Its been a good week for me as a tech geek. For three years now I've been pondering how to get our extensive DVD collection transferred to a format that we can watch on our couch without all that inconvenient "standing up" and "putting a DVD in the player." And without having to fiddle with all those DVD menus and previews and copyright notices (I bought the damn thing, stop telling me not to steal it).
Last summer I settled on a plan: a Mac mini with an external HD and audio/video into our TV. Basically use the TV as the computer monitor (an homage to the 80's when we used TVs as computer monitors). The AppleTV at the time had some limitations, Windows Media Center had all sorts of DRM crap on it (plus it crashed a lot and had a terrible interface), the Linux offerings required substantial work and hardware to set up. On the other hand, the mini has a remote that launches a program called FrontRow that gives you all your movies in a list for easy watching, requires almost no effort to setup, takes an external HD, and is just so damn cute.
I've spent the last 4 months ripping all 200+ DVDs to MPEG-4, loading them into the iTunes on the mini (only a terabyte of space needed!), sorting them, making them look pretty, and having MLEIV do QA on the ripped versions by sitting on the couch and watching movies (it was a hard job, I had to pay her extra). Today I officially ripped X-Men 3, the last of my DVDs and its time to think about the next steps:
For issue number 2, I've been looking at VHS-to-MPEG4 converters for a while and none of them were quite what I wanted. But in the NYTimes there was a review of this device which was built just for me! Mostly our VHSs consist of episodes of the short-lived remake of Fantasy Island (circa 1998) and Cupid (same time) and other odds and ends. Not something I want to spend a huge amount on, but things that need to be preserved.
Now all that's left is to pop some popcorn (with the awesome new popcorn maker Trevor gave me for xmas--thank you Trevor!!! You know how I love quality popped corn), fill up that growler with Mac and Jack's, and re-watch that first season of MI-5.
I can feel my gut expanding just thinking about it...
Last summer I settled on a plan: a Mac mini with an external HD and audio/video into our TV. Basically use the TV as the computer monitor (an homage to the 80's when we used TVs as computer monitors). The AppleTV at the time had some limitations, Windows Media Center had all sorts of DRM crap on it (plus it crashed a lot and had a terrible interface), the Linux offerings required substantial work and hardware to set up. On the other hand, the mini has a remote that launches a program called FrontRow that gives you all your movies in a list for easy watching, requires almost no effort to setup, takes an external HD, and is just so damn cute.
I've spent the last 4 months ripping all 200+ DVDs to MPEG-4, loading them into the iTunes on the mini (only a terabyte of space needed!), sorting them, making them look pretty, and having MLEIV do QA on the ripped versions by sitting on the couch and watching movies (it was a hard job, I had to pay her extra). Today I officially ripped X-Men 3, the last of my DVDs and its time to think about the next steps:
- Fix the interface for watching them (FrontRow on the Mac is kinda clumsy and you can't customize it at all)
- How to move my VHS's over
For issue number 2, I've been looking at VHS-to-MPEG4 converters for a while and none of them were quite what I wanted. But in the NYTimes there was a review of this device which was built just for me! Mostly our VHSs consist of episodes of the short-lived remake of Fantasy Island (circa 1998) and Cupid (same time) and other odds and ends. Not something I want to spend a huge amount on, but things that need to be preserved.
Now all that's left is to pop some popcorn (with the awesome new popcorn maker Trevor gave me for xmas--thank you Trevor!!! You know how I love quality popped corn), fill up that growler with Mac and Jack's, and re-watch that first season of MI-5.
I can feel my gut expanding just thinking about it...
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