iceman9000
New Member
Thread Starter
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2008
- Messages
- 1
- Likes
- 0
Dear all,
I'm sure this question has been posted a thousand times, but I'm losing my hair trying to figure this problem out.
When I first acquired an iPod, my CDs were duly ripped and have been relegated to the loft, never to be seen again. The iPod is docked in an iPod HiFi, which provides ample entertainment for the entire house and, more importantly, is instantly mobile for connecting to the car. No more rummaging for CDs to take in the car
I stumbled across the AnyDVD, CloneDVD & CloneDVD Mobile packages and have been merrily converting my childrens DVDs to iTunes so that we could take the movies with us on holiday etc. No more packing expensive original discs. Just hook the iPod up to the hotel tv via scart and we're away.
Now the crunch. Apple's video format is limited to 640x480 resolution for creating the mp4 files that iTunes understands. As a result, encoding DVDs this way is sufficient for travelling purposes, but the lack of quality means I still have to keep this mountain of DVDs in my living room for eternity.
I recently acquired an XBOX 360 and have installed TVERSITY on my home PC (XP). I pointed the TVERSITY library at my iTunes movie folder and my XBOX 360 at the TVERSITY installation. I can now view my iTunes movies on my remote TV, but since the quality of the encoding is not up to DVD quality, I still find myself reaching for the original disc more often than not.
I was going to acquire a Windows Vista Home Premium PC, load up the MyMovies addon (to rip the DVD to the internal disk and download artwork etc) and then point my XBOX 360 at the Media Center machine to watch the DVDs in their original surround-sound quality. All future rooms would benefit from something like the Linksys DMA2100 to link up to this Vista machine (or at least the Media Center component thereof).
Having done a bit more research I believe that the XBOX will not be able to play the DVDs stored on hard disks
I know this must be so simple to do and I refuse to pay the extortionate sums that DVD Server companies like http://www.kaleidescape.com/ charge just to have a home DVD library.
Could anyone offer any ideas as to the best way to achieve:
a) my home DVD library
b) the portability of those movies to a device for holidays
Golden rule with my family. If it's not easy to use, it won't get used. I genuinely want to retire those DVDs forever.
Thanks
Dale
BTW. The spec I was planning on ordering from tekheads.co.uk was:
1 x Antec Fusion Black Media Centre Desktop Case - 430W PSU
1 x Asus M2N-VM HDMI Vid/Lan/Sound (Socket AM2+) mATX Motherboard
1 x Samsung SpinPoint HD753LJ F1 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3GB/s 32MB Cache
1 x AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ 'Brisbane 65nm' (Socket AM2)
2 x Kingston ValueRam 1GB DDR2 800mhz Module
1 x Microsoft XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller
1 x Samsung SH-S203P 20X S-ATA Lightscribe Black DVDRW
1 x Microsoft Vista Home Premium 32BIT Edition DVD
I'm sure this question has been posted a thousand times, but I'm losing my hair trying to figure this problem out.
When I first acquired an iPod, my CDs were duly ripped and have been relegated to the loft, never to be seen again. The iPod is docked in an iPod HiFi, which provides ample entertainment for the entire house and, more importantly, is instantly mobile for connecting to the car. No more rummaging for CDs to take in the car
I stumbled across the AnyDVD, CloneDVD & CloneDVD Mobile packages and have been merrily converting my childrens DVDs to iTunes so that we could take the movies with us on holiday etc. No more packing expensive original discs. Just hook the iPod up to the hotel tv via scart and we're away.
Now the crunch. Apple's video format is limited to 640x480 resolution for creating the mp4 files that iTunes understands. As a result, encoding DVDs this way is sufficient for travelling purposes, but the lack of quality means I still have to keep this mountain of DVDs in my living room for eternity.
I recently acquired an XBOX 360 and have installed TVERSITY on my home PC (XP). I pointed the TVERSITY library at my iTunes movie folder and my XBOX 360 at the TVERSITY installation. I can now view my iTunes movies on my remote TV, but since the quality of the encoding is not up to DVD quality, I still find myself reaching for the original disc more often than not.
I was going to acquire a Windows Vista Home Premium PC, load up the MyMovies addon (to rip the DVD to the internal disk and download artwork etc) and then point my XBOX 360 at the Media Center machine to watch the DVDs in their original surround-sound quality. All future rooms would benefit from something like the Linksys DMA2100 to link up to this Vista machine (or at least the Media Center component thereof).
Having done a bit more research I believe that the XBOX will not be able to play the DVDs stored on hard disks
I know this must be so simple to do and I refuse to pay the extortionate sums that DVD Server companies like http://www.kaleidescape.com/ charge just to have a home DVD library.
Could anyone offer any ideas as to the best way to achieve:
a) my home DVD library
b) the portability of those movies to a device for holidays
Golden rule with my family. If it's not easy to use, it won't get used. I genuinely want to retire those DVDs forever.
Thanks
Dale
BTW. The spec I was planning on ordering from tekheads.co.uk was:
1 x Antec Fusion Black Media Centre Desktop Case - 430W PSU
1 x Asus M2N-VM HDMI Vid/Lan/Sound (Socket AM2+) mATX Motherboard
1 x Samsung SpinPoint HD753LJ F1 750GB 7200RPM SATA 3GB/s 32MB Cache
1 x AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4800+ 'Brisbane 65nm' (Socket AM2)
2 x Kingston ValueRam 1GB DDR2 800mhz Module
1 x Microsoft XP Media Centre 2005 Remote Controller
1 x Samsung SH-S203P 20X S-ATA Lightscribe Black DVDRW
1 x Microsoft Vista Home Premium 32BIT Edition DVD