Hi,

 

Hopefully someone can clarify a few points for me before I launch into an expensive and futile project!  I'm looking to build a media centre PC based around Windows 7 (x64).  I have been using the vista media centre with AnyDVD HD but as of yet, not tested with a BD. 

 

My plan is to Raid5 six 1.5tb drives and dump my whole DVD collection (and moving forward, BD collection) to the hard disk.  The few DVD's I've tried to playback from the dump on hard disk so far work a treat.I've been reading about media center's lack of native BD support, and the need to install a 3rd party player (Power DVD etc).  How will this work when playing back from disk.  I guess an appropriate player will still be needed to play back the content? 

 

Any advice for the most media centre friendly way of doing this?  If it makes any difference, I'm intending to build my system around the Asus P5E-VM HDMI motherboard with six 1.5tb drives in a Raid 5, and a decent Intel quad core of some kind and buckets of Ram.  I'll feed the audio and video from the HDMI into my Onkyo 876 and let that deal with the rest.

Any opinions greatly appreciated!

1- most up-to-date players will not play BD from disk. You'll need create an ISO and then mount them, I use Virtual CloneDrive. With the latest PowerDVD it integrates somewhat nicely into Media Center.

2- The onboard G35 video card on the P5E-VM HDMI has poor driver support. It will play most blu-ray well but be prepared to play with older drivers as Intel seems to always screw something up

Thanks for the great feedback.  I'm not completely adverse to dumping the titles to ISO, but I'd really much rather just drop the files.  Is there really no way to play back BD titles like this in teh same way as you can with ripped DVDs?

 

Actually, I'm only interested in the main title of the discs but I've not found a suitable way to rip just those parts without reprocessing of the discs which I don't like.  At least with AnyDVD  it's a purer rip albeit at the expense of disk space.

 

Thanks again for a quick reply!

With older versions of PowerDVD and\or Arcsoft you could but they broke that functionality. To me it isn't worth using an older player for that functionality as the playback itself is not as smooth, at least on my hardware.

Wow, what a bummer!  No other solution out there?  I only err away from the ISO work around as it's just an extra step for the family to learn before playing back a movie.  I'm really keen to have the 10ft point and click kept as simple as that.

I agree completely. I initially used Media Browser as it will mount\unmount the ISO for you but I didn't end up liking the interface much. Currently I either use Movie Library w/ a custom More Option to mount. With that I use the Video Library to find the ISO and then Info -> More -> Mount, this will auto play the Blu-ray. I also have a custom movie library but I'm nowhere close to being done w/ it. If you haven't tried it yet, OML, Media Browser and MyMovies are the popular ones. I don't like the SQL Express requirement of MyMovies and I think OML4 also uses it.

As I mentioned in another thread, I'm doing this exact thing with ArcSoft TotalMedia and blurays ripped (NOT ISO) to my external HDD. I had inadvertently changed a setting early on, but now that I fixed that, they play just like a ripped DVD would.

Actually, if you use TotalMedia Theater 3 and apply the .140 patch you can play ripped (non ISO) BDs from a hard drive or network drive.  Use MediaBrowser as your front end to catalog and launch TMT3.  Works perfectly for me and is quick.

HI,

I've not looked at TMT3 very closely, how does it work/integrate with Media Center?  The problem with having a wife and young family is that it puts a firm leash on my inner geek!

Thanks for updating me, I didn't know TMT3 added play from drive back into the product. I'm going to have to test it out again.

I'm not a fan of using on board raid controllers for big raid 5 setups.    My main mediacenter is using a onboard raid 5 with 5 1.5tb drives.  Now that I'm ready to upgrade, I wish I had initially bit the bullet and bought a addin raid card because it would make moving the array so much easier.

As sad as it is to say this, trying to get blue-ray to seemlessly work in Mediacenter is still more trouble then its worth.  I'm not suggesting that you should look into it or do it, but.... there are other methods to obtain the same HD content that will seemlessly play in Mediacenter.   The other option is to just use a stand alone blue-ray player.

I have a blue-ray player in my main mediacenter, however it seldomly if ever gets used.

 You don't even need to use MediaBrowser (unless you just want to for one reason or another), the ripped discs show up naturally in the "Movies" section.

Using AnyDVDHD I can get the Blu-ray ripped to my hard drive. Win7 will show the movie in media center (DVD Library) just fine, but when I click play, Media Center will launch TMT3, and then nothing...

It seems like it didn't pass on the location of the rip to TMT3, so it just sits there. I click back, TMT3 closes, and I'm back at the DVD Library.

If I pull out my mouse and tell TMT3 what folder to look in, it plays fine.

Did I miss something here? Or should I just lose TMT3 and download My Movies?

I just moved so I haven't rebuilt my WHS box but seeing this thread, I think I will be adding some 2Tb drives in and attempting this myself.

I posted this yesterday in another thread, see if it helps.

"So here's what I've discovered, and everything seems to be working.  I had opened TotalMedia Theater externally, and chosen "Open Folder", thus deselecting the default destination. When I attempted to play a ripped Bluray through MCE (by selecting it from the "Movies" section, not directly through the TotalMedia MCE interface) it would launch TotalMedia, but never play anything. I had installed DVDfab, and it installed something called VSO. I don't know if that had anything to do with it, but I googled it and found a tool to remove it. Now, while I stared at the TotalMedia screen waiting for a miracle, I grabbed my mouse and right clicked. The default location was still selected as my disc drive, but I went ahead and clicked it again, and then clicked it again. I don't know why or how, but that fixed it!

So now, I rip a Bluray onto my external drive with all my other ripped DVD's, select the movie through the built-in "Movies" ribbon, and it plays just fine.

Did I fix it, or just get lucky? I don't know, but at this point it works!"