Dipping toe into media server world. Advice welcome!

[JamesP1701]

Hi all,

I'm considering going down the route of having a media hard drive for my various Blu Rays/4k discs.

This is new territory for me, but I do like the idea of convenience.

I have a few question if people might be able to help:

1. How woukd I go about ripping the discs so that picture and audio quality is retained?
2. Presumably I can get a media box that will just plug into my av receiver (like my blu ray player.) Could someone steer me in the direction of such a piece of kit?
3. Anything else you feel I need to know?

With thanks in advance.

James

 

[bay73]

Hi James,

I recently dipped my toe into ripping my favourite films to my Synology DS216+ NAS.

I purchased an external drive (£140) from a very helpful seller on eBay (he is the main one that will come up if you search) and used the free MakeMKV software for ripping.

Once you get the hang of ripping it really is pretty simple.

I use Plex (again free) on the NAS as a media server and stream via the Plex app (you guessed it…free) on my 4K Apple TV.

Only two of the 100 films did not work - Inception and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Both were Blu-Ray but I bought them as UHD 4K and they ripped fine.

I do not own a UHD Blu-Ray player.

Picture quality and sound are very good. I had been told I would not get Dolby Vision outputting from the mkv files but one of the 4K Bond films (cannot remember which) displayed in DV on my LG OLED.

So my advice would be to give it a go (especially if you have a NAS and Apple TV).

 

[JamesP1701]

That’s really helpful, thank you.

My concern about streaming is whether there would be any loss of quality?

Is it possible to buy a device that I can plug straight into my AV Receiver (as I would a blu ray player) so I’m playing direct rather than streaming?

 

[bay73]

There may well be but not that I am aware of.

 

[dion 6]

That’s really helpful, thank you.

My concern about streaming is whether there would be any loss of quality?

Is it possible to buy a device that I can plug straight into my AV Receiver (as I would a blu ray player) so I’m playing direct rather than streaming?

As bay73 said above use MakeMKV to rip your movies and save them to a HDD this is your movie storage you then connect your HDD to your media player to play your movies your media player can be connected via hdmi directly to your avr. I use a vero 4k it plays 4k HDR10 + but if you what dolby vision play back you are looking at a zidoo or dune media player some of the more expensive ones have internal HDD's to store your movies on

Vero - OSMC

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Zidoo Z9X - High Performance Media Boxes - UK BASED - futeko.com