Ok here is my problem..... Like most of you I own quite a few DVD's and lazy as I am I can't be bothered swapping them in and out of my DVD player all the time.
What I want to do is copy my DVD's to my PC (compressed or not) then use an interface to browse and play them. Ideally I would like to use Windows Media Centre as it has a reasonable interface and a remote control but am currently unsure if I would be a ble to play the DVD's through that.
Please help!!!???
P.S. Not sure I want to go down the XBOX route as I'm not sure what to get.
media center would do just what u want but id make sure you encode all your dvds in a format that it will recognise, ive heard of media center having problems playing back AVI files
Studio Comp: AMD Athlon XP 3200+ OC ~ 2.35GHz runs at 40 celcius idle and 48 under stress (aerocool GT1000 really works!), Asrock K7VT4A , 1024MB Dual Channel DDR 400, MSI Nvidia FX5200 128MB OC ~ 600MHz mem 350MHz core,80GB SATA + 200GB SATA + 120GB IDE, 7.1 Channel Soundblaster Audigy 2 Platinum EX sound and midi interface. 19" Sony SDM-HS95 TFT monitor - sweeet
Comp2: AMD Sempron 2400+ OC ~ 2.0GHz (Stable), Asrock K7S41GX, 512MB DDR 333, Onboard Graphics, 40GB Maxtor IDE
set of monitors on the way soon :P
Google is your friend... WorkComp: LAPTOP, intel celeron D 2.4GHz, 256MB DDR, 20GB hd. NO SCREEN IT WAS SAWN OFF :S (bag of crap)
LOL.. wow a thread that seems to be made just for me.... J/K.. ok my system setup
AMD XP 3200+
RAM 2 gig
H/D 300 gig at the moment
audigy 5.1 surround sound
All in wonder pro (has remote =~))..
XP Pro
Power DVD
MusicMatch
shrink DVD
Ok, this is what I did. Cuz, yes, I am lazy too... I use shrink DVD to get them onto my machine and I leave them at 4 gig files and have shrink create the video_TS and audio_TS folders w/ it. Then once it is on my machine I create a shortcut icon for the Main video which is video_ts.ifo file and tell it to open w/ power DVD.. This is the main information file for said DVD, you know where splice points are and which file it needs to open up next where and when kind of thing for a seemless DVD.. It is actually pretty easy.. I have my 300 gig drive dedicated for movies only there is one folder which has DVD's and in that folder are the movie folders which has the audio_TS and Video-TS folders in them.. so when I am sitting in my favorite recliner. I just switch the TV tuner to another input that I named PC and use my computer remote to go into the desktop folder of my DVD's which are all shortcuts to the movie. DONE!! The height of laziness..
As for the Windows Media Centre PC's those are actually pretty awesome in themselves.. If I could afford one right now.. I would buy the one from HP, w/ the AMD processor chip.. But I would add more ram to it and another H/D to it.. good luck, have fun...
I did the same thing as Beltazar, and this works very well ... but I would like to go one step lazier. Does anyone know of any software that will automatically detect and catalogue the backed up DVDs (.ifo files). It would be very nice to have something to organize ripped DVDs like digital music. It sure is hard work to create a shortcut and type in the name of the movie.
Thanks for that. You have fond loads and have managed to answer one of my main questions. Will Media Centre play a dvd from disk that is held in the VIDEO folder (vob files)? Yes it looks as if it will. So if I use DVD Shrink to copy my DVD's over to my hard disk, 4GB each, Media centre will be able to play them!! Yipee. All i need to do now is wit for my media centre pc to arrive!
My movies 2 looks great as well. I like the idea of being able to keep iso files on the hard disk and have them automatically mounted.
I'll need to try this son and will let you know how I get on.
