ISO files to play on tv

[mt59102]

Hello
I would like to rip my DVD and blu ray discs to hard drives and play the on my hd tv. What is the best way to do this? Laptop or is there a cheaper way. And if lap top what software and specs do I need?
Thanks

 

[Hawk]

There are many ways you can play dvd and blu-ray, laptop is one option, you can also use android box or similar or build multimedia platform.
I use android box, total cost $ 41.

 

[mt59102]

Does a android box mount a ISO or does it just play it? Have no experience with them.
Thanks

 

[Mr Cron]

I guess there are a few ways. A lot of people seem to use things like PowerDVD with an ISO. You have to mount the ISO as a drive, Red Fox's Virtual CloneDrive allows this.

Personally on computers I use VLC which can play DVD with full menu support and some level of BluRay menu support which is getting better with time (though you can select individual Titles on the BluRay ISO easily). Or Kodi has similar support level for DVD and BluRay playback. Certainly unencrypted ISO's work fine, after RedFox AnyDVD's has been used to create them. Kodi has a very TV friendly interface.

On my TV, I use a OpenELEC, which is a single function Linux distro that boots straight into Kodi. People use various boxes for this, from Raspberry Pi's, Intel NUC's etc with a suitable media center etc People also just put Kodi onto Amazon Fire devices (though I'm not sure if all these Amazon devices can handle BluRay bandwidths for 1080p).

You can do an OpenElec solution probably for maybe $80 - $90.