[gentoo-user] Re: DVD Movie backups

[Grant Edwards]

On 2011-12-17, Stroller <stroller@××××××××××××××××××.uk> wrote:
>
> On 17 December 2011, at 20:39, Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2011-12-17, David Haller <gentoo@×××××××.de> wrote:
>>
>>>> Store these on a Samba share, then use something like the PlayOn HD
>>>> Mini or the Western Digital TV Live! to watch them on your big screen
>>>> TV.
>>>>
>>>> These players allow you to treat .iso files on the network just as if
>>>> they were actual DVDs and give you full access to the menus and extra
>>>> features.
>>>
>>> At least mplayer, vlc and xine will also happily play a directory, be
>>> it a mounted DVD, a mounted image or just a rip as made by dvdbackup
>>> and others (e.g. lxdvdrip).
>>
>> The SageTv set-top box will happily play a DVD directory also (in
>> addition to playing TV shows recorded by the SageTv DVR server
>> software).
>
> Practically all players will do this, I think, but I much prefer having the DVD as a single file, to move and copy and store.
>
> A directory containing a a VIDEO_TS and a load of files just seems a
> lot more fragile to me. Were you to accidentally delete one of the
> VOB files, there would be no way to tell the difference from looking
> at the outside of the video's folder.

True, but that's never happened.  ISO images work fine, but the extra
"layer of indirection" is an inefficiency that irritates the engineer
in me.

>> ? I absolutely dread going to
>> back to MythTv with a big, hot, noisy PC sitting next to my TV?
>
> I bought an eMachines 1401 recently - it's not as perfectly silent as
> the PlayOn (which is fanless), but it's *very* close. It's an AMD
> atom-equivalent, dual-core, mini desktop PC, about 7" on a side and
> maybe 1" thick. Right now, powered on with no load just to judge it
> for this conversation, I can hear it if my ear is a foot away from
> it, but not 2 or 3 feet away, not against the normal background noise
> in my apartment (clock ticking in the kitchen and so on). Right now
> its hard-drive is louder than its fan (which is shifting so little
> air that I can barely feel it, even putting my hand an inch from the
> grille). I think that if you load it up with an emerge then the fan
> will ramp up a bit, but I doubt if you'd notice it when watching a
> movie.

There are some platforms that are getting pretty decent, but they
still cost 5X as much as a set-top-box box, draw 10X as much power,
and are about 4X larger.  They're probably approaching "tolerable",
but compared to something like a Roku or SageTv box, they're still an
embarassment.

I used a Mac Mini for a while as a MythTv frontend, and it was quiet
enough that it wasn't noticable unless the room was dead silent.  It
would have been OK if I had been able to get DVI output working.

-- 
Grant