Media Server

Figment

jayme1 wrote: »

Pretty much yes, the Hub plays all the same files as the Live, and it also ahares files out via DLNA so you can then play the files an almost everything, I think with the Hub you have to put the files on it via USB storage rather than over the network, at least that's what some reviews say.

The manual says:

Step 3 - Connecting to Your Network
The media center can be connected to your home network so you can transfer files
back and forth from your networked computer to the media center, and access the
Internet and network storage using a wired or wireless network connection. A
network connection provides access to locally stored and online media content.

I think I'm going for the WDTV Live Hub as the media server and a 3TB WD My Book Live Personal Cloud Storage drive as a NAS backup. This would also mean I can get rid of both my small (250gig) NAS and 1TB USB External drive.

Figment

chris-j wrote: »

In respect DVDs, a reasonable time saving option is to get a media player which can mount ISO files. It is much quicker to create an ISO file of full DVD (retains menus, extras, etc) than to convert to compressed format.
Disks so cheap now I think it is good option as you don't need to bother about selecting what to keep and if you decide to convert later when you have time you can use the ISO file.

I believe the WDTV Live Hub supports ISO images, although I think I'd be inclined to convert the files, so I can strip out all the superfluous crap.

jayme1

Figment wrote: »

The manual says:

I think I'm going for the WDTV Live Hub as the media server and a 3TB WD My Book Live Personal Cloud Storage drive as a NAS backup. This would also mean I can get rid of both my small (250gig) NAS and 1TB USB External drive.

I heavily suspected it would share the drive on the network, I would have found it extremely odd if the WD TV Live would share an external drive but the Hub could not, it was Anandtech which said it couldn't.

I personally rip DVDs losslessly but it does keep everything in (ie all the trailers and warnings) you can skip them with the skip button easy enough but it's not exactly always ideal or pretty. Ripping to a simple video file does have benefits the obvious one is metadata you can add the artwork, who's in it, synopsis, ect. and you can more easily play them on devices like phones ect, but the downside is you have to convert them to be in that format (ie Handbrake if you want mp4) which depending on your computer may take a long while.

(this is only if you want them to mp4 from Handbrake, but if you rip the DVDs to their Video_TS folder then you can select the movie to convert from the ripped Video_TS folder with Handbrake, you can then queue 3 or 4 movies up to transcode over night, depends how powerful you computer is to do it this way, you might be able to convert directly to mp4 from the disc in a reasonable time)

Figment

I'll have to experiment with the different ripping methods to see if there's any discernible difference in quality v file size etc. I don't play videos on portable devices and at present I don't even have any music on my phone, so will most probably only be played on/through one TV. At the moment I cannot even see a need to stream to other devices.

To be honest I'm a bit of a heathen in the whole AV arena, and won't be aiming for the ultimate quality/picture definition/sound. Volume is seldom turned up much above about 25%, and at present we don't have external speakers or a sound system attached to the TV, as OH doesn't want too many bits or too many cables!

I've just ordered the Live Hub and 3TB My Book.

Figment

jayme1 wrote: »

For ripping your CDs I definitely recommend lossless as it keeps the sound quality, something MP3 can't, there are two main formats FLAC and Apple Lossless (ALAC) both produce the same filesize, FLAC is more 'universal' as a lotmore things can play them as opposed to ALAC which can't be played on a WD TV but can be on the likes of a Squeezebox or Sonos, any computer (with VLC) and iPod ect.
Good news is if you rip to one format and decide the other format was a better option then all you need to do is convert not re-rip.
EAC is the best to use to rip to FLAC.

What's best program to convert between formats?

jayme1

Figment wrote: »

What's best program to convert between formats?

For OS X you can use MAX or XLD, for Windows dBpoweramp, you can also go the long way and go from FLAC to WAV (using eg. foobar2000) then import the WAVs to iTunes to convert to Apple Lossless, (or reverse ALAC to WAV with iTunes, then WAV to FLAC using eg. foobar2000)

Figment

Would Audacity do it?

jayme1

Figment wrote: »

Would Audacity do it?

I don't know if Audacity has ALAC support, you can use Audacity to go FLAC to WAV or WAV to FLAC, they may have added ALAC support now it's open source I'm not sure though I've never used Audacity.

Figment

Thanks for your continued help in this

The available export options in Audacity are:

AIFF, WAV, GSM, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP2, M4A (AAC), AC3, AMR (narrow band), WMA

On a different note, I've just ripped a DVD to file as a test, but don't know which file to open to start playing the DVD

jayme1

Figment wrote: »

Thanks for your continued help in this

The available export options in Audacity are:

AIFF, WAV, GSM, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP2, M4A (AAC), AC3, AMR (narrow band), WMA

So if Audacity can open ALAC it can go ALAC to FLAC but you can't end up with ALAC from another format, you would have to use another program like iTunes to end up with ALAC

Figment wrote: »

On a different note, I've just ripped a DVD to file as a test, but don't know which file to open to start playing the DVD

If you've ended up with the Video_TS folder then if you have VLC installed right click on the Video_TS folder and then select 'Play with VLC'

To play the Video_TS folder on a WD TV then you navigate to the folder and instead of hitting 'OK' to open it (like you would navigating folders) you press 'Play' to play it.

No problem with the help I went through all this about a year ago, so if you can learn from some of the mistakes I made it's worth it.