I'm currently planning my HTPC project, I've been researching for weeks and I feel almost as lost today as I did when I started.
I want to rip all my DVDs, HD-DVDs, and blue rays to .iso because I want to preserve everything from the original and keep my digital library build from turning into a full time job. (I will rip them to iso with anyDVD HD)
Does anyone know of a media player which will recognize these .iso formats and display them in a graphical interface which can be navigated with a remote control (the remote would be a luxury, so I would be willing to use a wireless mouse if absolutely necessary).
I also need a sofware solution for recording TV to my home server (either linux NAS or WHS, I haven't decided yet.)
I really want this to be so easy my kids can navigate and watch their movies at the age of 4-5 years old.
I have looked at media extenders, but it seems their support of iso playback leaves much to be desired. It seems silly to me that there isn't a simple solution to this since there are a million sofware solutions which play video_TS etc and programs like daemon tools (which I use).
I know the file sizes are fairly large, but given the price per gigabyte of storage nowadays it really only translates into $1-2 per blu ray backup.
Besides, I don't want to further compress the data or spend an hour per DVD stripping out all the extras only to realize later I wan't to display subtitles in spanish or whatever.
You install, and then just double click the iso image and it will mount, then just play using PowerDVD, it is as easy as its going to get, and really can't be much easier.
My 9 and 7 year olds both manage with it without any problems, I showed them once and that was it, now they just scroll through the films and pick which one to watch, 30 seconds later its playing.
Personally though, for DVD I use clone DVD and just rip to iso image but remove the menuas and extras unless desired on box sets etc..., you can set the program to rip to DVD+9 DL and that way you stil don't loose any quality as theres no compression required.
