Ripped DVDs and Media Centers?

Question

For the last year i have been trying to use an old PC as a media center. I am trying to take DVDs on my PC and stream them to my Main TV or transfer them to the PC connected to the TV. I have looked at BackStage which emmulates the AppleTV look and feel and TVersity an neither gives me what I am looking for.

I have a base Directory called MY DVDs and each folder in the directory is an entire Movie(w AUDIO_TS and VIDEO_TS sub folders) I want to use an interface to scan the MY DVD directory and display these movies and preferably show album art similar to the AppleTV interface. When I do that with TVersity, i have a bunch of VOB files out of order from the main movie and no way of knowing which movie each file belongs to. I am also looking to preserve the Digital Audio on these files via fiber out. I looked at the APPLETV as a solution using Handbrake to encode these DVDs to a single file, but the quality is not great and I thats over 200 movies to encode.

I already have ripped the movies on my NAS and have removed everything so that all i have is the main movie and the DTS, Dobly Digital Audio. Anyone who used DVD Shrink or DVD Decrypter knows the directory structure I have. I used Divx but it loses the surround sound. I want something that can understand the VIDEO_TS.IFO in each directory and organize it like APPLET TV does with its mp4 files you get from iTunes. I want to be able to navigate my videos using album art and make a media center so easy my grandma can use it. I dont care about recording TV, i got a DVR for that and I have used CyberLink to what movies by locating the DVD on disk. I want something simpler, think APPLETV, Centerstage is available but not quite what I want.

Answer 1

instead of having all these vobs floating around, what you really should think about is 2 things,shrinking the dvds using dvd shrink and creating iso files. u obviously have a computer network at home, so set both as workgroup blah blah blah, map the network drive... go to the pc attached to the tv, use a program like alcohol120 to emulate a virtual dvd drive, you mount the iso file right off the other computers hard drive and play it like a dvd is in the computers dvd drive. problem solved. i do this all the time. shrinking the files def a good idea, most dvds are 9gb so 200 x 9gb 1.8tb... but shrinking them 4.7gb x 200 is 940gbs organize the isos into folders etc.

Answer 2

You are going about it the wrong way.
You need the Original Video TS Folder complete with the VOB folders as well and they can not be eleminated or changed,(Without editing Software).
The only way you can change or take portions of a Movie is with the use of software. That doesn't include Handbrake.
You can do the entire Movie with Handbrake or MTR, and then Popcorn utherwise you are spinning your wheels.
I suggest you do some homework on exactly what you are trying to accomplish. Dealing with video is much different than anything else you kight be trying to deal with. sometimes it requires the use of 3 different softwares to accomplish.
Don