Playing backed up movies from the network.

[h4rm0ny]

Hi,

I didn't know where else to ask this question and narrowing down the Google results when I'm not sure what I'm looking for didn't go very well. But I use AnyDVD HD for some of this and people here will know so...

I would like to set up a server at home that stores all my media, so it can be accessed by different machines in the house. This includes both regular DVDs and HD-DVD and BluRay discs.

I have been able to rip unprotected ISOs using HD DVD as well as extract the files themselves if I choose. I've even managed to convert a HD DVD (so I could play it with PowerDVD) using ClownBD. But I don't know what is best for storing on my server or even if I what I want to do will work well.

My network is a 100Mbps home network with a standard ADSL-router. I understand that the media files get decoded into the video and sound... What do I want to do? Do I want to have an .iso stored on the server and mount the server drive as a network drive and then play the .iso in PowerDVD like that? Do I want to instead do the same thing with the media files themselves? Do I want to "play" the files (iso or the actual media files) on the remote machine and somehow stream the resulting picture across to my viewing PC, e.g. with VLC? If I do something like the latter, where does the decent graphics card need to be? Is the server sending something that needs to be decoded by the graphics card at the viewing PC end so that's where it should be... ? Or is the server decoding things itself (so using the graphics card at its end) and sending decoded audio and video that my viewing PC then just displays without effort?

As you can tell, I'm not even sure what questions I should be asking. And I know that the answers might be very technical and involved. I'll appreciate any replies as I'm really just trying to get an idea first of how you would do such a thing and how it works. Or even if it's possible. For example, would I need to buy a Gigabit router to get better bandwidth for HD content?

If anyone can advise me on where to look for these answers or, even more marvellously, can advise, it would be a big help to me.

Many thanks,

Harmony.

[h4rm0ny]

Sorry for posting in the wrong forum. I wasn't sure where to put it and as it concerned software as well as hardware, I went with AnyDVD HD, since that was what I was getting my rips out of.

Apologies,

H.

[Stormcrow]

You have some options.

Store the ISOs on a server, and simply map the ISO share on your 'viewing' PC, as (say) the Z: drive.

Then have Virtual Clone Drive mount the remote ISO on the local 'viewing' machine. The ISO then appears as a virtual BD drive on your local machine, and any player software will play it, in as much as it ever can.

I've done this and it works fine, on a gigabit network.
Not tried a 100Mbit, but should be fine if the switch is up to it.

Also, you may be interested in the new Popcorn Hour C200, which will mount remote BD ISOs.

--
SC

[jamesthebard]

From blu-ray.com:

According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps)...

The max bandwidth specified for playing a BD movie is ~54Mbps. 100Mbps Ethernet should be able to handle the amount of data travelling from the ISO to wherever it may go raw.

As long as you have software that will play a remote ISO (or mount remote files) you should be good to go.

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Store the ISOs on a server, and simply map the ISO share on your 'viewing' PC, as (say) the Z: drive.

It makes managing movies/television shows much easier with a centralized computer that holds all that wonderful footage. I'm a big fan o' RAID, cheap HDDs, and Plex.

[Adbear]

The max bandwidth for a single stream is 54mbps, but when playing back PiP it can increase above that

[h4rm0ny]

Thanks for all the replies. It's particularly good to know that someone has already tried this approach and had it work for them. I should be able to mount the remote .iso as a drive. I'm putting a new hard drive for such media in my home server this weekend, so I'll try all this then.

I have a slight concern about the bandwidth required. Although my home network is 100Mbps, I've never actually seen it perform at that. When copying large files from machine one to another, it seems to come in substantially below that. Perhaps that is just a problem with speed of writing files, or somesuch?

I'll try it out and report back, anyway.

Thanks,

H.