Well a Chromecast is the only one you can't pick up a remote and use it with, all the others you can.mcewinter wrote:Again, I use all the same apps on a portable basis or on my smaller TVs where audio or PQ aren't a concern. As far as family members being able to pick up a remote and watch whatever content that resides in my home, Media Center can't be beat. I agree with a lot of what your saying but not as a MC replacement but as more of a supplement throughout the house, inside and out.
And I guess we just have to agree to disagree on whether these are WMC replacements or supplements. But again, you can't use PQ (transcoding) as an overall negative against the devices/apps/platforms. Not everyone needs to transcode, so it's only a negative for a subset of a subset of a subset, not the apps/devices/platform in general. For those that do need to transcode, yes, it would be a negative for your particular use case, and your particular use case alone. But then again, you are limiting yourself to only 'perfect' or 'only' viewing via the HTPC then. I'm not trying to tell you to encode your collection - just to point out that your 'negative' of lesser PQ/needing to transcode comes from your insistence to keep/only use the 1:1 BR rips. That's a demographic that is a subset of a subset of a subset of a subset like I keep pointing out, which is why devices that do what you are wanting aren't really commonplace/popular/don't exist. However - if you look at the video codecs/codec levels these devices support you'll find you most of the time you can leave the video actually untouched from your 1:1 rips (even if it's a high bitrate h.264, or VC-1 etc). It's only the container you would have to remux or audio only you would have to re-encode. And while I understand why someone wouldn't want to do that, then that's a decision you are making to sacrifice playback quality/device availability, not necessarily a negative of the device/app/platform in general. And WMC/Windows doesn't even support 1:1 BR rip playback out of the box - you would need a codec pack or LAV at minimum to play them back. So if we are comparing apples to apples OOB to OOB there really isn't a difference in playback for the most part. So again, it's more about willingness to compromise on the users end than device/platform/app ability IMO. And again, this all isn't necessarily just pointed at you per se, more at the HTPC community in general.
I keep my movies and TV rips on their own individual drives. On my movie drive I have 244 BR rip encodes/movies (some that aren't released on BR are DVD encodes, but few enough and small enough file size to not consider here), taking up 2.77TB on a 3.63TB (4TB) drive. Again, this is with 15mbps h.264 videos that are on avg 15GB (some are less, like VC-1 titles; only 1 or 2 are larger IIRC. Dances with Wolves is one that is larger I know cause that movie is like 47 hours long). Now, I also only add at most 9 movies a year to my collection, sometimes only like 5 or 6 a year. So, at 15GB a movie, with 866GB of free space remaining, I should be able to get 57 more movies on here, or about 5 years left of time with this drive @ 10 movies a year. Now, obviously if you choose to encode to a lower bitrate than I did, you can get even more out of it. Obviously a higher bitrate would be less.barnabas1969 wrote:OK, the price of a 4TB HDD is now about $155. That's 3.638TiB. Or, about 74 Bluray movies without compression. So, price per movie is 89 cents.
But, that's not including the cost of the hardware to run that HDD. That cost can vary greatly depending on the number of HDD's that can be connected to the system, the overall throughput of the system, and the processing power of the system.
To serve 2-3 clients, you're only talking about a max throughput of 216Mbps (27MB/s), which even some USB 2.0 external drives can accomplish.
But, when you start talking about connecting four or more 4TB hard drives to store more than 300 movies, you start talking about a significant expense.
I would greatly prefer to store 3 or 4 times the number of movies in the same amount of disk space... as long as I can do so without costing myself a bunch of time... and as long as those movies can still be played on my XBox extenders.
So far, I haven't found a reasonable way to accomplish all of my stated goals... but, I haven't evaluated MyMovies or Media Browser since long before I started thinking about archiving movies. So, perhaps those software packages can help. I appreciate constructive input from people who have used them in the way I have described.
A lot of time did go into this however. It took me about 3 months to encode my 1:1 BR collection to m4v. But, now that it's done - it doesn't have to be done again (I have duplicate 4TB and 3TB drives in my main rig that are just redundant back ups of the movie and tv rip drives in my HTPC. This way, I'm covered from drive or machine failure and don't have to do the encoding all over again). This is the compromise I keep talkign about though. I sacrificed all that time (one time only) and PQ from 1:1 to be able to play my movies and tv rips natively on every single device I own - BR players, Chromecasts, WMC via Xbox, and any consumer device I buy in the future. I also don't have to worry about whether there is an app for the device to transcode my collection. If it plays mp4, I'm good. This doesn't limit me on what devices I can buy/use. Which is another great benefit.
People act like if they aren't viewing the actual 1:1 rip there is no way in hell they can enjoy the movie/show/content. That must mean they never ever ever ever watch anything that's isn't a BR. Ever. Anywhere. No TV or Netflix or anything, cause the PQ isn't the same as BR. It's just cutting your nose spite your face IMO (again, this wasn't directed at anyone here, more the HTPC community in general). Meanwhile, those of use who do encode (or dl) will go on enjoying all these wonderful consumer electronics devices available to us, even if there is no way to transcode to said device. Those who will transcode at least, get to enjoy not as many devices as the rest of us; but more than the ones who will only watch 1:1, no compromises.
