I have 1,000s of Blu-Rays and DVDs - how to watch them via Apple TV?

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2844 posts

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#1982470 24-Mar-2018 11:00

gehenna:

@afe66 Ripping a DVD is one thing. Ripping a Blu-ray is a whole other story, especially if it's also being compressed. You're looking at 40GB+ for a single Blu-ray. That's up to 10x bigger than a DVD, so you'd imagine also up to 10x the time it takes to rip a DVD.

Blu-rays have a higher data density, so the time taken to rip does not increase linearly with data size. Encoding time will increase, assuming you're preserving the output resolution, as there is 4x more image data to encode. I doubt that's linear either however, as motion detection etc. will also impact overall efficiency.

freitasm

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#1982493 24-Mar-2018 11:44

@KiwiTT:

I was able to rip a DVD to M4V format, but when I placed it in a USB stick and plugged it into my Blu-Ray player the film expanded to fill the screen. This made the aspect ratio wrong as the characters were too tall.

Just a reminder that New Zealand copyright law allows you to rip you music CDs but as it stands today it is still against the law to rip DVDs and Blu-Ray discs.

driller2000

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#1982531 24-Mar-2018 12:37

If you have that many - as others have suggested, I would just use a Bluray player - and perhaps rip the ones you love the most as a back-up.

And for other content you don't have - just get one of the better streamers Nvidia Shield, Apple TV 4k so you can access Netflix, Amazon, Lightbox etc.

lchiu7

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#1982535 24-Mar-2018 13:00

fearandloathing:

lchiu7:

Given most BD's have DTS audio (sometimes with a Dolby Digital track) then your Plex server is going to be transcoding audio much of the time with potential audio degradation or when you rip the BD you are going to have to perform a DTS to AC-3 transcode to avoid this.

I'm no audiophile, transcoding of audio from DTS to AC3 is very low CPU (Synology NAS) and wouldn't let that stop you, it will still be surround sound.

Since that requires a decode from a lossy format with proprietary compression algorithms (DTS) to an intermediate format (probably lossless) and then back to a lossy format (AC-3) with different compression algorithms, then audio degradation is bound to occur. The key point is, can you heard it and do you care?

I suspect the current generation who consume audio and video content on phones are not going to care or notice (certainly neither of my children care at all which is disappointing :-( )

Also the ATV cannot decode any of the new audio codecs like Dolby Atmos or DTS:X so you are not going to have immersive audio after the rip. But then see the sentence above - a tradeoff between quality and convenience.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

lchiu7

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#1982536 24-Mar-2018 13:03

SirHumphreyAppleby:

gehenna:

@afe66 Ripping a DVD is one thing. Ripping a Blu-ray is a whole other story, especially if it's also being compressed. You're looking at 40GB+ for a single Blu-ray. That's up to 10x bigger than a DVD, so you'd imagine also up to 10x the time it takes to rip a DVD.

Blu-rays have a higher data density, so the time taken to rip does not increase linearly with data size. Encoding time will increase, assuming you're preserving the output resolution, as there is 4x more image data to encode. I doubt that's linear either however, as motion detection etc. will also impact overall efficiency.

I'll have to admit the only HD quality discs I have ripped entirely are my small (about 40) HD-DVD discs since that technology lost the HD format war and rather than keep a player around to play those titles, it was more convenient to rip and put on the server.

For my large BD collection I prefer just to flick through the titles in the book case to find something to watch since I have BD players and a 4K player in both of my HT setups.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

gehenna

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#1982548 24-Mar-2018 14:23

lchiu7:

since that technology lost the HD format war

I'm still bitter about that.

lchiu7

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#1982549 24-Mar-2018 14:30

gehenna:

lchiu7:

since that technology lost the HD format war

I'm still bitter about that.

I hedged my bets and bought both the Toshiba HD-DVD player (from the US) and a PS3. The PS3 has since died and been replaced, the Toshiba is working but sitting in a closet.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

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KiwiTT

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#1982753 25-Mar-2018 10:01

Not sure about the sanity of doing this "ripping", as many of my DVDs are old enough to be even listed on the Netflix free to watch.

freitasm

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#1982777 25-Mar-2018 10:51

You will find that titles enter and leave Netflix every month. They don't have permanent licenses. It is more likely you will find older movies alone included in Amazon Prime Video.

KiwiTT

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#1982834 25-Mar-2018 12:30

freitasm: You will find that titles enter and leave Netflix every month. They don't have permanent licenses. It is more likely you will find older movies alone included in Amazon Prime Video.

Seems like it - https://www.justwatch.com/nz/provider/amazon-prime-video

Paul1977

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#1983577 26-Mar-2018 15:58

I've considered they idea of a NAS to rip my BDs to, but I would not want to compress them. For the number of BDs I have this is probably doable, but when I make the move to 4K, how big will an uncompressed UHD-BD rip be?

SirHumphreyAppleby

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#1983587 26-Mar-2018 16:11

Paul1977:

I've considered they idea of a NAS to rip my BDs to, but I would not want to compress them. For the number of BDs I have this is probably doable, but when I make the move to 4K, how big will an uncompressed UHD-BD rip be?

I only have four titles. The films themselves range in size from 45.15GB to 79.98GB, mean 58.94GB. MKV, video and primary audio tracks only. All originally from film, with minimal noise reduction... i.e. lots of grain.

Paul1977

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#1983614 26-Mar-2018 16:29

SirHumphreyAppleby:

Paul1977:

I've considered they idea of a NAS to rip my BDs to, but I would not want to compress them. For the number of BDs I have this is probably doable, but when I make the move to 4K, how big will an uncompressed UHD-BD rip be?

I only have four titles. The films themselves range in size from 45.15GB to 79.98GB, mean 58.94GB. MKV, video and primary audio tracks only. All originally from film, with minimal noise reduction... i.e. lots of grain.

Not as bad as I was expecting, thanks.

cadman

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#1983645 26-Mar-2018 17:09

gehenna:

lchiu7:

since that technology lost the HD format war

I'm still bitter about that.

I still haven't got over BETAMAX losing to VHS...

JimmyH

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#1984454 27-Mar-2018 18:27

KiwiTT:

Not sure about the sanity of doing this "ripping", as many of my DVDs are old enough to be even listed on the Netflix free to watch.

It's tedious, but not that hard (or "insane" in my view).

I just put a stack beside my computer, and dropped a few in per evening while I did other things. Even if you just do 3-4 a night (say one when you get home, one while you surf GZ, one before dinner, one after dinner), it's surprising how fast you can chew through even a large stack of discs. It's not like you have to sit there ripping one disk after another and doing nothing else while you wait for them to finish.

I did well over 1,000 DVDs (partly purchased, partly 15+ years worth of a DVD recorder hooked up to Sky) and 6-700 CDs that way. It took a while, but it wasn't terribly onerous.

Compression can be done unattended in batches (I used Vidcoder) as well, if you want to do that.

Once done then having everything on a networked server, with metadata and cover art and accessible from portable devices and either TV, is well worth it in my experience. High Wife Acceptance Factor, and really easy to locate and play material.

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