Ripping dvds/bluray for personal use

twopointfour1980

Hi all

As title says, I'd like to digitise my dvd and bluray and music collections for use at home through my TV.

I guess two main options would be burn to hard drive which then connects to TV via usb/hdmi.

Other option could be to setup a home server to store and then stream on TV or via Sonos for music

Can anyone recommend a good external drive to use? Also, if I rip to a hard drive will it talk to my TV for films or will I need to convert them further?

I've done some reading and research but still a bit confused by some it.
I'm guessing using external drive would be cheaper than home server setup but could use server for storing photos and music and films and be stored from anywhere?

Thanks

flashg67

DVD Fab will rip both and give you just the movie only & rips DVD & Bluray but isn't free. BDlot DVD Iso master will rip DVD only but is free, but only dos the full disc

I rip to ISO to keep the original quality and use a cheap small PC connected to my TV via hdmi to 'play' them using the free VLC media player. The isos are stored on a 4 tb external HDD - I've a few of various brands. 

facade

MakeMKV will rip the dvd/bluray to a single chaptered MKV file*, you can select just the English soundtracks.

Then use handbrake, on a quality of 18 or less  to reduce the mkv to 10GB or so (about 12Mb/s), or leave the original

Store them on a portable harddrive, most TVs will play them directly, or stream from your PC with Plex or similar..

(I think handbrake preserves pgs subtitles, you can always add them back in though with MKVtoolnix)

*You can name the chapters with MKVtoolnix, very useful for music blurays

GT60

Hi Ya i have used this in the past for copying DVD's  https://www.redfox.bz/en/anydvdhd.html
I think it was recommended on here years ago 

Neil_Jones

twopointfour1980 said:

Hi all

As title says, I'd like to digitise my dvd and bluray and music collections for use at home through my TV.

I guess two main options would be burn to hard drive which then connects to TV via usb/hdmi.

Other option could be to setup a home server to store and then stream on TV or via Sonos for music

Can anyone recommend a good external drive to use? Also, if I rip to a hard drive will it talk to my TV for films or will I need to convert them further?

I've done some reading and research but still a bit confused by some it.
I'm guessing using external drive would be cheaper than home server setup but could use server for storing photos and music and films and be stored from anywhere?

Thanks

MakeMKV and Handbrake will do the job.

You could an also make use of a NAS drive, which will be cheaper (to buy and run) than a proper server which is pretty much overkill anyway just to be a file server.  If you're not fussed about performance of the NAS you can do this with a Raspberry Pi 4, a mobile 2.5" USB drive and OpenMediaVault.

Bonhomie

Unless, you are ripping them to a specific quality, simply download already ripped media. As long as they are the same as what you own, there isn't a moral issue.... it's much less labour intensive, it's cheaper and it's quicker.
The advantage, for me, of doing this, is that I can keep a copy in the Cloud that can be accessed from anywhere in the world with an appropriately fast Internet connection. That way I can stream/play anything I have stored in the Cloud, with the likes of KODI. I can also choose to download it from the Cloud in order to play offline.

For a single Blu-ray, you can spend hours. Ripping, compressing...

twopointfour1980

Bonhomie said:

Unless, you are ripping them to a specific quality, simply download already ripped media. As long as they are the same as what you own, there isn't a moral issue.... it's much less labour intensive, it's cheaper and it's quicker.
The advantage, for me, of doing this, is that I can keep a copy in the Cloud that can be accessed from anywhere in the world with an appropriately fast Internet connection. That way I can stream/play anything I have stored in the Cloud, with the likes of KODI. I can also choose to download it from the Cloud in order to play offline.

For a single Blu-ray, you can spend hours. Ripping, compressing...

Thanks all for your suggestions. A NAS drive was the preferred option from what was being suggested until...

Bonhomie - can you elaborate please? I hadn't thought of the idea of downloading for movies I already own ( I never have downloaded stuff for copyright concern and also security reasons - perhaps the old days of virus infested downloads of Pirate Bay are gone?) and then storing in the cloud.

Where do you download from and what cloud solution do you use to store larger files? Would like them to be decent enough in that if i wanted to watch on my tv upstairs that it felt like i was watching a dvd, not a grainy, bad quality version 

[Deleted User]

Plex server is a great choice for this - takes a bit of setting up but soon pays off in terms of what you can you it for, and a NAS for storing your movies. 

You've not said what your budget is but you can do all this from £100 - £1000+ depending on what type of setup you want.

£100 SoC computer (like Raspberry PI but they are expensive at the moment) and a 1TB hard disk will get you a basic setup.

I run Plex on a £150 2nd hand Dell Optiplex 3080 Micro Form Factor i3-10100T - tiny thing, sips elec like a laptop and is powerful enough to stream 7x 4K streams. That is paired up with 16TB NAS which will hold about 3000 movies depending on quality.

For the downloads not sure you will get a direct response on that from this forum and I wouldn't recommend torrenting either because although you are downloading a copy of a movie you own, you are also sharing it when download which can be a breach of copyright.

But if you are interested then do some research on these 100% legal applications called Radarr, Sonarr, Prowlarr, Qbittorrent & Sabnzbd for example.

Bonhomie

twopointfour1980 said:

Bonhomie said:

Unless, you are ripping them to a specific quality, simply download already ripped media. As long as they are the same as what you own, there isn't a moral issue.... it's much less labour intensive, it's cheaper and it's quicker.
The advantage, for me, of doing this, is that I can keep a copy in the Cloud that can be accessed from anywhere in the world with an appropriately fast Internet connection. That way I can stream/play anything I have stored in the Cloud, with the likes of KODI. I can also choose to download it from the Cloud in order to play offline.

For a single Blu-ray, you can spend hours. Ripping, compressing...

Thanks all for your suggestions. A NAS drive was the preferred option from what was being suggested until...

Bonhomie - can you elaborate please? I hadn't thought of the idea of downloading for movies I already own ( I never have downloaded stuff for copyright concern and also security reasons - perhaps the old days of virus infested downloads of Pirate Bay are gone?) and then storing in the cloud.

Where do you download from and what cloud solution do you use to store larger files? Would like them to be decent enough in that if i wanted to watch on my tv upstairs that it felt like i was watching a dvd, not a grainy, bad quality version 

There are many places from which you can source media. Whilst you may own the media you wish to download, some might not. I don't want to be seen encouraging the general public to do so. So I won't post anything here.
As to your second question, there are services that process the download for you, in so that you won't ever be uploading anything, with regard to the assertion by tallmansix that you could potentially be sharing if utilising Torrents. In this case you won't be sharing anything. You will simply be presented with a download/streaming link, which you can use directly or process with the likes of KODI.
This way you can have streaming and offline access to all of your media. There is no quality restriction that will affect your viewing. If the media was released in 4K, then 4K will be available etc