How do you use your HTPC for movie playback?

[wmandra]

Hi all, just wanted to get some input from the members here to help guide the development of my Xlobby movie / video player "plugin".

Please post how you are getting your movies from DVD to your HTPC, which format your storing them in(i.e. are you keeping them in the original DVD format or re-encoding them as AVI or MPEG), and which player you are currently using.

Right now my plugin uses WMP9 as the playback engine and mainly supports AVI and MPEG. But I am currently modifying it to support playback of offline DVDs using both the Xlobby database and autoplay.

Currently the way I am leaning is to have the program monitor the CD/DVD drive for a disc to be inserted, identify wheter it is CD or DVD, then present a popup window with choices based on the media type. So when you insert a disc a skinnable message box will appear ansking if you want to play the disc or rip the disc. If you select play, it will download info and coverart automatically and add it to Xlobby as offline media. If you select rip it will rip the CD or DVD in a format pre-configured for the media type and automatically add it to Xlobby. So you could set it up to rip music to the C:\Music directory tell it to store it by artist\album\track.mp3 or for DVDs you would be able to select AVI/MPG or orginal DVD format.

Just kindof want everyones input on this.

Bill

[noviceboy]

sounds good.

Here's what I do.

DVDs
Most offline
Favourites on-line ,(musc, childrens) - Often DVD shrinked, but still a dvd structure on HD

Video Media
Mostly recorded from DVB-S SAT TV MPG2 high quality either as MPG or PVA format.

Childrens video is xvid codec compressed in AVI container

Audio Media
Mix of WMA (mostly ) and MP3

[noviceboy]

Video Media
Mostly recorded from DVB-S SAT TV MPG2 high quality either as MPG or PVA format.

mixed online/offline

I feel that detection of a file being on/offline should be a central feature of the Frontend software. I dont want to care.
Blank DVDs are about €1.30 so I often burn 2-3 films onto one and they go offline. Very economical.

[samgreco]

I do strictly offline DVD viewing. The only things that I have ripped to my HD are trailers and surround demos (as VOBs). I currently run Zoom Player and use it's trailer definition file. Although I've been playing with preMovie Manager.

I like the ideas you've come up with. I would love to see a player more tightly integrated with XLobby. But I really "need" the pre movie entertainment

Also, I use an UltimateTV box on DirecTV and don't plan on changing that until I can get a satellite based HDTV recorder. As much as I'd like to move that to the HTPC, I haven't found anything that works as well or is as reliable.

Sam

[chadwolcott]

I have a number of movies (xvid/Divx encoded) movies as avi, and a number of mpgs online. Additionally, I have about 150 offline dvds. I am using theatertek for offline DVD's currently by putting it in the drive and clicking the WatchDVD button on my menu, but they are also loaded in the movies database via dvd profiler. I use zoomplayer to watch the online movies and will most likely switch to zp for DVD watching as well.

Pardon the ignorance, but what is it that you are trying to accomplish? Are you looking for a way to have xlobby be able to rip cds and dvds? The CD part of that I can see is fairly easy, the DVD ripping on the other hand...that sounds like you're going to need to "integrate" a number of other programs to do that.

[jowaldo]

Almost all of my movies are stored offline, and about 99% of them are in the dvd format.

[wmandra]

Thanks everyone for your responses.

The plugin that I am working on already hadles playback of AVI/MPEG movies from Xlobby and I have started adding code to handle DVD format stored on the hard drive.

The end purpose is to have a movie playback program written to work specifically with Xlobby. I will also add a feature that allows for viewing of trailers before the feature. As far as the ripping portion goes, I am going to look at ways to control DVDshrink to rip a DVD using pre-determined settings in the background, completely transparent to the end-user.

The program does depend on Xlobby knowing if a movie you selected is on/off line, however it will also handle autoplay / autorip.

I will keep everyone posted on the progress.

Bill

[jowaldo]

wow sounds pretty interesting, if you need any help testing, I'm here

[Tracie]

Everything that I view on my HTPC is online right now. I've got some sort of bug in TT that won't allow me to play DVDs from the disc, so (whether I want to or not) I have to rip it if I'm going to use the HTPC to watch it. With that said, most of what I would watch would be online via my media server anyway. I've got my entire DVD & CD collection stored on it & playing through Xlobby on the HTPC. (Netflix stuff I just use the STB player for - not even going to tempt myself with going over the line there.)

Personally I don't think that I would use a feature such as this, at least anytime in the near future. All of this software (DVD playback, ripping, frontend) is still very immature & clunky, & I feel like I need more control such as the ability to double check settings before ripping/playing in order to get it right the first time. As good as DVD Shrink is, it's still going through changes/fixes/updates, as is Theater Tek, as is Xlobby....

[Scarpad]

I'm setting up a media server now. With over 800 DVD's I'd have to have terrabytes of HD space to hold them all and then what would be the point. I plan to have all movies be offline, I'm going to rip to the HD all my TV based series. TV stuff is going to get most of the repeat business since it's nice to grab an ep to watch without fumbling thru those awful foldout digipacks. I have'nt decided whether I'm going to remaster them as single episodes or entire disks yet but I'm leaning toward having a setup like this


\Star Trek TNG\Encounter at Farpoint Episode 1\VIDEO_TS

I was actually thinking of capturing a JPEG from the ep to serve as the episodes Artwork...