kvrdave

I sure love the idea of these. I find that I rarely watch dvds when I have something tivo'd simply because I don't have to go over to the shelf, pick one out, etc. Yeah, stupid, but that's the way it is. So I have looked into media servers, but they seem new enough that they are crazy expensive. But I have also wondered, do they have some special agreement with movie studies that let you rip them to the server? That seems to be the way these work, yet I know I can't just rip a dvd to my computer. Why can media servers work this way?

Also seems that a person should wait on these because the smaller 500gb units won't mean squat once HD dvds come out.

Some have the 200 dvd carosel type player, but I had an early one of those and it sucked. Terrible menu, etc., but maybe that has changed.

mndtrp

I've been looking at them as well. I would pick one up, but like you said, they're pretty expensive. Once they drop in price, as well as get bigger, I'll buy one.

You could always set up a computer server for your movies. Same type of thing, but cheaper. Probably not as convenient, though.

kvrdave

How does one watch dvds from that, though? I currently use my computer as my dvd player, etc. and use it for tv shows recorded, but I don't understand how the dvds work.

BobDole42

http://www.kaleidescape.com/ is currently the only legal way to rip dvds. Although Kaleidescape has been sued for violating their contract with the DVDCCA, so who knows what will happen. Very slick system, but crazy expensive.

An Escient DVD-M100 (http://www.escient.com/products/dvdm100.html) might be a good match for you. They are usually available used on Audiogon for around $1500. They work with the Sony ES DVD changer (around $700 I think). I use an Escient Tunebase 200 to manage my CD collection and love it. The Escient system is very easy to use and looks very cool. You put in a disc and it looks it up, downloads the cover art, chapter info, etc. and adds it to your collection. I can't imagine listening to music any other way.

mbs

The Sony Digital Living System looks pretty sweet. It's an MCE system with a 200 disc changer that is integrated into the MCE. And the list price is only $1,999.

I personally use a MCE-HTPC with a couple 500 GB drives for serving DVD media. You can get about 75 discs per drive (which is little compared to most people's collections, including my own). I wish a solution existed for around 2,000 DVDs, but that just isn't feasible with how much storage one would need.

sdcrym

What OS do you have on this computer?

kvrdave

XP media Edition

BobDole42

The Sony system is another interesting option. I still think the Escient interface is by far the slickest (except for Kaleidescape, which is well over $25k).

Any home-brew solution that involves ripping your DVD collection is, of course, illegal. Even if it weren't I'd probably stick with something like the Escient since you can swap out the changer for an HD-DVD/blu-ray changer down the road.