XBMC/Apple TV for ripped DVDs

Four Suns

Four Suns

Not a pot stirrer
TECHNICAL Contributor
Oct 4, 2006
10,533
Williamsburg, VA
Boat Info
2003 480 DB
Engines
QSM-11 Diesels
Any XMBC users here? I have been messing around a little with ripping some DVDs. I've been using HandBrake for the Mac and have ripped a Star Wars DVD and The Master and Commander (widescreen) DVD. These files are about 20 GB so a 1.5 TB disk would hold about 75 DVDs. An external 1.5 TB disk costs about $130 now so I could hold about 300 DVDs on 4 of these drives hooked together.

I would love to get rid of all the DVDs on the boat... they take up a lot of space and I find them, frankly, annoying as the kids seem to shuffle the cases and actual DVD around just to piss me off. Having the stuff on screen and then just select what you want to watch would be pretty slick.

I have an AppleTV on the boat but would have to install some hackware to be able to use external drives. That is probably the approach I'll go... but have been playing around with XBMC a little. It's free... and the interface is customizable. Anyone mess around with XBMC before?
 
Gary,

I don't have an Apple TV, but I have ripped (am ripping) our DVD collection with a Mac Mini with a 1TB drive that is attached to our new HDTV. The TV ports the mini's audio output back into our home theater. The mini also has a another TB drive that is used as the house 'time capsule'. So it sort of sounds like we are doing the same thing.

I have also been reading your TV upgrade with interest. I have a thought towards adding a 12v capable TV and using one of our MBPs to play the movie, display it on the TV and run the audio through the stereo. (The generator challenged solution.) We used the notebook and the stereo patch last summer and the results while not home theater, were much better than computer speaker.

I have been using Ripit and end up with files that retain the DVD format and are the same size, about 7-8 gig each disc. When I want to return these to DVD I use Popcorn and that supplies the compression to get the files onto the DVD.

Henry
 
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I played around with it a little when it came out. it's slick, maybe a little buggy but that was in the early stages.
 
I have a feeling Gary wants his DVD's intact as far as quality.
 
TurtleTone said:
I have a feeling Gary wants his DVD's intact as far as quality.
Click to expand...

Are you saying it degrades it too much? I just use it for the Ipod, so quality I know is not high. I would have figured the Apple TV app would keep it in high quality? The spec on the site aren't very detailed.
 
Four Suns said:
Any XMBC users here? I have been messing around a little with ripping some DVDs. I've been using HandBrake for the Mac and have ripped a Star Wars DVD and The Master and Commander (widescreen) DVD. These files are about 20 GB so a 1.5 TB disk would hold about 75 DVDs. An external 1.5 TB disk costs about $130 now so I could hold about 300 DVDs on 4 of these drives hooked together.

I would love to get rid of all the DVDs on the boat... they take up a lot of space and I find them, frankly, annoying as the kids seem to shuffle the cases and actual DVD around just to piss me off. Having the stuff on screen and then just select what you want to watch would be pretty slick.

I have an AppleTV on the boat but would have to install some hackware to be able to use external drives. That is probably the approach I'll go... but have been playing around with XBMC a little. It's free... and the interface is customizable. Anyone mess around with XBMC before?
Click to expand...

If you're not set on XBMC, check out the A110/A200 PopcornHour from Syabas. It'll do all you appear to want to do. I use one (A110) at home (utilizing 2 x 1TB USB drives) and place it in the boat when we want movies along for a trip. At home, it's 1080i signal is distributed throughout using an Audio Authority Avatrix matrix (which I think I saw a post where you have one on your boat).

The A-110 supports native video quality (1080i/p down to 480i/p), digital audio, network-based streams (if you like to centralize your storage on a NAS) and is extensible if you have the desire to expand its capabilities with third-party apps (movie jukeboxes, audio jukeboxes, etc).

For me, the big win is that it supports the VOB file format directly--that is, you can use the free version of DVDFab or DVDAnywhere to de-CSS a DVD once and have the output written directly to the PopcornHour--no need to perform addition manipulations/encodings/etc.

Our DVDs now stay in their cases in a cabinet at home...only used in the event of a disk crash/recovery.
 
Not familiar with Apple, but I thought I would share my experience.

My friend built a Unix based NAS box and loaded it up with 10 TB’s of hard drives. He has been ripping and storing his DVD’s on and streaming them to his TV using an Xtreamer. http://xtreamer.net/xtreamer/specs.aspx

I forgot what he is using to rip the movies, but file extensions are ISO. The blue ray movies are in the 40 to 45GB size, with standard def under 8 GB. He is pretty happy with that setup. The xtreamer will stream movies in full 1080P.

I am doing something similar using Windows Media Player. I store all my pictures and home movies on my PC and have been streaming them to an Xbox360 for a few years. I was unable to stream my AVCHD home movie video files (Mt2s extension) to the Xbox because my Windows XP media center did not have the codec. I had to use Pinnacle to convert the files to MPG format before streaming. It took hours to convert a few minutes of AVCHD video, but I was able to create a 1920x1080 file at 29 frames/ second. This solution worked, but it was tedious.

I just built a new PC with Windows 7. I am now able to stream my raw AVCHD files to the Xbox. I abandoned Pinnacle and now use TsMuxer (freeware) to stitch my individual AVCHD /M2TS files back together so that I end up with one file for each event I film.

I have yet to experiment with ripping DVD’s. I am planning on playing around with Handbrake, but haven’t got to it yet. I borrowed one of my friends ISO files to see if Windows Media Player would play it and it doesn’t.

I am also able to stream all of my media to my kids PC’s. (I installed windows 7 on their pc’s) However my kids PC connect to my home network using wireless USB devices. My sons adapter advertises connection speeds of 300 Mps, but I have yet to see it go over 54mps. My kids PC’s can successfully stream my older home movies, however the wireless network speed is not fast enough for the MT2s files.
I have 3 internal hard drives and 2 external. One external drive is connected via USB while the other (SeaGate 750gb is connected with a firewire.) If I try to stream high def movies that are stored on the hard drive connected with the USB cable, it doesn’t work. Connection speed isn’t fast enough.

So I guess my takeaways are, be sure your external hard drives are connected with either ESata or Firewire and make sure your network speed is high enough to stream HigDef movies.
 
Wow... I'm glad to see people are messing with this stuff... Because I feel stupid on some of it.

I want my DVDs to be ripped in the exact same resolution as the master. It seems with HandBrake, the resolution is always a little less... what's the deal with that? Also, with HandBrake, I lose the DVD menu that a DVD player gives me. Is there a way to get that back? I want an EXACT replica...

Also, I don't understand the whole video output and scaling. If I put a standard DVD into a BluRay player, it does something called "1080p upconvert" or something and it looks really good. Can these players do that? (I know it's not true HD but there is some "magic" that happens to make it better)

Also, how does one handle the resolution/video hookup issue. If I have an HD TV with a 1280 x 720 resolution, I have to set the computer to that resolution otherwise there is all kinds of scaling/color issues that come up... What do you all do with that? Anything?

I'm really glad some of you are doing this... home or boat.
 
there are some programs for the mac that will rip the DVD as an image file. This retains all of the menus etc... and strips the copy protection. it'll work and look just like the DVD. The issue is what will play this. Basically you'll need a computer to recognize the image file and play it back like the DVD player on your mac.

The quality of handbrake de-muxing the VOB files "should" be the same quality as the DVD. The difference is mostly likely in the player, not the actual file. It depends on the output setting and how it converts the VOB files. Again there are programs that will rip the elemental streams but you'll need a computer to combine the MPEG files and the Audio files.

the upconvert is nice looking on some players. It basically fills in some of the resolution gaps by guestimation for larger resolution TV's.

If you are using the computer to scale to the TV, then you need to pick the output that fits the TV, otherwise you'll have scaling issues. MOST of the scaling is built into the video card of the computer. some are software. This is mostly hardware dependent and your results may vary depending on the computer.
 
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OK... I just downloaded "RipIt" and it made an image that kept the DVD menu structure... However, there really isn't anything in that application that I could see that allows one to set the resolution. The resolution, based on comparing it to the "Actual Size" view of the original DVD is about 2/3 the height and width... It was a heck of a lot easier than handbrake though...

The MacDVD application (comes with the Mac) recognized this file and played it flawlessly other than being a lower resolution.
 
that's the difference in the actual DVD and handbrakes conversion. handbrake will convert the file to 720X480 anamorphic. If the film was 70mm, it will have a different aspect ration and handbrake will convert the film to 720X480. that is probably what you are seeing.

EDIT. just saw that you used ripit. don't know that program. probably the same thing.
 
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Rip-it is an excellent program to make a bit for bit copy of your DVD. As you've seen it keeps the menu structure intact, and as an exact copy keeps the quality @ 100%. In my experience, it will copy the vast majority of commercial DVDs. When it won't, there are other methods, but they are not as quick or as easy.

Handbrake is an encoder (not a ripper) and by virtue of the fact that you are converting from one lossy compression codec to another, there will be some loss of quality, even at the max quality setting.

As for the upconverting DVD player, when you play a standard def video on a hi def monitor, the video must be scaled to fit the display (or you would have a small picture in the middle of the screen) The resulting quality is a function of the device doing the scaling. Based on your experience, I'd say the scaler in your upconverting DVD player is superior to the scaler in your television, but this isn't always the case. It depends on the specific hardware in use. The video hardware in the Apple TV is pretty good, and should give you acceptable results scaling your SD content for your HD TV. My library is mostly SD kids movies, and even after re-encoding them to mp4 (both for size & compliance with the appletv format limitations) they are still pretty good looking on a 50" 1080p plasma.

Its best if you can set your playback device to the same resolution as your monitor/television, as this reduces the amount of scaling taking place. Even on the best hardware, there is a loss of information whenever there is an up or down conversion.

Hopefully that answers more questions that in raises......since this is directly related to my day job (professional video, not pirating DVDs) I'm happy to provide additional explanation if required.
 
Just noticed you said you thought the Rip-it file was of lower resolution.

I'm not sure why using "actual size" setting in the Mac DVD player would result in a different size window, but the resulting file should be identical to the original DVD.
 
I hate the mess that DVD's seem to make, and long ago chucked all the cases and store them in albums.

On the boat, I use two solutions that work well for us.

1. In the stateroom, I use an Archos 604 and docking station connected to the 19" HDTV. Admittedly, the Archos does not feed HD signals back to the TV, but with 160gb storage and support for a ton of video formats, it allows us to have a hundred dvd files ripped, as well as tons of tv shows (important stuff like "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia"). The Archos has a decent on screen menu, and the docking station comes with a remote.

2. In the salon, I have installed a PS3slim behind the 23" HDTV. This thing is a great answer on the boat (as other threads have noted). Besides the gaming and Bluray, you can do the following:
a) copy video files right to the internal harddrive
b) plug a USB drive into the PS3 that is loaded with video files
c) stream video from a PC or other device (like the Archos on our boat since we have WiFi on board)

For those who haven't been introduced to Archos, take a look at their stuff at www.archos.com. I travel with a new Archos 5 - it beats the heck out of an iPod for in flight video watching, and works as a portable hard disc too.
 
I have been using XBMC for a couple of months and I really like how you can customize the interface and plugins. I have been ripping the DVD's to ISO files so they retain all the menus and extras. You just need to have the storage to handle all of the content. XBMC does have some methods for upscaling the content that you can play with that does seem to help. I have the HTPC set to output 1080p to the TV, and XBMC is taking care of the rest. I have not dug deep into the program for all of the options, but I am very impressed. It will also run on just about any OS without any problems.
 
So in my first post above I forgot to mention my XBMC experience - the whole point of Gary's post to begin with:

At the end of last summer I installed XBMC to a Mac Mini that wasn't being used around the house with the thought of mounting it in the salon behind the HDTV. Like most of you, I like the interface it offers and the ability to have a library of DVDs all in one place. Plus it just seems cool.

I ended up giving up on the project because I couldn't get a Windows media center remote control that I had lying around to work on the Mac Mini.

If you're going to use a Mac as the platform for XBMC, what will you use as a remote control device?
 
OK... So I messed around the ATVFlash stuff and, although it's pretty cool, it really takes away from the user interface from the AppleTV. I guess that's because the AppleTV's organization of "stuff" is all based on QuickTime (.MOV) files. To play other codecs on it, you end up having to not go to "Movies" but finding your way to other software programs that you install that will run the Non QuickTime movies.

I guess one option is to rip all the DVDs and store them in QuickTime format and then import them into the AppleTV... but even then, to use an external disk drive, you have to use 3rd party software that degrades the UI.

I did run across Plex which is a source fork from the XBMC software and built for the Mac. It can tap into iPhoto, iTunes, etc and no mater where the source is located, it gives a consistent UI on movies. It also has the ability for all the Internet stuff which is nice.

Here's a MacWorld review:

http://www.macworld.com/article/132438/2009/06/plex.html

and the website

http://www.plexapp.com/

I still have not figured out all the DVD ripping stuff... too confusing! The DVD's I did with Handbrake work in plex but I'm still trying to see if the thing will import an actual DVD image from Ripit...
 
Agreed, none of the AppleTV hacks I've seen so far are a "perfect " solution. The main reason I haven't hacked mine yet is because my wife is the primary user and its got to be clean and simple, otherwise she just won't bother with it.

An alternative to the Apple TV hardware is something like this:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=735

Broader range of file support, USB storage, network capable.

I bought one install in my excursion. I will hardwire it to the AUX input of the built in entertainment system, eliminating a huge stack of DVDs.
 
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