perfect world

[rhaeckl]

Planning on upgrading my AV receiver and speakers come Christmas time. I would also like to have my dvd's on library through my computer so that I can view them through my bravia 46". Can this be done? Is this done through a wi-fi set up on your AV or am I way confused here??

thanks for the help!!

 

[fmw]

If the computer will be a part of the home theater, then you would need a video card with the right output (DVI as an example) and you would need a sound card with a digital output so that you can transmit Dolby to the receiver. Those cards would connect to the TV and receiver respectively.

If the computer is somewhere else, where you can't connect it directly, you would need some sort of media server that would connect to the computer via a wired or wireless network. The media server would, in turn, connect to the AV components.

I do this with audio. I have my music on hard drives on my local area network. My media server is a Thin Devices Squeezebox that connects to one of the network switches via a wireless connection. The Squeezebox is then connected to my receiver. It is an excellent setup. I have over 1000 CD's encoded as 320 MP3's and I can access them instantly via remote control. The Squeezebox would not be an answer for you, however, since it is for music only.

 

[davidtwotrees]

Can he store his dvd collection on a computer?! I have an Escient Fireball music server. I just checked the esceint site and they don't offer a dvd server that puts the dvds on a hard drive. They offer a dvd manager that works with a mega changer dvd player, sony ....777...dvdes??? and manages your library. Aren't dvd files to large to store a dvd library on the hard drive?

 

[avaserfi]

Can he store his dvd collection on a computer?! I have an Escient Fireball music server. I just checked the esceint site and they don't offer a dvd server that puts the dvds on a hard drive. They offer a dvd manager that works with a mega changer dvd player, sony ....777...dvdes??? and manages your library. Aren't dvd files to large to store a dvd library on the hard drive?

If you have a big enough hard drive which isn't too hard it would be pretty easy. On average from my experience if you are ripping a movie a DD track will range from 450-600mb and a DTS track will be around 1gig with the movie itself running around 3-5gig (uncompressed). So you can can easily store 20+ movies per 100gig on a HD. Storage is dirt cheap now too, I bought a 500gig external HD for less than 150 a couple months ago and internal drives are normally cheaper. So if you are willing to take the time to rip your collection and break some stupid laws while at it the job wouldn't be too hard to do.

 

[rhaeckl]

I like all the suggestions, but I'm wondering if there is a better way to library and view dvd's. Do you have any other thoughts or suggestions on how to achieve not only user friendliness, but also quality during play back.

 

[OttoMatic]

I like all the suggestions, but I'm wondering if there is a better way to library and view dvd's. Do you have any other thoughts or suggestions on how to achieve not only user friendliness, but also quality during play back.

Archiving movies on HDD is user friendly and the playback quality is the same as if you were watching it from your DVD player (assuming you have the correct connections). If you have a DVD player in the PC, you can also watch movies from directly from that device.

Use something like PowerDVD or TheaterTek to play back DVDs. There are many options for video and audio. I know you can get a remote for PowerDVD, and you probably can as well for TheaterTek. It's all pretty cool.

I believe PowerDVD supports HD-DVD and BluRay as well.

If you need to tweak your video card's output to values that are outside its normal range, you can use another program called PowerStrip. It will allow you to get just the right display resolution for your particular display device.

Of course, and as noted, you have to have the correct connections for this. In general, to watch movies, you are going to have to connect the PC to the TV and the receiver/preamp. The quality of the audio and video will be limited by the video card and audio card. I would very much suggest connecting digitally for the audio (one way or another). There are also a variety of ways to connect to PC to the TV. You can go HDMI/DVI or VGA or component. Or any lesser means, such as S-video or composite (these would be last resorts in any case).

You can also use TV cards to demod a cable TV signal and record it to your HDD. The TV is then behaves something like a DVR or "Tivo."

Good luck!

 

[agarwalro]

I remember using MakBit Virtual CD/ DVD a long time back when I was a hardcore PC gamer. Basically the software copies an image of the CD or DVD to the HDD. Then you can select which image to "mount" into the virtual CD-DVD drive. Pretty much eliminates the need for the physical media once the image is created.

There are several other softwares out there that do the same/ similar thing.