RE: Basic questions about "video streaming"

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>    1. There's lots of file formats out there - Which is best (I
need
>       "basic quality" rather than hi-def)

I rip to ISO images and don't recompress anything - that way the quality
stays as per the original. Years ago I used to extract just the main
feature
and throw away any unwanted extras / audio / subtitle tracks to save space
but now storage is cheap and I generally now rip all menus / soundtracks /
subtitles / features / extras remain intact. Main reason for this is just
laziness as it means where you have movies that use occasional forced
subtitles (such as the start of "Hunt For Red October" where they
subtitle
Connery et al's dodgy Russian with English) then you don't have to think
about stuff like that. I use ISO's because everything is contained within a
single file (I used to rip to a /MovieName/VIDEO_TS/ folder structure but
batch converted *EVERYTHING* over to ISOs when I migrated my server to
Windows Home Server).

>    2. What's the best ripping software?

IMO you can't go wrong with AnyDVD / CloneDVD - they're updated regularly
to
accommodate new protection varients etc. and just work without p*ss*ng
about.

>    3. What's the best way to playback the ripped discs - Dedicated
>       "hardware" box (Xbox, PSP3 or purpose designed
"box") or windows
>       PC (I know nothing about Linux so please don't point me in that
>       direction) and suitable video card/application?

Mark loves the Mac Mini and Plex because it looks sexy - I've been playing
with the PopCorn Hour A110 (which someone on here had mentioned previously)
and for what I need it's bang on the ticket. It's silent, it's completely
solid state (although you can add a hard disc to it for local storage if
you
want), its video decoding is completely hardware and doesn't glitch or
break
up (unlike the completely software based decoder in Plex), it has HDMI /
component / s-video / composite video outputs and costs a third of what a
Mac Mini does. (It also doesn't have an optical drive which for me is a
good
thing.)

>    4. On average, how big (in GB) is an average ripped DVD? I've got
>       about 1TB spare on my NAS so how many DVDs will it hold?

I'm averaging 4.6Gb a movie...

Phil



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