[stephen_]

Catalogue all my Dvds so i can access them electronically ??

What kind of systems would i need ?

I want to be able to gain access to these in three rooms, either via Cat5e or wireless if need be.

Sorry for the daft questions but i am just learning.

Thanks

[sbowler]

Most use the "DVDprofiler" to catalogue there collections. To access them electronically, would that be from a HD on your pc?
Heres DVD profiler http://www.intervocative.com/

[stephen_]

Originally Posted by sbowler

To access them electronically, would that be from a HD on your pc?

Yip

Can these be compressed or would i need a few hard drives to store all these ??

[sbowler]

You would need about 9gig per film, uncompressed. DVD Shrink will compress to half of that so for every 20 discs you would need 100Gb 200 dvds 1Tb. so compressing is essential really.

[Neil Davidson]

There are quite a few packages designed to allow you to view DVDs on your PC. DVD Lobby is one that is nice but there are plenty of others. There is a nice media centre plugin that gives most of the capability of a £20k Kaleidoscope system!

I would reccomend trying to keep things uncompressed due to the hassle and time involved in transcoding the video in to other formats. Storage is relatively "cheap" and £500 would get you at 1TB in a NAS device that will allow you to stream the video over CAT5 without having a server switched on the whole time.

Neil

[stevedster]

I have the solution for you...

+

sorry I will stop this now hehe

[stephen_]

Originally Posted by ceenhad

There are quite a few packages designed to allow you to view DVDs on your PC. DVD Lobby is one that is nice but there are plenty of others. There is a nice media centre plugin that gives most of the capability of a £20k Kaleidoscope system!

I would reccomend trying to keep things uncompressed due to the hassle and time involved in transcoding the video in to other formats. Storage is relatively "cheap" and £500 would get you at 1TB in a NAS device that will allow you to stream the video over CAT5 without having a server switched on the whole time.

Neil

NAS Device ??

[Neil Davidson]

NAS = Network Attached Storage

Basically a drive caddy with enough smarts to let it run without being controlled by a host PC.

Neil

[TTT]

If I understand what you are asking correctly, then this will be of interest:

www.digitalfuturesolutions.co.uk

You put an Idyl in the first room, giving AV outputs to the first cinema system and (optionally) up to 16 audio-only outputs (often for a multiroom system). Each additional AV system or screen requires a Video Node for completely independent playback of the same content. Also, the video node will back up the content stored on the idyl so that it is saved from any HDD failure.

[baldrick]

Originally Posted by ceenhad

There is a nice media centre plugin that gives most of the capability of a £20k Kaleidoscope system!

The Media Center plug-in is very nice. You add you're ripped movies to the database of films and it will download all the info about the films, actors, genres, directors etc...

You can then browse a library made up from pictures of the movies (downloaded with the other info). Simply find the film you want and click 'play'...

For pure DVD cataloguing, if you're running an Apple then Delicious Library (?) is great. It's even better if you have an iSight as you simply hold the barcode of the DVD upto your camera and it will read it and add the film.....