BlueMorel wrote:
I have a new bluetooth dvd player that has Roku installed in it. My various connected devices - computer, tv in the other room, etc, recognize the bluetooth connection. I haven't tried it yet, but I bet that's the cheap way to connect them all and watch my dvds on any other connected screen. Sadly, though, with all the streaming media content available, I don't seem to get around to playing my old dvds or even vcr tapes very often.
So at 4.7GB/DVD, you’ll need around 1.5 TB of storage in your server which can be any computer you already own on your network. You can then stream using any of the streaming SW (such as MS media player) over the network to any DLNA renderer. Most newer “smart” TVs have this capability or you can use one of the popular streaming devices. The caveat here is disk reliability. Just loading up the 300 DVDs will require constant writes over a large portion of the drive, something that rarely happens in day-to-day use, and playback will require constant access and head seeks if you use a conventional HD. I would ideally opt for an SSD or if that’s too expensive, an enterprise class HD or mirror two drives so you can recover if one fails. It’s a lot of work to copy all those DVDs, and you don’t want to lose it. My oldest son, who does DJ shows at weddings, spent the summer ripping all his CD collection to an inexpensive external HD, only to have it fail, wasting hundreds of hours of time. Lesson learned.