I haven't heard of this one, but am interested in looking into it.

Do you know a website we can look at to take a look at it?

I've been converting my widescreen movies into WMV-HD at max quality.  I see no quality loss and the files basically come out to 1 GB per hour.

I've almost filled my Iomega 1 TB network storage device.

I was putting them on hard drives in my server PC (had 8 running in there) but I got tired of moving files from one drive to another as I filled up the space and larger drives became available.  I figured adding a TB or two in network storage at a time was more preferable.

Quoting Stevizard:

Quote:
Hi gang,

Since I have over 1200 full-length movies

Few hour movie takes about 6GB of space, so that means you would need about 7-8 TB of storage (Using 2TB external HD's that would cost you ~3000$). It takes time to rip them to the computer, so i would guess it probably takes an hour/movie, which results in 50 days of work from the PC to record them. Considering you have to swap discs every 2 hours... 

I would just forget it, go buy 100 new DVD's and 2 of these ...and it would still be cheaper

Quoting whispering:

Quote:
It takes time to rip them to the computer, so i would guess it probably takes an hour/movie, which results in 50 days of work from the PC to record them. Considering you have to swap discs every 2 hours... 

If you were using a hammer and chisel then yes, about an hour per movie.  However, with drive speeds these days a normal time would be between 10-15 mins.

Still a long time for 1200 movies.

Hi Steinyd and all,

Im converting my movies into DivX using the latest DivX Pro codec. I can cut the main movie down to 1GB or slightly less with no apparent loss in quality (I watch movies on a 120-inch diagonal front-projection screen). So, 1.4TB should handle all of my movies at present. But I would like to have the ability to add additional space above 2TB should I need it (and I probably will).

The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ looks like just what I need but "holy cow batman," the price is out of this world. That's why I'm looking at the 2TB Buffalo Terastatiion ($600.00 with drives included). I could put roughly 1800-1900 movies on the Terastation, which is cheaper than buying 18 100-pack DVDs at $35 per pack.

Yes, it does take time to convert vob movies into a single DivX file but when you consider the storage space I'm saving, its worth it to me.

Does anyone know if the Terastation can stream movies via its 2.0 USB fast enough so that the movies don't lag?

Stevizard

I have stored all my movies on a spare PC I had. I add a new 500gb disk (about £60) each time it fills up. I'll move to 750gb disks when they come down to the £60 range.

I basically create a new directory for each disk names as per disk title and copy the VIDEO_TS directory into this.

The drives are shared under a single share with subfolders so basically I share c:\MEDIALIBRARY on the PC but each drive sits under this. (c:\MEDIALIBRARY\DRIVE1, c:\MEDIALIBRARY\DRIVE2 etc..) as a seperate mount.

As the only share on the PC is the \\mediapc\medialibrary mapping it to each of my Media center PC's is easy. (They all map to drive M)

Obviously the PC has ANYDVD installed so copying the vobs is not an issue.
If a drive should fail it's not a problem as I have stored the DVD's in the attic in boxes that are labelled to represent the drives. BOX1 = DRIVE1.

I use DVD profiler to catalogue the DVD's and import the XML extract into 'My Movies'. This way I get the DVD covers and movie information on the screen.

I have found this the best solution as I can view DVD's in any room (I have a media center in every room).

I have streamed 4 different DVD's at the same time with no loss in quality. No time delays and no performance issues.


This has worked for me and I have over 550 disks. Yes it takes quite a few disks but the end results are worth it.

BTW: It takes about 15 mins to copy a DVD to the PC. I have a seperate PC I setup with 5 DVD rom drives for the initial load. That way I was able to load 5+1 DVD's at the same time. So thats 6 DVD's every 15mins rather than every 1h30m. At £9 for a IDE DVD ROM and £14 for a SATA DVD Writer (Ebuyer) it makes sense.



MediaStore PC:
Intel Pentium D 945
ASROCK motherboard (2 IDE, 2 SATA)
2GB DDR2 RAM
3x unbranded 4 Channel SATA Controllers (SIL3114 chipset) (£14ea eBay)
2x 250GB Western Digital Hard Disks (OS & Programms, Pictures, CD's)
3x 320GB Western Digital Hard Disks SATA (DVD's)
6x 500GB Western Digital Hard Disks SATA (DVD's)
1x LG DVD Writer
850WATT Power Supply
1000Mbps Intel Network card.
Custom Made Case

DATA Load PC
AMD Athlon xp2400
ASUS A7N8X Motherboard
1GB DDR RAM
1x 1250gb IDE Hard Disk (Seagate)
3x LG IDE DVD ROM Drives
2x LG SATA DVD Writer Drives
1000Mbps Intel Network card.

Quoting Dr. Killpatient:

Quote:
I went the route of a NAS PC at first, even had an 8 bay external SATA case.  However, it got old after upgrading the drives to larger ones and moving the files between them.  I decided it was a lot less effort to simply add a new NAS storage system to the network when the current ones fill up.

I thought about going the NAS route but just couldn't afford it at the time.

My current setup is based mostly on existing hardware I had lying about. Only the drives were an actual purchase specifically for this.

I'm looking at upgrading the SATA controllers to the new Sil chipset that supports port multiplying. That way a 4 port SATA controller actually supports 12 drives. I cannot be botherred to copy between drives so I'll just keep adding new ones until 1TB drives are about £60. Probably in 2 years or so. :-)

Quoting MarEll:

Quote:
What do you use to convert your WMV-HD?  And how long does it take?

Intervideo DVD Copy 5 - but it only works with unencrypted video.