Ever want to be able to watch all your movies and record tv shows on your widescreen tv without swapping in and out DVDs? Ever want to listen to your entire music collection - no matter what format the files are - On your widescreen tv? Ever want to browse through all your pictures? On your TV with your remote? Well that's what I want to do. I have found there are a WHOLE lot of ways to do this and very few of them do it very well. Each tool supports 3-4 formats and accomplishes one, two, or three of my desired tasks but not all of them. So I am trying to piece together the software, scripts, and tools needed to make this happen. The basic layout is there is a file server in my bedroom with tons of HD space that stores it all. There's a Mac Mini connected to my 40inch LCD. I want everything to interface with MythTV/Front Row via my MacMini remote control. I want all this data to be backed up too. I want an easy method of converting any file formats on the fly. I want an easy method of ripping new CD's, DVDs and recording TV shows into my database of media. I want it to all work beautifully and seamlessly. It should be intutitive so my mom can use it on Christmas.
I have tried in several ways to serve my entire media collection to several clients and replicate it across several servers. I also want full control of my media collection from my TV with a remote control. I also want to be able to access my media collection from the internet from a standard web browser. I've used iTunes, MediaMonkey, Amarok, pre-made Web Streaming Apps and custom Web Streaming apps. Problem is some of these work well on some platforms or situations and not so well for others. I like finding one fix that works for everything - and works well. So I'm after that goal still and here I plan to write all the details of my missions!
A mixture of [http://amarok.kde.org/ Amarok], [http://www.mythtv.org/ MythTV], [http://www.apple.com/itunes/ iTunes] and [http://www.fireflymediaserver.org/ Firefly DAAP Server] using [http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ Unison] and [http://www.drbd.org/ DRBD] for replication across several servers and usb media devices.
Right now I am toying with Firefly. The idea is it will (via DAAP) serve all stored music and video files to Front Row / iTunes / MythTV and convert formats as needed, on the fly, to each client. The music side of it seems to be worked flawlessly at this point. I have -several- audio file types and it is converting them all and publishing them to iTunes. The Video side is where I'm still working at.
There's a debate. I decided M4V. It works with all the stuff I have or want to have. It's a pretty popular standard and has all the features I want. So if you have a iPod, PSP, PS3, FrontRow, iTunes and want them all to play the file. Store them as M4V's and you won't need to run around trying to find on-the-fly transcoders because QuickTime doesn't understand .MKV containers.
I don't have all the details on this yet, so I'm making notes. I used DVD decrypter recently to copy over family guy. It wasn't very intutitive but worked. I am looking at handbreak and some other linux solution along with imTOO. But I want something I can script into my media center solution so…
I want to store all my audio in a lossless format. HD's are cheep and speakers keep getting better. I've started using .FLAC files. Yea, yeah.. iTunes doesn't support it. But it's easy to do on-the-fly transcoding of .flac to any format. It's a open standard and is gaining in popularity. I might look into .ALAC files but I can't comment on them right yet.
* [http://www.brad-x.com/category/transcoding/ Transcoding to M4V on Mac/Linux Guide] * [http://handbrake.m0k.org/ Handbreak? Does this rip DVD's nicely?] * [http://forum.doom9.org/ DVD Conversion]