thegreek's HD DVD / Blu-Ray HTPC Project

thegreek's HD DVD / Blu-Ray HTPC Project
========================================

After a long time waiting I finally bought a HDTV and now I can build a HTPC I always wanted. The only thing I want my HPTC to do is store and play HD DVD, Blu-Ray and DVD. Now you're probably thinking why don't you just buy a HD DVD player and Blu-Ray player? Well I want to store all my movies into a directory and be able to rip and play ANY movie I want at ANY time with just a click (basically, a movie server). Besides, the dual format LG drive costs $300 which is way cheaper than buying 2 separate players.

After reading a ton on AVS I finally decided to buy my first HDTV which is a 50" Panasonic PZ77U (couldn't afford the Pioneer). Wow does it look beautiful with HD programming and HD DVD movies are breathtaking. I have it connected to a Dish Network ViP722 via HDMI which is their top of the line DVR reciever which I got for FREE with a new contract. I bought the Toshiba HD-A3 along with the TV but I will be selling it in the classifieds since I have the LG drive.

As for the HTPC, most of the hardware I already except for the GPU, HDs and LG drive. The reason I decided to get the Seagate 7200.10 250GB is because of it's 1 platter design making it cooler and faster, quiet and 5 year warranty. I will using this for the OS and programs. Next, I decided to get the Seagate 7200.11 1TB because it cost $300 while 2x500GB cost $250, I figured the extra $50 wasn't so bad considering I get the same space in 1 drive vs 2 saving me space plus noise. I would love to build a RAID5/6 but right now I don't have enough money for the drives and adaptor (RAID6). No reciever/speakers either, for now



HARDWARE
=================

Panasonic TH-50PZ77U 50" Plasma (1080P)

Dish Network ViP722

Toshiba HD-A3 (sold)


Home Theater PC
========================
Lian Li PC-A05B (HAVE)
Asus P5K-E (HAVE)
Intel E2140 @ 2.4GHz (HAVE)
G.Skill 2GB (DDR2 800) 4-4-4-12 (HAVE)
ATI HD2600XT (HAVE)
1 x Seagate 7200.10 250GB (OS) (HAVE)
1 x Seagate 7200.11 1TB (MOVIES) (HAVE)
LG HD DVD / Blu-Ray / DVD Drive (GGC-H20L) (HAVE)
PC Power & Cooling 510 ASL (HAVE)


SOFTWARE
=================
Windows XP PRO w/SP2

Media Portal (undecided)

AnyDVD HD

Zoom Player 5.50 (undecided)

WMP Classic (undecided)

PowerDVD Ultra (undecided)

UPDATES
=============

11-20-07 - gathering / ordering parts stage (questions or suggestions welcomed)
11-21-07 - received the case and 2 hard drives
11-22-07 - thanksgiving day
11-29-07 - received the LG drive and the video card

SAVED FOR PICTURES

SAVED FOR CALIBRATION

looks bad ***. What case do you plan to use?

--pak

pak said:

looks bad ***. What case do you plan to use?

--pak

Click to expand...

forgot the case, I will be using a Lian Li PC-A05B

It has good enough space in a SMALL case, the psu sits in the front and it have a 120mm fan opening in the back to fit an Ultra-120. The price is not bad at all.

subscribed!!

btw, I too thought 'bout setting up a HD movie directory in my home server. however, the latest PowerDVD disabled HDD playback, so you can't play any ripped movie directly from the HDD via PowerDVD..... (may be WMP or VLC could?) well, since HD movie weight in 20+GB each (a 500GB HDD can only hold <25 movies!), I guess I'm not going to do it anytime soon anyway.... probably until there's some easy recoding solution for the HD movies first....

also, I still haven't try AnyDVD HD yet. as Transformer is the only disc I'm having problem to play right now. the new Shrek3 plays fine! I might probably wait till PowerDVD fix it later on instead..... but if I want/find some nice solution to start a HD movies server, then I'll get it tho.

I'll be watching you...





All joking aside, subscribed.

LandShark said:

subscribed!!

btw, I too thought 'bout setting up a HD movie directory in my home server. however, the latest PowerDVD disabled HDD playback, so you can't play any ripped movie directly from the HDD via PowerDVD..... (may be WMP or VLC could?) well, since HD movie weight in 20+GB each (a 500GB HDD can only hold <25 movies!), I guess I'm not going to do it anytime soon anyway.... probably until there's some easy recoding solution for the HD movies first....

also, I still haven't try AnyDVD HD yet. as Transformer is the only disc I'm having problem to play right now. the new Shrek3 plays fine! I might probably wait till PowerDVD fix it later on instead..... but if I want/find some nice solution to start a HD movies server, then I'll get it tho.

Click to expand...

You can forget about PowerDVD, the DVD-Forum told them to remove the "play from HD" option. I still think you can play them by mounting as an ISO but with each update the more restrictive it becomes that's why a lot of people on AVS are already asking for refunds. You can play HDM on MPC and ZP if you fiddle with decoders and filters but you have no HA.

As for the ripping, I only plan to keep the movie + best audio track only (same for DVDs). For DVDs it averages out to about 5GB per movie, I'll let you know what HDM averages.

Where did you order the GGC-H20L from thegreek?

Psychotron said:

Where did you order the GGC-H20L from thegreek?

Click to expand...

I was waiting and waiting for Newegg to stock it but after I couldn't wait anymore I ordered from NCIXUS.com

Tell us how it performs.
I want one.

LandShark said:

subscribed!!

btw, I too thought 'bout setting up a HD movie directory in my home server. however, the latest PowerDVD disabled HDD playback, so you can't play any ripped movie directly from the HDD via PowerDVD..... (may be WMP or VLC could?) well, since HD movie weight in 20+GB each (a 500GB HDD can only hold <25 movies!), I guess I'm not going to do it anytime soon anyway.... probably until there's some easy recoding solution for the HD movies first....

also, I still haven't try AnyDVD HD yet. as Transformer is the only disc I'm having problem to play right now. the new Shrek3 plays fine! I might probably wait till PowerDVD fix it later on instead..... but if I want/find some nice solution to start a HD movies server, then I'll get it tho.

Click to expand...

Same reason I decided to wait on HD/BR. At an average of 25gb a movie and 20C a gb(best price per GB I can find with 500g drives), I am looking at $5 to store each movie. I decided to hold off on making my PC store/play HD/BR. It just doesn't seem cost effecient, and that is not even counting the actual hardware needed to read it and the software to play it. I think I am going to just grab and HD/BR player.


I was also considering that same case, Lian Li PC-A05B. Only problem for me is that it only holds 3 3.5 drives and 2 5.25 drive. One drive will be used for my dvd drive and I could turn the second 5.25 to another 3.5 giving me 4 3.5 drives. But at the rate I am going, the 4 3.5 slots will be quickly used. Right now I can not decide between getting that case or smaller and building a file server or just getting a huge case that will hold more HDs.

I like the file server idea because I get to build another PC. I have tried playing movies on one PC from another PC on my network and there doesn't seem to be any lag issues so I know it will work. It just that getting a bigger case seems a lot more simple and cost effecient.

--pak

there you have it, 203 movies fit on the drive (I still have 3.62GB left, probably can fit another small movie)

931GB (after format) / 203 movies = 4.59GB average per movie (this is including The Godfather Collection - The Godfather II alone is 10GB )

4.59GB per movie x $0.30 per GB = $1.38 per movie

So this is a mix of regular DVDs, HD-DVDs, and Blu-Ray DVDs?

203 movies seems like a lot...but I have over 500 DVDs sitting on my shelf right now. I could easily do that with regular DVD, but these HD-DVDs and Blu-Ray DVDs sure do eat up a ton of space. It is almost ridiculous IMO.

Nice work though.

no those are just DVDs, I still haven't receieved my LG drive yet to test HD DVD and Blu-Ray


EDIT: I have a 750GB and 320GB drive that I am thinking about selling to buy another one of these - I would like as little HDs possible.

What are you using to rip regular dvd's? The progam I use takes like 2 hours on my quad, is there anything faster? I am going with 4x320gb seagate perps in raid 5, will give me a little less then 1tb of room

anydvd + dvd shrink

I don't compress - I just rip the movie and the 5.1 audio track (or DTS if it has one). takes me about 5-10 min per movie.

thegreek said:

there you have it, 203 movies fit on the drive (I still have 3.62GB left, probably can fit another small movie)

931GB (after format) / 203 movies = 4.59GB average per movie (this is including The Godfather Collection - The Godfather II alone is 10GB )

4.59GB per movie x $0.30 per GB = $1.38 per movie

Click to expand...

Just abit of a correction. You still have 1TB after format. You have 931GiB showing by Windows incorrectly as GB. 1TB = 931GiB, not 931GB. You can even see in your own screen cap there, that the files are taking up 996GB of space. Windows is incorrectly reporting it as 927GB when it sould be stating 927GiB.

If your hard drive was only 931,000,000,000bytes, how would it be possible to have 996,203,065,344bytes worth of data on it?

thegreek said:

anydvd + dvd shrink

I don't compress - I just rip the movie and the 5.1 audio track (or DTS if it has one). takes me about 5-10 min per movie.

Click to expand...

Let me know when you figure out what software you are going to use to play the HD dvds and BR. I would like to do the same thing, I already have it setup but just for normal dvd's.

I have 1x1tb
2x500gb

1.5tb is for movies (about 500gb's are left)
1x500gb drive is for shows recorded.

But I do have a few other smaller hard drives in the file server which i would really like to get rid of.

2x250
2x500
1x300
1x1tb

I liked the idea, I may try and get rid of some of the smaller ones here in the future and just grab one or two bigger ones.

currently, there's NO (at least simple) way to just rip a HD movie itself. the above mentioned from thegreek is to rip regular DVD movies.

@ thegreek, could you verify DVDShrink could just rip the main movie (I know it could) and the 5.1DD sound track (that I'm not quite sure!!)??? if you hook up to your receiver (I assume you do from you HTPC), will the receiver showing it's getting DD/DTS steam?? reason I ask is I've yet to find a software that could just rip the main movie and retain the 5.1DD audio track.....