Waaaay OT: Apple TV

[M.Fillmore]

I heard a guy talking who said with Apple TV and a multiple Terrabyte hard drive, he "rips all his DVD movies into the hard drive for access anytime he wants." He went on to say he ditched all the DVDs to save space.

I could use the space saving idea, and I like the idea of less clutter.

Is this hard to do? Where can a learn to do it? How easy is it too access the movies?
There is an Apple store not too far from me.

[Coldsleeve Jr.]

I'm a huge Apple TV user and fan, but have no clue how to rip DVDs onto an Apple TV.

Only thing I can imagine is he ripped them onto his desktop/laptop, then through Apple TV you can stream from your computer to your tv screen. I do this all the time with movie downloads. Just put them in your iTunes and wala they're on the tv screen.

[#660000]

I'm a huge Apple TV user and fan, but have no clue how to rip DVDs onto an Apple TV.

Only thing I can imagine is he ripped them onto his desktop/laptop, then through Apple TV you can stream from your computer to your tv screen. I do this all the time with movie downloads. Just put them in your iTunes and wala they're on the tv screen.

Handbrake is pretty straight forward for ripping.
http://grandiloquentmusings.blogspot.com/2014/12/ripping-encrypted-dvds-with-handbrake.html

[SailingDawg]

HandBrake (https://handbrake.fr/) is a DVD Ripper for Apple. It gives you the option to choose where to save the file once it begins processing the file.

Once the files are on your computer, or storage device (terabyte drive), you can play any music or video from your Apple TV as long as devices are connected to your wifi.

Instructions from Apple (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202190)

[RealHastings]

I prefer not to host dvds on my on computer or hard drives. I just stream movies online and let someone else do all the hosting for me.

[vv83]

I would go the Plex route. Plex is basically a home media server that lets you access all your content on any device in your house on your wi-fi network. Use a DVD ripping software to rip the movies then upload them to Plex on your laptop (which will act as your move server). Then just download the Plex app on whatever devices you want (xbox, playstation, chromecast, etc) and sign in and all your movies will be right there .

[dparker]

Handbrake is the easiest tool for Apple

[Tbonewannabe]

I would go the Plex route. Plex is basically a home media server that lets you access all your content on any device in your house on your wi-fi network. Use a DVD ripping software to rip the movies then upload them to Plex on your laptop (which will act as your move server). Then just download the Plex app on whatever devices you want (xbox, playstation, chromecast, etc) and sign in and all your movies will be right there .

Is there a limit to how much you can host on Plex? I never thought about ripping my DVDs. Do you lose any picture quality doing this or is it exactly the same?

[dparker]

I use plex and if you're talking about a limit of the number of files, I'm not sure but I've never hit it. I rip all my DVD's to a central drive so the kids don't destroy them. Depending on the hardware you run plex from it can automatically transcode to a bit rate/ resolution to match your device/internet bandwidth. Or you can make it deliver the quality that the file was encoded but you may get stuttering if your bandwidth isn't up to it or your device has to transcode to it's native resolution. Handbrake doesn't do any of that. It just take the movie from the dvd and compresses it to play in a way that is optimized for Apple devices (but you can change the settings to rip it however you want). On an Apple TV iTunes would serve the function of Plex but you can also install Plex on the Apple TV.

Hope that makes sense.

[vv83]

As far as I know there is no limit on Plex. As much as your sever can hold is how much you can put on there. You could look into getting a NAS to hold everything or just a big external HD to connect to your sever (prob laptop)