Suggestions for a DVD Video on Demand System?

An anonymous reader asks: "I was paid, with about 1000 DVD movies, by a video rental store that owed me money and then subsequently went out of business. I'd like to rip a couple hundred of them to a 1 TB disk array, and serve them up to my big screen, via a video on demand system. However, all the systems I can find for interfacing computer network to the plasma display only serve up the basic MPEG files, and not the entire ripped DVDs with their menus, etc. What systems would Slashdot readers suggest that could manage the ripped DVD files as a complete disk, and serve them up?"

Legality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?

What about

[Anonymous Coward]

What about building a robotic, 1000 disc changer? Like a jukebox sort of setup only for DVD's?

Linksys DVD Player or HTPC seems perfect for this.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.linksys.com/press/press.asp?prid=142&cy ear=2004

Rip to your hearts' content and play away, either that or get a HTPC that's networked to your 1TB array.

HOW WE AV PROGRAMMERS HANDLE IT

[Anonymous Coward]

1 crestron MC2W-
1 crestron STX-1700
1 kaledascape video service
That would provide complete control over the complete collection(stored on a hard drive), the x1700 would display the collection, the control to the mc2w and kaliedascape would be through rs232

The Programming Lang would be simplwindows, VTPROE

Store the ISO's and then mount them

[ptelligence]

There's a program (somebody help me with the name) that will let you mount an ISO in a *nix system and manipulate it as if it were a CD/DVD in the drive. You should be able to write an easy script to rip the DVD using the dd command. Then you'll have your entire DVD library intact. You could even use the ISOs to make more DVDs if you were so inclined ;)

Good luck!

You'll never watch all that!!

[Anonymous Coward]

1000 movies averaging 90 minutes = about 62.5 back-to-back days. That's not counting extras and audio commentary versions which could easily take another two months. Add in rip-time and you're going to lose six months of your life over this thing.

I guaran-damn-tee you that after The Good, The Bad and The Ugly you'll never see anything better anyway. Watch that one and save yourself some time.

Are you sure these copies are legal?

[clifgriffin]

Video rental copies are licensed for rental. I wonder what the legality of them giving them to you is.

I don't know, I'm just posing quiestions which I refuse to try to answer.

How about them yankees?

Re:MythTV

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Videolan? Rip a disc image of each DVD, and mount them each on a loop device. That should work fairly painlessly.

Re:If he's got plasma...

[timeOday]

If he's got a plasma screen, he's not going to want to give up any video quality, so recompression really isn't an option.

Maybe the best idea is to find him a high-quality DVD player and nice storage rack so that he can organize his 1000 DVD collection and show it off

It's digital data, the whole point is you can copy it losslessly! I realize DRM is supposed to wreck everything, but that's what we have tools like mencoder for, to break down the barriers.

As for doing things the hard way, I suggest he set up an automated system that rips when you pop in a disk. Then, instead of ripping all 1000 dvds, just rip a show when you want to watch it. This way, you invest no more effort than it would take to place the dvd into a player to watch it on the first viewing, and subsequently it's already on line for you.

Speaking of which, I'm still waiting for a car CD player which will automatically archive all the CD's I play through it. Is there such a thing?

Add a hard drive to your APEX DVD player...

[SethJohnson]

There's a pretty simple hack for some of the APEX DVD players. You can simply remove the DVD drive and replace it with a hard drive full of SVCD files. It can mount the drive and then provide a menu for selecting what movie you want to watch.

Caveats:

Have to yank the hard drive to add more movies. These are SVCD files, not full DVDs with extras and menus, etc.

The huge plus is that it's a real easy solution for this need. Grab a 250 gig HD for a hundred bucks and rip around 250 DVDs to the drive. Swap it into your Cyberhome player, then you've got a quick solution that has a proper remote control and doesn't require a noisy, hot computer in your house.

Here's a link to a how-to [area450.com]. It talks about adding a different power supply, but I've heard you can get away using the original ps.

DVD Lobby

[Wesley Felter]

If you can't afford a Kaleidescape, you might try building an HTPC with DVD Lobby [webpromotion.com].

Re:Hollywood is never gonna help this...

[topham]

Well, based on the Judges decision, if he were in the U.S. he would have the legal right to do it; just not the right to buy the software to do it.

No problem. Just download from somewhere outside the U.S.

Re:What about

[ack154]

Instead of just "jukebox sort of setup", why not just convert an actual jukebox? That may be what you were getting at though. One of the CD ones obviously. But it seems like a perfect match. It's meant to hold discs, and read those discs based on selection. In theory, if you could replace the reading device with that of a DVD player and get audio AND video out of it... Sounds like one hell of a case mode project if you ask me... But damn that would be so cool.

right tools for the job (i.e. DVD mega changer)

[sykt]

I think you are looking the wrong way my friend. Why go through all the pain/legal questions/hardware... Just plunk down a few bucks and by a mega changer.

Here is one that holds 400 DVDs from Sony for like $400 400 Disc Progressive DVD/SACD Player DVP-CX985V [sonystyle.com]

Sometimes a dedicated device has its place.

Re:Legality?

[Monx]

Wouldn't you have to circumvent CSS encryption and violate the DMCA to do this?

Nope.

The DVD playing software will legally decrypt the ripped images. No illegality there. I do that with my DVDs so that I don't have to carry them with my laptop. I can leave them at home on the shelf. This also means that I don't have to find my DVDs when I forget to put them back on the shelf.

The whole problem is easily solved:

Get a cheap PC.
Get a video card with tv-out.
Get lots of HD space.
Get a usb infrared receiver.
Get a remote with directional controls.
Make the computer treat the remote as a keyboard.

Rip the DVDs to disk images.
Run a file manager

Now just select the file you want with the remote and press enter. The image mounts and the dvd software starts up.

If you don't like the interface, get another file manager and try again.

Done.

XBox Media Center

[aderusha]

1 used xbox: $150
1 cheapmod: $10
-or-
rented copy of "mech assault" or "007 agent under fire" plus memory card: $20
1 copy of xbox media center (visit #xbins on efnet to obtain this): priceless! (and free too!)

XBox Media Center (XBMC) will play VOB files across the network from machines sharing the files via SMB (regular windows networking) or 2 other xbox-only streaming protocols. XBMC also plays divx, xvid, mpeg, quicktime, realmedia, ogm, and other video codecs. throw in mp3/ogg support, streaming internet radio from shoutcast, a picutre viewer for your digital pics, and even weather updates from the weather channel.com and you have yourself a pretty cheap playback system.

oh yeah and it can play xbox games too.

xbox media center website [xboxmediacenter.de]
information on hacking the xbox (news, tutorials, and forums) [xbox-scene.com]
reliable source of cheap chips in the us [llamma.com]

xBox + EvolutionX

[sirket]

This is _exactly_ what I want to do with my 300+ DVD collection.

I am planning on picking up an xBox, modding it, and running EvoX on it. I get the hardware for approximately $200 (soon to be less) including the remote and you get a spare S controller with the xBox. Add in a few dollars for the mod chip and you are set.

Besides being cheap, EvoX looks good and the xBox itself is small and the case is easily modded. It also starts up quickly which is nice. EvoX will read DVD files off the network as well as a few other file formats.

-sirket

On the off-chance someone reads this

[proverbialcow]

*sigh* Wish I'd seen this earlier.

Make an .iso of each disk, compress them with gzip -9, write a simple little front end that lets you select which disk image you want to watch, have it decompress on demand and mount the .iso to a loopback device, and then launch your DVD player program. If you configure your player to read from the loopback mount point, you'll never even know the difference.
Once the player exits, have the front-end delete the decompressed image. Granted, you'll be lucky to get more than a couple hundred DVDs in a single terabyte, but with gzip you should be able to squeeze a couple extra on there.

Re:If he's got plasma...

[rworne]

I found the answer. Not only can you store it all, but you can rip all the data in a single afternoon! I've been working with this toy [conduant.com] at work, it's wicked fast and has several terabytes of storage, nothing like RAID 0 with 16 drives!

Forgive the marketing spiel:

How Fast Is 200 Mbytes/Second?

One copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica (2619 pages per copy) is one (1) Gigabyte of data
StreamStor can record the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in 5.12 seconds

The Library of Congress (20 million books, not counting pictures) is 20 Terabytes

StreamStor can record the entire Library of Congress in 29.13 hours

A typical video store with 5000 videos is 8 Terabytes
StreamStor can record an entire video store in 11.65 hours

A copy of your favorite mystery novel is 1 Megabyte
StreamStor can record a mystery novel in five thousandths (.005) of a second

One hour of music is 535 Megabytes
StreamStor can record one hour of music in 2.675 seconds

Twenty four hours of music is 12.54 Gigabytes
StreamStor can record 24 hours of music in 1.07 minutes

So you can rip your entire collection in 2 1/2 hours (not counting swap time). Too bad the bottleneck's not the StreamStor...

The Constitution and laws of the United States forbid all interference with the religious or political concerns of other nations.
-- US President Millard Fillmore 1850-1853

Re:why recompress?

[kekoap]

BTW-- damn, I wish I had 1000 DVDs.

Join Netflix, get a pipeline going, and you too could amass a collection of 1000 titles...

Freevo

[fathergrief]

Wait for the new version of freevo to come out, or grab the cvs version.
They just added support for this a few days ago.

network file system

[ajagci]

DVDs have a fairly complicated structure involving multiple files and multiple file types and containing numerous indexes and references. If you mirror them with vobcopy, you can then point some of the free DVD players at the ripped directory structure and get the menus and everything else. So, if you export the mirrored directories via some network file system, you should be able to play them over the network. It is possible that one or the other network file system has some glitch that causes problems (e.g., unexpected latencies for certain operations), but then just try another one or fiddle with the parameters for that file system.

Re:Add a hard drive to your APEX DVD player...

[GroundWire]

SVCD's are 480x480 in resolution (yes, that is a square - the DVD player stretches the picture out to get the proper 4:3 aspect ratio).

The standard maximum bitrate for an SVCD is 2,520 kb/sec, but sometime you can get away with more. (depends on the player).

I know with software players (PowerDVD, etc) and having the files on your hard drive, you can exceed that, but you're violating all of the standards to do it.

Contrast that with a DVD, who's resolution is 720x480, with a maximum bitrate of 9,000kb/sec that INCLUDES the audio stream as well.

So basically you're cutting the horizontal resolution of your picture in half, then saying you have a quarter of the bandwidth available to compress it with.

It's true that SVCD's are very useful - especially for anime and the like (since it compresses so well).

SVCD's are indeed compressed using MPEG2, that's about the only thing you got right. :)

Checkout http://www.vcdhelp.com - That should teach you some things you didn't already know.

- Joel

Re:DVDs on Xbox - don't!

[Niten]

The XBox's DVD remote uses the JVC infared "instruction set". So if you have a programmable remote that you prefer, you should be able to program it to interface with a JVC DVD player and, in theory, use it to control your XBox.

Re:why recompress?

[Crazy Eight]

You mean, like `apt-get install dvdbackup' so you end up with the 32k binary (on ppc at least) that can put a VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive?

Re:If he's got plasma...

[Lumpy]

first off ditch freevo. mythtv ruins faster on less hardware and is much easier to get going. I tried both.. 2 months getting freevo and it's quirks to behave.. 3 days for mythtv.

secondly, I can watch a dvd changer in 5 different roons here and for much less money than you are spending. one 16X16 computer controlled AV switcher, with the other components + multiple changers and if I want to finish that new DVD in the bedroom (and I cant see why I would... trade a 10 foot diagonal projection in 7.1 surround for the dinky 29" set upstairs??)

I can do it, but reality showed me that the equipment sits idle and 99.9% of all dvd's are watched in the home theatre. the other .1% are watched on the dvd player in the bedroom.

If you are in it for the challenge then go for it! if you are trying to make something for distributed DVD watching, go analog it's better, cheaper, and gives much less headaches.

Videolan

[Anonymous Coward]

Rip them as iso's then use videolan.

I'm surprised nobody has hit the best solution yet

[illumin8]

Well, of course, the best solution is the one I use, personally. :-) The main benefit to my solution is that it actually works. I'm not just talking out my ass about how theoretically Freevo or MythTV will do what you want, if you can figure out how to install it.

Major benefits to my solution:

Uses Divx+AC3 files for great compression with minimal loss of picture quality.

Scales Divx video up to 720p for remarkable picture quality, which in many cases looks better than the original DVD. The PQ approaches HD in many cases.

Allows Dolby 5.1 AC3 optical pass-thru for true surround sound with no recompression of audio streams. The sound you hear is the sound on the original DVD.

Each compressed DVD movie is just over 1GB in size.

Compressed movies can be delivered to wireless clients anywhere in the home with standard 802.11b, with seamless playback.

Head-end server can be located in the basement or a closet to keep computer and fan noise away from your home theatre.

Also stores and catalogs your entire MP3 music library for listening to music from any client.

Outputs stereo audio sources (such as standard MP3 files) to both front and rear stereo channels in a surround setup, giving you output from all speakers in your surround setup, even if you're only listening to a stereo source.

Listen to Internet radio from any client.

The only disadvantage to my setup:

Not enough disk space to rip entire movies including menus in a lossless format. My setup can fully support reading .VOB files from the server, provided you have enough space to store them all.

Actually, I think it's pretty good. This is the hardware I had lying around to work with, most donated by my work:

1 Sun Ultra 5 360 mhz. workstation w/ 256 MB RAM and 9GB HD. (about $190 on eBay).

1 dual-channel differential PCI SCSI card, (about $20 on eBay).

1 Sun StorEdge D1000 with 10x 18GB SCSI hard drives, (about $130 for the array itself on eBay, then buy some Sun spud drive brackets and load up with your own SCSI drives).

1 Xbox, modded, with DVD remote kit, for each client.

You could get a much cheaper server for storage and all that by just building a PC clone and throwing a few 250 GB hard drives in it, but this hardware was free (except for the Xbox), so I used what I have.

Here are the installation steps:

1. Install Solaris 9 on the Ultra 5.

2. Use Solstice Disksuite to setup a RAID 5 metadevice spanning across all 10 18GB SCSI drives. Newfs the metadevice, end up with about 150 GB of space mounted under /bigdisk.

3. Setup Samba on the Ultra 5 and share out the /bigdisk partition in read-only to everyone and read-write to your ripping workstation.

4. Rip your DVDs in Divx format with AC3 audio (don't recompress the audio stream, because AC3 is already compressed and you want 5.1 surround, right?)

5. Save your .avi video files to the Samba server.

6. Mod your Xbox (use the 007 agent under fire savegame hack to avoid buying a modchip and cracking the case). If you want instructions on how to do this, check out the Tutorials section on this site. [xbox-scene.com]

7. Install XboxMediaCenter [xboxmediacenter.de] on your Xbox and set it up as the main dashboard.

8. Configure XBoxMediaCenter to point to your Video server using smb://username:password@servername/bigdisk or whatever you decided to name it.

9. Enjoy movie watching madness from any TV in your house.

Re:why recompress?

[bobbabemagnet]

Averaging 1 1/2 hour per movie, that's 62.5 days, or 8.9 weeks. That's straight watching, no breaks, no sleeping. That's mind boggling. But the real pain is, if it's going to take, say 30 minutes to copy the dvd, then he'll have to spend 3 weeks straight without sleep just to copy. This seems like way too much wasted time.

Re:HOW WE AV PROGRAMMERS HANDLE IT

[Anonymous Coward]

humaneinterface? the leading program/design firm? You must work there.

Oh yeah, Kaleidescapes currently cost over $25,000.
If you're going to spend that kind of money, get an NXI (http://www.amx.com/product-details.asp?lin=84&pf= &pid=505) and an MVP (http://www.amx.com/new-products.asp#viewpoints) from AMX (www.amx.com).

And go with a company that DOES installation, as well as programming and design. This is pretty essential for a custom design job.

One thing you need: Virtual DAEMON

[boy_afraid]

If you have your DVDs ripped, then just create some sort of program that will automatically unmount, and mount virtual DVDs on your computer, then use any DVD playing software to watch DVDs on your plasma screen, simple as that.