My dad wants an HTPC...but with a catch. Need help

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kill4killin

Gawd
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Ok, so today I was telling my dad about my plans for making my beast P180 machine a smaller, more managable Qpack or MicroFly with 1TB of HDD space. I guess this peaked his interest because not 2 hours later he came to me and wanted to know if he could maybe get me to make him an HTPC to hook up to the home Theater downstairs in the basement. We have collected a very large DVD collection over the years and so he wanted to put in 1TB worth of HDD space so that he could put all the movies we have onto the hard drives of the computer and then we can store away all the DVDs in another room or in boxes even. However, here is the catch. He wants an interface like Windows Media Center, however he wants the videos to be able to be sorted by a ranking order rather than by name or date. I told him that there was no such option in windows media center so he asked me a rediculous question of "could I make him one that did it" well...no I said, but I think that Linux has a media center program that can do it, and that I would look into it and let him know. But here is my question, can either MytheTV or Freevo do it? Also, I know from my own DVD to HDD experience that ripping a DVD to a computer is no easy task and that even if I was able to instruct him on how to do it, or even if I just did it myself, that it rips it to a file that windows media center does not like. So, instead I was thinking I could just encode them into a hi-def AVI file format, but I also know from experience that it takes up to 3 hours/movie to encode dvds at hi-def quality...

So for those who have done this before...please help!
 
Use MCE and take a look at My Movies. It can sort by predetermined ratings such as IMDB ratings. You can also manually edit the data after it has been downloaded from imdb. The ratings scale is from 1-10.

http://www.mymovies.name/

Use AnyDVD to decrypt and then copy the Video_TS folder from the DVD's to a local folder on the HTPC.

c:/movies/Predator 2/Video_TS

Rinse and repeat.

Edit: "Ripping a DVD" consists of just copying the video_ts folder from the DVD to the computer.
 
yea, I know how to rip a DVD, the way I do it is with DVD decrypter but that is complicated...will mediacenter recognize just a VIDEO_TS folder and play it like a DVD?
 
Ok, wow I must be stupid or something...I am trying to add movies to "My Movies" but I can't figure out how to...I read that help file and the frequently asked questions...but when I open up the Media Center and go to My Movies, there is nothing there. I look and see if there is any option to add media, but I can't find anything...
 
Awesome, now I know how to add mvoes from a DVD to the HDD in the program and use it to play a dvd...but is there a way to add like AVI files and stuff I already have on my HDD into the collection? Because I can't find it in the manage my movies thing
 
Yep you can do that too and it also adds a feature that MCE doesn't have on it's own.

You can actually add titles that consists of several avi files (sound familiar?) and MCE will then play them 1 after the other when you play the movie through My Movies in MCE instead of My Videos.

There is no particular function in My Movies to add a certain media type. Instead you are specifying a folder.

So in the case of a DVD it's enough to point to:

c:\movies\dvd\predator

even though the movie is in "c:\movies\dvd\predator\video_ts" since MCE will autoplay the video_ts folder.

In the case of 1 or several avis just point My Movies again to the directory where the movie resides:

c:\movies\rips\Kung Pow (where the folder Kung Pow contains 1 or more video file types recognized by MCE)

Then My Movies will generate a playlist file with all the avi files in that folder and will simply play them in alphabetical order when you request the movie. Good for movies. Not good for TV Series. For TV Series and Anime I would stick with the My Videos function.

Sadly MCE kinda sucks at music videos. There is no "play all, shuffle all" function. :(

Then you get to do all the fun stuff like making MCE let you FF and REW in divx files, recognize file types like mkv and ts, etc... :)

If the computer is networked you can also add movies on other computers or network storage. Then you can also configure online radio in MCE, Youtube and Google video interfaces as well as tons of other stuff. TGB would be a good place to start. AVSforums is good too.

Hope this helps! Don't forget to add the covers!

I basically am forced to use My Movies because when I am going to watch a movie with my gf she inevitably asks... "what is it about?". Upon which I hand her the remote while mumbling to myself, "WTH... can't you watch a movie without knowing what it's about?"
 
GOT IT! sweet, thanks guys! Now...why does it give me a decoder error whenever I try to load the Folder with the VIDEO_TS folder in it?
 
Because you probably don't have a proper Mpeg2 decoder. Get Nvidia Purevideo or to begin with download a Cyberlink PowerDVD trial from the Cyberlink website.

Less people have trouble with PowerDVD than with Nvidia PureVideo. Some people will however say that PureVideo has a tad bit better image quality. Your mileage may vary. :)
 
kill4killin said:
I will get PowerDVD and try that, but does Nvidia PureVideo work if you have an ATI card?
Click to expand...

Yes it does.

IMO PowerDVD still looks like garbage for regular DVDs, it looks good for HD-DVD and Blueray though. I'd heavily suggest going with the Purevideo codec instead.
 
bleh, you have to pay for purevideo...forget that...maybe, but my dad says that he would rather not have to pay for things if a comparable product is available...we don't have HD anyway so it doesn't really matter THAT much I don't think. I can see if it was an HD picture but its not...
 
kill4killin said:
bleh, you have to pay for purevideo...forget that...maybe, but my dad says that he would rather not have to pay for things if a comparable product is available...we don't have HD anyway so it doesn't really matter THAT much I don't think. I can see if it was an HD picture but its not...
Click to expand...
If you're using Linux then it hardly matters since you can't run it. If you're using XP then... does $20 really matter all that much to you? Hell, I work my ass for a small pay check each week but even then $20 isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things.
 
Thats true...but its not my choice in the matter sadly. I will pitch the prices to him. He wants a quote on what it will cost him with all required software and hardware. So I will pitch him the options that there are in both categories and let him pick what he wants.

For an HTPC, that is running MCE I'm assuming 1GB of dual channel RAM will suffice for the machine with a Sempron processor. Any objections to that?
 
Yes it's enough. If you're looking to do as much on the cheap (software-wise) then you'll want to get a few things:
Dscaler5 MPEG2 codec
Media Portal or Xlobby
Media Player Classic
DVD Profiler
Add FFDShow if you'd like

First you rip the disc and catalog them with DVD Profiler which grabs (low res but you replace them manually) cover art as well as IMdb info. Put them into a folder structure like RA outlines earlier and then load the DVD Profiler database into MP or Xlobby. They'll display all of the cover art making it easy to choose what you want to watch and then it gives you more info on the movie once you click on it (window pops up with movie description and such). When you want to watch a movie the frontend (Media Portal or Xlobby) launches the movie inside of Media Player Classic and then once it's done you just hit exit and you get sent right back to the frontend app.

Notes: Media Portal includes it's own built in DVD/video player but whenever I tried to use it it would most likely crash first or act generally flaky; I didn't like it very much. That said I don't like Media Player Classic very much for this either. I don't like how it renders video oddly, I perfer Zoomplayer and think that it's well worth it's price ($25-30 I believe).

I use to use the Dscaler5 codec and it is almost as good as the Purevideo codec but there were times here and there where I would put a disc in to watch only for it not to work because theres no Macrovision support in Dscaler5. It didn't happen very often but when it did it was annoying; ripping the DVDs should avoid this problem anyways.

Something like that would be best for if you don't need an OS since you already have a copy laying around or something. If you need one then it would be best to get MCE (or Vista Home Premium in this case) since it's going to have all the parts needed (I believe Vista now comes with an MPEG2 codec built-in) ready to go right out of the box.
 
Random Access said:
titles that consists of several avi files (sound familiar?)
Click to expand...
lol
Sadly MCE kinda sucks at music videos. There is no "play all, shuffle all" function. :(
Click to expand...
I know!!! I totally want this too! The only thing I haven't tried is WMP can build video playlists....maybe there is a way to make video playlists play in MCE?

PS. Kill4killin shouldn't you be writing a Vista article? lol
 
They made a little write up in TGB on how play WMP video playlists in MCE and how to make WMP generate a new playlist on boot. Still no shuffle though. So you get to watch them in alphabetical order... yay. Tried it a long time ago. Don't use it anymore.

Which is why my D-Link 320 still has been allowed to live. Play all, shuffle all. Image quality isn't the greatest in the world... but hey... music videos. I'm not really going for the HD ones there.
 
Ok well the parts list can be found here for those wanting to look over the specs, the case is more of a price holder than anything until he picks one he likes so just sort of over look that. But I figured that the dual core processor would handle all the initial video encoding better than a Sempron would. And I use AutoGK to encode all my movies and its great because it allows you to cue jobs to process one after another so I will be able to set it to do enough to last for a week then when I come home on the weekends I can set it up to do another weeks worth of work. With all the movies we have its gunna take forever to encode all of these as it is and a Sempron was only gunna make that time longer.
 
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