Blu Ray streaming via gigabit ethernet?

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RickD

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#30749 20-Feb-2009 07:23

I was thinking of getting a D-Link gigabit NAS and ripping some of my Blu Ray discs to isos and storing them on it for playback through the network.

Has anyone tried this? I'm assuming gigabit ethernet will be fast enough (switch and HTPC are both gb)? But I was wondering wether the NAS would handle it, my old 10/100 IDE NAS would struggle a bit when watching a DVD iso off it.

sbiddle

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#196843 20-Feb-2009 07:58

It really depends on the throughput on the NAS.

100Mbps ethernet is perfecetly adequate of streaming Bly Ray bitrates, the issue is that many cheap NAS units have extremely poor throughput speeds and really struggle.

garvani

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#196853 20-Feb-2009 08:49

I have a dlink dns-323 although i haven't streamed blu-ray iso's i have had no problems with streaming dvd iso's, 8gb mkv's etc etc. The throughput of these is fantastic as the reviews state, im only connected to it via a 100mb router but seem to recall copying to it somewhere in the vacinity of 16mbs, someone else may be more assistance with the bluray side of things.

stevenz

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#196859 20-Feb-2009 09:23

Consumer-level NAS units have poor network throughput. If you can find one that does better than about 18-20MB/Sec, even when it has a gigabit LAN port, then it's a rare beast, one with 100Mbps is going to give you about 12MB/sec throughput, enough to stream Blu-Ray (they need at most 40Mbps).

I was going to use a Taurus NAS as a substitute file-server for shifting immense amounts of files about and got one with a gigabit LAN, turned out to only be fractionally faster than a 100Mbps unit, and after some research it turns out that's about the norm. Fine for media streaming, not so good if you want a fast fileserver! :)

You'd be better off getting a cheap normal PC if you want to shift lots of data quickly, and using that so you get decent network throughput. Gigabit ethernet should be good for around 120MB/Sec which is more than any HDD you're going to put into the system is likely to be able to supply in a continuous stream.

RickD

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#197101 21-Feb-2009 13:25

Thanks, I might as well give it a go, if it doesn't work I'm sure the NAS will be useful anyway. I didn't really want to go with the old PC as a server option because of size/power usage etc.

A while ago I remember seeing a thread/site that listed the size of many/all Blu Ray releases, so you could get an idea of what the ISO size of the disc would be. Does anyone know of this site? Haven't managed to find it on google yet.

Another quick question, is there any alternative to AnyDVD for creating Blu Ray ISOs yet (that will playback with PDVD or TMT)? I don't need to remove copy protection because my GFX card and LCD both support HDCP [I think...?].

mark2c

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#198101 25-Feb-2009 22:20

Blu-rays backed up using AnyDVD HD to a Thecus N5200 NAS play back fine across the network to my HTPC using the TMT player. The network is gigabit and the Thecus is dual connected (load balanced). Hope that this is helpful.

lchiu7

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#198318 27-Feb-2009 07:52

RickD:

Another quick question, is there any alternative to AnyDVD for creating Blu Ray ISOs yet (that will playback with PDVD or TMT)? I don't need to remove copy protection because my GFX card and LCD both support HDCP [I think...?].

Well if you have a PS3 (or a friend with one) you can install Swiss Army Knife on the PS3. It can backup (and retain the encryption) to a USB drive an iso image of the title. Note because of the FAT32 limitations you will need to format your USB drive in EXT3 format and then install a reader on your PC to handle this file format.

The iso can also be created over the network if your PS3 is so connected so you could write the iso directly to your PC

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