Video Storage DVD player

[Whimsical]

Been thinking of how to store DVD's on board and power consumption while watching.
May have found a solution. Just bought one of these, $350 Aus from Dick Smith Electronics.
LaCie - LaCinema Premier - USB 2.0 Multimedia Hard Disk

Have converted some DVD's to various formats such as Dvx and have found the result at under one gig per movie to be quite acceptable when viewed on a 32" LCD so should be good on a 21" lcd on the boat. At 750 meg per file it will store 600 DVD's.
Not sure of the power consumption yet but I would expect it to be pretty good as it would only have a small processor and limited graphics. Runs on 12v and the adaptor is only rated at 1.2 A so probably about 7 watts.

Mike

[Cowboy Sailer]

I think that I understand that you store the DVD content on the usb removable hard drive while at home and running from the ac power mains. How long does it take to store an hour of video program on the usb hard drive? Then when you watch the video on your boat only the TV and removable hard drive are powered up and the removable hard drive takes a lot less power than a optical DVD reader. Am I understanding your setup? Sounds great!

[knottybuoyz]

What software do you need to rip the DVD's Mike? Have you tried MPEG formats? I tried ripping DVD's yrs ago but never had any luck. The idea sounds interesting! Hmmmm? "Hey Honey! Did you see this?"

[hellosailor]

Mike, I'm surprised you can rip them down that small and still enjoy the quality. I find that even ripping a conventional "9"GB DVD down to "5"GB leaves some pixellation on a small hi-res (1900x1425) screen...but then again, that's also higher res than even a 1048i-HD set so maybe I'm looking at the wrong end of things.<G>

FWIW watching a movie from a hard drive instead of a dvd drive is supposed to be way more power efficient, regardless of everything else.

Rick, if you search for "DVD Shrink" that's one of the programs available free that can re-code DVDs to smaller size files.

[Whimsical]

Haven't had much time to play with it yet. It will playback Vob's (MPEG 2 files), MPEG 4, Divx, AVI and some others. I use Shrink to rip from DVD, with DVD43 running in the background to remove encryption. I used Win AVI to convert to any of the above. I have only tried cartoons at this stage as my 5yo wants to try it out first but the quality at 750Mb from the orig 4.3 Gig seems very good using either Avi or Divx.
It is my intention to use it with a 21" Tv on the boat, on a big screen it would probably be less impressive.

hellosailor I use Shrink to extract just the movie and discard the rest. The movie is always under 5 Gig. Shrinking down to 50% with an output file type of VOB is usually pretty dismal so I was only expecting to get about 120 movies on the box but out of curiosity I tried the other formats and so far have been pleasantly surprised but time will tell.

Cowboy Sailer The time is taken up with converting to the Divx format, copying it to the drive is via USB and is no different to any other external hard drive. WIN AVI has a batch node so you could do a heap overnight. First Shrink the DVD's to the hard drive and then let them all run. Getting 500 movies on the box will be a fairly serious time commitment though. I usually shrink in the background, maybe 5 mins to set it up then up to 1 hour shrinking. The conversion seems about 2 hours but only 10 mins to set up a whole batch. It is only hooked to the PC while copying files to it, it then has a tv onscreen menu to select the playback just like a video or PVR.

I will try to get to measuring the power draw over the weekend

Mike

[witzgall]

I think this gadget is worth looking into. Best feature is that it can play ISO files.

Macpower / Home / Home Entertainment / Multimedia / TVisto

There is a portable version also.

Chris

[David M]

This is the ultimate in DVD or Blu-Ray backup software that can be burned in the original resolution to another Blu-Ray or DVD disk or copied to your hard drive. It also strips away any copy protection. You cant buy it in this country and to be legal you will have to do your ripping 200 miles offshore because it violates the DMCA. So use it with discretion and never steal movies. It can be used legally depending on where you are so mentioning this should not violate any terms of this forum.

I have been using it to backup my movie library onto a 1Tb drive for that day when I can take off over the horizon. The software works fine. That will beat having racks and racks of CD's and DVD's onboard.

SlySoft AnyDVD HD I have to say this is some REALLY nice software. Nothing gets in the way of doing what you want to do. You do not need to be a computer geek to use it either. Its all very intuitive.

Phillips has an excellent burner for this: Philips Computers - SPD7000 Blu-Ray Disc Writer - SPD7000

[Whimsical]

Still have not spent a lot of time with the box but I think Dvx files about 2 gig are the way to go. Reasonable quality if tv is less than 26".
A mate claimed mine so I have replaced it with a Mvix MX-780HD player with a 1 terrabyte drive. This sucker has 802.11G wireless and 10/100 lan built in. It also has a USB host port which means you can plug a USB device such as another hard drive or even a dvd player and use it through the box without a pc.

Mike

[waterworldly]

Where did the 12V adaptor come from, you or them?

[Whimsical]

Originally Posted by waterworldly

Where did the 12V adaptor come from, you or them?

If you mean me the adaptor comes with the device. I don't know how they will get on if used directly off the batt supply but battery to 12v converters are cheap.

Mike

[rdempsey]

Movie ripping has come a long way in the last few years. Properly done a movie will look excellent at a size of 700 Megs. Thats with stereo sound only, but how many of us have a real Dolby setup on our boats?
I bought a 500 Gig harddrive and an external USB case for $120. Thats over 600 movies! Then I watch them on the laptop.
K.I.S.S. principle.