Best Ways to Playback from an External HDD to HDTV

[TM2-Megatron]

Really, you can just plug your HDD into your TV and play MKV files? Unfortunately for me, my TVs don't have any USB inputs, only HDMIs.
Thanks.

Most new TVs have 1 or 2 USB inputs and support a surprisingly wide variety of video format playback. You can use external HDDs, or even just USB thumb drives.

But if your TV doesn't, your Blu-Ray player might. You should look into it; my Blu-Ray player supports all the same formats as my TV, although I've found its quality and speed is a bit better than the TV's. That's how I play most things myself, these days. Except 3-D Blu-Rays, anyway. Even videos I've bought off the iTunes store (once Requiem removes their DRM) are remuxed into MKV and stored on an external HDD. Why buy an overpriced AppleTV paperweight to play a video that virtually any modern device is technically capable of playing, once the DRM is gone?

I'd avoid actually converting your movies (that makemkv program looks like it transcodes), and follow the process bracket cable suggested to just demux the Blu-Ray content you want and remux it into MKV with no quality loss.

That Dune HD D1 looks interesting (I assume it can play 3-D Blu-Ray ISOs?). But I imagine there'll be a revised version eventually with USB 3.0 and HDMI 1.4. I'll probably wait for that.

 

[SamuriHL]

But if your TV doesn't, your Blu-Ray player might. You should look into it; my Blu-Ray player supports all the same formats as my TV, although I've found its quality and speed is a bit better than the TV's. That's how I play most things myself, these days. Except 3-D Blu-Rays, anyway. Even videos I've bought off the iTunes store (once Requiem removes their DRM) are remuxed into MKV and stored on an external HDD. Why buy an overpriced AppleTV paperweight to play a video that virtually any modern device is technically capable of playing, once the DRM is gone?

Agreed. I do similar things. I personally strip the protection so I can play them on my Xoom.

I'd avoid actually converting your movies (that makemkv program looks like it transcodes)

Um, no. It does not. At all. It only repackages the streams. It doesn't have ANY capability to transcode at all. :disagree: I wouldn't have recommended it if it messed with the streams in any way.

That Dune HD D1 looks interesting (I assume it can play 3-D Blu-Ray ISOs?). But I imagine there'll be a revised version eventually with USB 3.0 and HDMI 1.4. I'll probably wait for that.

I don't know if the Dune is a licensed player. Meaning if it can handle AACS protected discs. If so, I'd be cautious about it with regard to Cinavia going forward. If it's NOT licensed it makes it a much safer bet. It's one hell of a device for sure. I was even thinking about it at one point but I'm an HTPC guy myself. Still, very nice player.

 

[TM2-Megatron]

Um, no. It does not. At all. It only repackages the streams. It doesn't have ANY capability to transcode at all. :disagree: I wouldn't have recommended it if it messed with the streams in any way.

hm... well, maybe I'll try downloading it myself, then. All I had time to do when posting above was to take a look at the site's front page, and there it describes itself as a format converter and even refers to "transcoders":

http://www.makemkv.com/

MakeMKV is a format converter, otherwise called "transcoder".

They should definitely change that bit if it isn't the case.

 

[SamuriHL]

hm... well, maybe I'll try downloading it myself, then. All I had time to do when posting above was to take a look at the site's front page, and there it describes itself as a format converter and even refers to "transcoders":

http://www.makemkv.com/


They should definitely change that bit if it isn't the case.

Yea, the description is COMPLETELY wrong so I agree they should change that. ALL it does is take the streams you select and repackage them into an MKV. Nothing more. Quality is IDENTICAL to the disc you are ripping from. And as I mentioned earlier, I keep AnyDVD running at all times and ignore the warning from MakeMKV. I also create a profile so that it auto-selects the HD audio stream instead of just core (which it does by default for some odd reason). All in all it's a good product. I am definitely waiting for CloneBD or whatever it'll be called to see how it compares. Almost all my backups are MKV's so I've been using this for quite some time now. Haven't had any problems with it.

 

[MMM]

This weekend, I was trying out this new device called the WD TV Live Streaming Media Player. This thing seems to be able to do a lot and it seems to do it well. It reads my Video_TS movie files and .ISOs, so I can just rip my DVDs to my HDD using AnyDVD, and just plug it in and watch! The gadget also seems to upconvert standard movies as good or better than my Sony BD player. This was a pleasant surprise as none of the descriptions on the box or on WD's website even touch on the topic of upconversion.

 

[SamuriHL]

I got my dad one for Xmas. It works pretty well but has given him issues with some blu-ray converted to mkv. Overall it's a good device though.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

 

[MMM]

Wow blu ray MKVs...can't wait to finally start watching more movies in hd:agree:

I too actually had some minor problems to report when playing back an mkv file I made of Super 8. The chapters would not work for that movie (although the chapters worked fine with mpg-hc and vlc)...so to fast-forward, I could not skip chapters, I could only fast-forward -- that's all. The video ts file I had of the same movie played ok.

What a great son you are SamuriHL. I may use that idea too.

 

[SamuriHL]

The blu-ray mkv's have no quality loss so it's ideal for backups. He throws them on a little external drive and plugs it into the wd device. It's a pretty sweet setup. Still I prefer JRiver MC17 on my htpc's. I like building my library of backups for the most watched movies and shows in my house and being able to share it to any machine on my Gigabit LAN. In any case mkv is IMO the way to go for backups.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk

 

[MMM]

Very cool, you definitely have an ideal setup. Who wouldn't want to have access to their movie library from any of their HTPCs or TVs.:agree: That is a dream for me.

Anyway, back to my reality...got a big problem with a couple of my favorite movies that I have on DVD-Rs (about three years old). AnyDVD and DVD Decrypter are failing at reading my discs and the originals are being stored in another state. I would like to add the movies to my HDD library. Are there any solutions to this? The DVD-Rs play perfectly in my Sony BluRay Player, so I know the movie is still intact on the disc.

 

[SamuriHL]

Dvd-r doesn't require anydvd since it should be unprotected yea? So there should be a couple of ways to try to recover the data off the discs. Optical media over time does degrade though. It's possible the discs are simply bad at this point. Try imgburn and slow the read speed down to 1x and set the read retries higher. If that doesn't work there's not a lot you can do.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

 

[TM2-Megatron]

You could also try using software like ISO Buster to recover the data. I've used that a few times to pull data off a disc that other programs refused to even see (including Windows Explorer; the files just didn't show up).

 

[MMM]

Dvd-r doesn't require anydvd since it should be unprotected yea? So there should be a couple of ways to try to recover the data off the discs. Optical media over time does degrade though. It's possible the discs are simply bad at this point. Try imgburn and slow the read speed down to 1x and set the read retries higher. If that doesn't work there's not a lot you can do.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

Yup, copying an unprotected movie does not require decrypting, but I was just using it to copy the movie to my hdd. As for trying imgburn and turning the read rate down to one and turning the retries to 8, it didn't work this time. I actually got one of the movies to copy by using some old Roxio video editing software, and I simply burned the iso image instead of the files. Didn't work for the second one tho'. Strange tho' that the dvd plays fine in a bluray player.

 

[Adbear]

Not strange at all that the disc plays but won't copy as they aren't the same thing, Players can skip over small read errors on the disc, whereas copying needs to be bit perfect with no read errors. That's why they have a section about reading versus playing in the AnyDVD FAQ sticky

 

[SamuriHL]

Still you could try the ISO buster idea. It might work. Although I'm not sure how well I'd trust a disc that can't be read.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

 

[MMM]

TM2-Megatron, I remember you and Adbear. Still around eh. Thanks for the advice. I actually tried the ISO Buster program and it didn't work, but it got me to the point where I decided to try removing the paper sticker label from the dvd-r. I remembered reading somewhere on this forum a while back about the labels causing dvds to spin unevenly when played/read which would cause read problems. Miraculously, this low tech fix worked and the movie transferred! Kinda makes me mad that our optical drives are so finicky...POS:doh:

 

[SamuriHL]

Rofl! Labels are incredibly bad. The glue can destroy the disc over time and as you discovered it can unbalance them while spinning. Use label markers! seriously though I'm glad you were able to read your disc.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk 2

 

[MMM]

HaHaHa...not funny. Hope you enjoyed yourself there SamuriHL.

Anyway, I've been experimenting a bit and tried out the LG BE12(ext bluray drive) and AnyDVD HD out for the first time with one of my Bluray movies and found out a single Bluray movie is 38-40GB!!??...REALLY!!!!!!????:doh: I was guessing the file would be no more than 25 GB (the size of one BD-R).

So, I ripped the movie directly to an .iso file, and now I am wondering how I can shrink the file in half or so, and STILL get the benefits of HD. I tried using Clown BD -- I really am still new to using it -- but, even by removing all the unnecessary audio and subtitles, I don't think it even reduced the size of the file by 1 GB!

Is there a DVDShrink for Bluray?

 

[Adbear]

Blu-rays like DVD's have single and dual layer discs, so your films that are bigger than a 25GB will easily fit on a DL BD-R.

If you want to shrink it down to a SL disc then try using BD rebuilder

 

[Roycal]

I have the LG BE12LU30 and is working great! (Knock on wood). Cool thing is if the drive fails, you can replace it by keeping the enclosure and just replace the internal drive at a fraction of the cost of replacing the whole external drive.

And, Yes, BD-Rebuilder is a great solution. Strip out unwanted languages and extras and often you sacrifice very little in quality to bring it down to a single layer BD-R in most cases

 

[Roycal]

I tried using Clown BD -- I really am still new to using it -- but, even by removing all the unnecessary audio and subtitles, I don't think it even reduced the size of the file by 1 GB!

Is there a DVDShrink for Bluray?

I use BDClown to remove trailers and spurious video clips very carefully if I want to backup the entire disk to S/L. It takes a lot of patience to do that right. And it will typically save about 5 GB per D/L Blu-ray. But it is a lot of effort to backup the entire disk and if it's a 40GB remaining to shrink to 25 GB, you are usually better off just extracting the movie only with BD-Rebuilder and dumping the extras.

The Audio tracks can occupy a lot of gigabytes especially if you have multiple DTS True HD tracks in multiple languages. I always cut or rencode the LPCM audio (most ineffecient audio versus space) tracks from a shrink. But I do keep the best English Audio track intact and original, as long as its not LPCM or PCM.