I've been trying to figure out what to do with my massive collection of DVDs. The size of my collection is ginormous, and since I've been pondering where I might be moving to at some point, I've been considering ways to get rid of the DVDs themselves, somehow.
I thought that someone might make a DVD jukebox, the same way Sony, et al, all used to make those CD jukeboxes that held like 100 or 200 CDs. That would be kinda spiffy, and would almost be worth picking up a couple to hold all the discs. But they don't.
Then I found Kaleidescape, which makes a cool product that rips the DVDs to a disc-array, and then makes them all available via a video interface. Also quite cool, but with a 4.4TB version chiming in at $22,000, it occurred to me that maybe there might be somewhat more economical solutions.
I mean, in reality, it doesn't take much.... you need a linux box, a nice DVI and/or HDMI capable video card, a nice audio card with digital output, a DVD drive (you could try to do the DVD-R thing, but I think that's a lot of work and definitely something "Version 2.0" like), and a shitload of disc, preferably in a RAID-5 or similar situation.
You could control it via web interface (ugly) or you would need some sort of IR control which could get piped into the DVD playback software.
How hard would this be? Has anyone seen anything like this in the open source world? It completely pisses on the CSS thing, but it's totally something that major consumers of DVDs would find extremely useful.
Well, the Roku box can act as a fairly good front end player, handles DTV and digital audio, is windows, mac and unix compliant, and at around $300 far cheaper. I have ripped a DVD and stored it on my server, and it does play back, but I've noticed some skipping over a wireless network. (Oddly, my main computer replays the video fine.)
Don't forget that each DVD equates to around 4GB of movie, and that doesn't include the extras. So figure a 120GB drive is going to hold less than 30 movies. Plan accordingly. Granted, building a cheapo unix box with a slew of high capacity disks and a network connection isn't that bad.
Sadly, I don't think you're going to find a lot of DVD carosels out there mostly because I don't think there's that much demand for them.
yet anyway.
Although, I'm betting there's a lot of folks who are like you.
I just don't understand people who buy DVDs. Why not rent them unless they are rare documentaries or the like that aren't available in rental shops?
I mean, realistically,how many times do you watch a single movie? On average I bet it's 1.05 times or so. Just rent the damn thing again if you want to watch it again.
Have you thought about ripping them to another format? Instead of 4.4G, you could only need ~1G. For under a 2 grand you can build a RAID protected 1TB server. would probably only take you a few weeks in your spare time (just putting a new disc in to be ripped every hour or so).
Or you could just buy what Sony is offering. Used 300DVD changers go for about $150-$200 on ebay. You'd need to do hacking to get an IR controler for your PC that would allow you to select the Discs from software. But that's not reinventing the wheel or anything. Well within your means.
Re-reding your comment again, I noticed you seem to think nobody makes the componet DVD Jukeboxes, but Sony has been making htem for years. The DVP-CX985V is currently shipping, and retails for $399.
Why not rent DVDs?
[a] You are limited to whatever selection your local video rental location -- which may or may not suck ass -- has in stock.
[b] If you happen to like a movie which is popular, it's entirely possible that after they get through the "guaranteed to be in stock or your rental is free" period of time, you might get yourself in the mood to watch a movie and find out that your local rental place doesn't have it in stock. Disappointing.
[c] Unless you like paying monthly fees for times even when you're NOT renting movies, you have to make sure that you return the movies by a deadline, etc., something I have been notoriously problematic with in the past (in fact, it's often been noted that I am so bad about returning movies that it actually IS more cost-effective for me to buy them outright than to rent them... even when I lived in an apartment that sat directly above the Blockbuster store, I was frequently late with returns).
With the DVP-CX985V, though, I'd still need *two* of them, just to account for my current collection of DVDs. That doesn't speak at all to what tomorrow might bring.
The ROKU-with-a-NAS thing might be an interesting way to go, and at least doesn't have me tying up two input devices on my reciever (and later a third maybe) for all the various changers.
What format would you recommend ripping them to that *doesn't* lose definition in the process? (and, can you recommend Mac software that does it? *grin*)
Well, I assumed you'd be ripping to Linux,since that's what you'd be building the server with. Of course there are no lossless formats to compress MPEG2, but DiVX is pretty damn close. I can't tell the differnce on my 19" LCD, but can't speak to what happens on a 65" RPTV.
You could always buy another HT Reciever, too. scaling a system to 1000 DVDs.... That's quite an issue to deal with, when you don't have 100K to play with (NetApp can give you a pretty nice NAS solution that with 8TB for around 40K nowadays. And it's platform agnostic)
check out mactheripper and/or ffmpegx
My fried has such a self-built system at home. He has (I think) 2-3 TBstorage at home.