & data worth to you?

[douggmc]

IAs alternative to FreeBSD based FreeNAS ... Check out:
www.openmediavault.org

It is a from scratch Linux NAS distro based off of stable Debian from one of the original primary developers of FreeNAS. Still technically beta, but I've been using it for few months and has been stable for me.

Reuse some old hardware laying around.

[IndyGunFreak]

Originally Posted by douggmc

IAs alternative to FreeBSD based FreeNAS ... Check out:
www.openmediavault.org

It is a from scratch Linux NAS distro based off of stable Debian from one of the original primary developers of FreeNAS. Still technically beta, but I've been using it for few months and has been stable for me.

Reuse some old hardware laying around.

I love OMV. It has some issues, but I think it's way better than FreeNas. The webUI is nice, even if not necessary. The only thing I feel you really *need* a webUI on, is when using your NAS as a Torrent server. It's just a lot easier to set up, but it's not impossible to do via command line.

I still find I prefer a simple command line OS for my NAS. Ubuntu Server is just dead nuts simple and there's plenty of documentation on setting it up.

[IndyGunFreak]

Originally Posted by Drjones

JMO.... The 6-Bay ReadyNAS Ultra is only like $730 without disks....add a couple 2TB drives to start and you're up & running for under $1K....how much is your time, sanity & data worth to you?

I spent about $200 on my NAS, toss in another $200 for 2, 2tb Hard drives. Used an old case I had here at the house. I figure the actual build, only took me about 30min as it was pretty basic (4 hard drives, motherboard, cpu, RAM)

Took about 25min to install the OS, and about 45min to install and configure all the software I want to use. Once everything has been set up, it's very much a "set it and forget it" item.

I'll take $400 vs $900 any day of the week.

[Nickotym]

I am pretty happy with openmediavault and mediatomb on my server. The TVs get to the NAS through the bluray player on one and Wii on the other. The ipad gets to the NAS through Airplayer. I just last night installed MediaHouse DLNA and MX Player on my B&N Nook color running CM7 and it works great too. I still need to get bigger drives to use with OMV, but that is a down the road purchase that I can put off. I have not come close to filling my current drives.

[douggmc]

Another nice/subtle thing that differentiates omv is (as mentioned before) the fact that it is a vanilla Debian base (albeit a very light one with default install)). This means you can install virtually ANY package from the Debian library (which is arguably the largest and most thorough of any Linux distro) with the standard apt tools.

I played/struggled for year with other NAS offerings, from FreeNAS, Amahi, and other *nix based distros ... To a off the shelf product from Synology. I couldn't get one that could meet my needs completely.

My OMV serves double duty (actually triple). In addition to the NAS functions, it also operates as a Tor relay and a Crashplan backup "server". All headless and tucked away in my server closet and easily managed via the web interface and some SSHing in occasionally.


I'm a big fan so far.

[Linux3]

Originally Posted by IndyGunFreak

I spent about $200 on my NAS, toss in another $200 for 2, 2tb Hard drives. Used an old case I had here at the house. I figure the actual build, only took me about 30min as it was pretty basic (4 hard drives, motherboard, cpu, RAM)
Took about 25min to install the OS, and about 45min to install and configure all the software I want to use. Once everything has been set up, it's very much a "set it and forget it" item.
I'll take $400 vs $900 any day of the week.

Plus if something goes wrong you are familiar with the hardware and software and that makes troubleshooting much easier.

[cowboy1964]

I like Media Center. I primarily use it for air-over-the TV though, not for movie storage.

[IndyGunFreak]

Originally Posted by srhoades

Since I just built a new system I have my old system that is more than adequate to run Free NAS or some other variant. Definitely cheaper than a NAS. I'll take it into consideration.

One thing you need to keep in mind if you go OMV (which I'd highly recommend)

Is the "OS" will take up a complete drive. So you don't want to put the entire OS on a 2tb drive, as that is a total waste of space... since the OS only requires about 4-5 gigs tops.

You also can't really use a thumb drive/cf card, because the OS does to much disk writing and will nuke them fairly quickly (this is one advantage FreeNas has).

I ended up putting OMV on an old 2.5in 80gig SATA drive that I pulled from a broken laptop. Wasn't good for much, but it was perfect for this.

[srhoades]

Originally Posted by IndyGunFreak

One thing you need to keep in mind if you go OMV (which I'd highly recommend)

Is the "OS" will take up a complete drive. So you don't want to put the entire OS on a 2tb drive, as that is a total waste of space... since the OS only requires about 4-5 gigs tops.

You also can't really use a thumb drive/cf card, because the OS does to much disk writing and will nuke them fairly quickly (this is one advantage FreeNas has).

I ended up putting OMV on an old 2.5in 80gig SATA drive that I pulled from a broken laptop. Wasn't good for much, but it was perfect for this.

I have a decent quantity of system pulled drives to choose from to use as an OS drive. No matter which route I go I was going to buy new drives for the actual storage.

[srhoades]

I like the idea of Open Media Vault. However what if I start running out of storage? Would I have to create a second RAID and copy it over, or can I easily extend the partition if I swap out the disks one by one on the existing array?

[srhoades]

Well this is turning into a huge bust. I installed Openmediavault but it will not boot from the drive after the installation, just a flashing cursor. I also tried ripping a DVD. Apparently it is copyright protected and neither handbrake nor another program that clams it will rip copyright protected DVD's worked.

[Drjones]

Originally Posted by srhoades

I like the idea of Open Media Vault. However what if I start running out of storage? Would I have to create a second RAID and copy it over, or can I easily extend the partition if I swap out the disks one by one on the existing array?

Again, my bent on this is clear; I'm a ReadyNAS fan, for reasons I've already outlined.....that said, with my 6-bay, as you add drives, you are given the option in the GUI to expand the volume capacity or add dual-disk redundancy.

Could not possibly be more simple.....

[Drjones]

Originally Posted by srhoades

Well this is turning into a huge bust. I installed Openmediavault but it will not boot from the drive after the installation, just a flashing cursor. I also tried ripping a DVD. Apparently it is copyright protected and neither handbrake nor another program that clams it will rip copyright protected DVD's worked.

DVDFab is amazing....try that one...if not....torrent away!

[douggmc]

Originally Posted by srhoades

Well this is turning into a huge bust. I installed Openmediavault but it will not boot from the drive after the installation, just a flashing cursor. I also tried ripping a DVD. Apparently it is copyright protected and neither handbrake nor another program that clams it will rip copyright protected DVD's worked.

So you downloaded the ISO, burnt it to a CD, and went the the install process .... but now upon first boot you are getting blank screen?

A few things to try:
1) I noticed you said DVD. The ISO is only about 260MB. Do you have any CDs you can burn to? I think I recall having a similar issue trying to burn an ISO that I think was intended for a CD, onto a DVD (I wouldn't think it would matter though).

2) Try re-downloading the ISO: http://sourceforge.net/projects/open...ult/files/0.3/ I've had corrupted ISOs before and it seemingly installs fine, but really something is goofed up. Actually ... I would do this first.

3) Instead of burning the ISO to CD, if you have a USB stick laying around ... you can instead write the image to that. This assumes your target machine can boot the install media from USB. I actually do this mostly nowadays. Instructions: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawik...allation_media .... the cliff notes version: download unetbootin ( http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ ) and use it to copy the image from the ISO to the USB stick (or if you are on a Mac or Linux machine just drop to the shell and use "dd" command).

4) Lastly, have you installed any other linux distro on your target machine before with success? You could download the base Debian ISO and see if that installs. This would rule out the compatibility question (i.e., if Debian installs, than OMV should too).