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That's a very rational choice. I envy your fortitude. :D I don't see shutting down my media server until it dies of its own accord. But insofar as I still succumb to the temptation to buy and own some few discs, I think I'll continue ripping them. For it would be simpler to not buy anything...

The drive has to have an older firmware or (I think) has to have the firmware replaced with an alternate firmware. If you bought it somewhat recently new, it has newer firmware and so can't rip 4K UHD discs. I bought from an individual who buys drives, does the firmware conversion, and resells...

Everyone needs a pointless fussy hobby! 😂 I don’t like experience of playing discs on a disc player. Terrible experience ironically designed to antagonize the paying customer and push people to piracy. And Emby’s UX is still better than Movies Anywhere and AppleTV for browsing and managing a...

I’ve swapped my formerly trusty LG WH14NS40 drive for a new Pioneer BDR-213. The Pioneer is about ½” longer than the LG, so it *just* barely fits in my case. I’ve ordered an external SATA drive case and I might pull it out, since it’s a really tight fit. Also the button is recessed so I had to...

I decided that I'm not done with my HTPC, despite the time and hassles it takes. I ordered a replacement drive that should read Oppenheimer and such newer discs. I'll find some weekend to do surgery on my HTPC to replace my original LG with the Pioneer and try again adding Oppenheimer to my library.

Seemingly, Amazon sells a printing of Oppenheimer that can’t be ripped by my LG drive. I’m told I‘ve got two options: a) buy a Pioneer drive (from an online source that still has old stock with old firmware) that is said to be more robust than LG and will read everything b) buy and return...

I’m thinking of quitting my HTPC hobby. The downsides are starting to become bigger obstacles to me: It’s significantly time consuming ripping discs, processing them, dealing with special features, and so on. Plus the instability overall of the Win10 PC and the Shield streamer mean there’s...

I think I’ve sorted through my Emby HDR issues. HDR works fine. But my server isn’t powerful enough for real-time audio transcoding, so if the client doesn’t support e.g. AppleTV can’t play Atmos, then video playback fails. I haven’t figured out Dolby Vision from my HTPC. I thought I ripped my...

It’s working great on Emby on nVidia Shield to my Projector. The projector recognizes its HDR10 and goes into HDR mode. I can get HDR playback through the Emby app on my LG LED, though I have to select DD 5.1 or lesser audio to play. I can’t get HDR to work on Emby on the AppleTV 4K on the...

Almost a year later, and I’ve got 4K HDR10 working from my HTPC! :dance:

I'd guess the power supply had died. After two or three hours of fighting with that, and having bought a replacement and trying it out, that was not the problem. Did some googling and found a random thread somewhere that suggested to start with reseting the bios by pulling the motherboard...

We had power fluctuations (lights were strobing) following by outage today. My HTPC is dead - won’t power on. <sad panda> I’m hoping that at worst the PSU is dead. I’ve ordered a replacement. Which, hopefully, a simple* replacement will fix the media PC. * nothing is ever simple in pulling the...

It’s well hidden and not obviously discussed in the forums or documented well. 🤷‍♂️

I have potentially doing this harder than I needed to, the past five years. I've just learned that CloneBD works with AnyDVD to automatically identify the correct playlist for the maintitle *and* auto identifies other content such as trailers and menus and bonus features *and* lets you're easily...

And the Plex server does abstract out essentially a media NAS, eliminating the practical need for a NAS if media is all you do and you don't mind your personal computer also being your server. And all the media server apps aggregate multiple drives and folders so you don't have to worry about...

Each parity disk protects all data from a single drive failure. Two parity disks protects the system from two drive failures. This isn't a "backup", but a means to add robustness to a drive-of-drives that is otherwise at greater risk of failure due to the combined risk of multiple drives at...

There are a couple of key benefits to a RAID It's a giant disk to the system, which means you as the user don't have to think about whether to put new files on Disk A or Disk B or Disk C...it just all goes in the giant Disk Z. Parity data reduces the risk of catastrophic data loss from a single...

And copying 9TB across external USB is going to take 12-24 hrs. :)

I've got the 8TB "shucked" and in my HTPC. I've been wanting to buy the 10TB as a true backup to my RAID. My RAID is about four years old, which means I'm entering the realm of possible drive failure. And I've concluded I'm never re-ripping all my discs. So I'm burning another $180 on this silly...

Nvidia 2060 RTX Founders Edition 6GB GPU is now $300. This is the realm of affordable for trying to upgrade to a 4K HTPC with madVR processing. Will have to research this year. https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/rtx-2060/

Computer OS upgrade led to upgrading to a more current ffmpeg version, changing the encode process. And iTunes no longer supports podcast files in macOS. I need to see if I can get ffmpeg working on my HTPC, that would be slightly faster than my iMac. Extracting and Converting Commentary Tracks...

Improved approach (for me). Cost money, but lets me use my podcast player of choice, and the listening experience is much improved over iTunes. What's nice about this is the chapter breaks get embedded that came along with the original MKA export. The process is more kludged, now with two...

Not on an airplane :) I want to listen to these as audio content per se, like a podcast or audiobook, on the go. It’s easier and uses no data if I extract the audio tracks as described. :) But Apple Music isn’t a great player for spoken-word content, I’m finding. I need to see if I can get...

Commentary Tracks On-The-Go I am forced to concede I don't have time to watch commentary tracks like I used to. I barely find time to watch a movie, much less rewatch it twice more for its commentaries. So I'm trying an idea I've heard others talk about: extracting the commentary tracks and...

Handbrake

That's reasonable. Ripping TV discs and converting to MKV can be tedious -- I've done a lot -- due to the need to identify episode numbers and titles. If you have a computer (mac or pc) with a dvd drive, you can download MakeMKV and try ripping for free. If you have a spare USB drive, you can...

Transcoding a DVD at high settings will be indistinguishable from the original, and will take half the space. For example, when I download shows from my TiVo, they're MPEG 2 files, similar to a DVD. I transcode to H264 into an MKV container. This format plays natively on my AppleTV. And at good...

Mostly MKV but also ISO. I've ripped all Blu-Rays and UHD and extracted the MKVs. That works best with media-service software like Emby and Plex. But it's more work. I have all my DVDs in ISO because it's not been worth the time to convert them to MKV, as I really don't rewatch DVDs. But if I...

Hmmm...maybe not as easily as I expected. It appears oppo doesn’t play dvd iso. It will play backups of BD and UHD, though. https://watershade.net/wmcclain/UDP-203-faq.html#how-do-i-play-full-disc-blu-ray-and-uhd-backups Might be able to rip and extract video files to play on the oppo. I don’t...

The drive shucking: