Hello all
Iv built a nice AMD *2 system with 2G , Vista Ultimate , 160G drive for my living room 42 inch LCD TV. What im doing is putting my collection of DVDs on my hard drive so the kids don’t throw the disks around and we can just play the DVDs from the system when friends come over. My thing is , what’s the best program to use to play the DVD like the disk was in the drive using the data from the rip. Media player likes to stop ever so often and we would have to play the next file. Very annoying. Please help




Thanks : )

don't know what is the best but Nero and powerdvd works. They are the 2 players I use to play from hdd and I prefer them over windows media player. VLC player is good too but I not have it so I'm unable to tell you how good.

Are you using Windows Media Player or Windows Media Center for playing dvds in Vista Ultimate? Media Center plays dvds seamlessly for me, though I'm not a fan of their DVD Library. It is a pain in the butt to set up and use, though Microsoft does give info on how to set up the blasted thing: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930526

I normally use PowerDVD in my XP Pro partition and VLC works pretty well these days. I use VLC to play ISO image files of dvds.

VLC and ISO files is the simplest solution, IMHO.

O.K. great Im ripping an ISO now , So once I have an ISO can I just keep using PowerDVD or do I need another type of program.

Also is an ISO the best way to keep DVDs on a drive , because this one movie even in a ISO is still 5Gs.

The ISO is an exact copy of the movie, menus and extras included. The advantage is it 's a single file (no folders, IFOs, VOBs, etc. to keep track of). VLC can play that ISO directly. Pwer DVD will require you to mount that image using Daemon Tools or Alcohol or some such program.

If you click on the VIDEO_TS.IFO file the DVD should play normally (you might have to set up an association). This works with all my players, Nero Showtime, Media Player Classic and WMP10. It's easier than playing ISOs.

An easy approach would be to make a folder with appropriately named shortcuts to all the VIDEO_TS.IFOs from each rip. I would also suggest using DVDShrink in reauthor mode and do movie only at about 90% (saving as Hard Disk Folder) and see if the results suit you to keep sizes down.

Personally I prefer WINDVD for my dvd playback because of its better quality picture over what VLC, WMP or MPC can do, IMHO. PowerDVD is okay but you cant just double click on the VIDEO_TS.IFO file to start it playing.

I've kinda done the same thing as the original poster. I've built a NAS box running linux. It holds all my movies in ifo/vob format as rip is usually done. I also have mpeg files out there as well. It can be done on a windows box just as well. I only went with linux for the array that I have.

My goal was to allow the kids to view their movies in their rooms if they wanted to but I may scrap that until they get a little older. I can't seem to find a simple program that lists movies in a simple double-click-to-run format.

Anyway, what I have found is a PVR program that will do the trick. It will require a bit of tweeking to get to run if you want to us a remote of some kind. Keep in mind I just got this set up about a week ago and I'm not running it to my tv yet. I'm just trying to get it set up to go to my main box.

The program is gbpvr, it's free and it's a pvr software, but it does have a movie library menu where you can set the directory to your storage location or network store. It runs it like a tivo(ish) box so you can pause and so on. The problem I'm having with it at present is because it's used in a pvr environment, it's not very mouse click friendly.

I have to re-mention I'm not in full use of this yet so this may not be the route you want to go.

Hope this helps. If anyone has a suggestion for a program that will list dvd's in a library type of format, kinda like windows media player, and play them by simple double clicks, that would be great.