iTv jukebox....

philbutlerphilbutler
Posted:
in Future Apple Hardware edited January 2014
Hi all,



Our 5 disk changer just bit the dust and it hit me that one thing that would be nice is some kind of jukebox add-on for iTV/iTunes. Something that could handle 100-200 DVDs would be great. This would just hang off ethernet and would be able to spool to the iTunes and/or iTV. It could be kept out of the way



We have young children that we won't allow to change DVDs yet (anything we want to keep that is) but we might let them handle a remote. Such a setup would have parental controls - the kids would not be allowed to watch our movies - and perhaps we would not be allowed to watch the kiddie movies



I know that if it wasn't for DRM (something I know very little about), then just putting a 500+ gig hard drive on the "host system" would hold 100+ DVDs. If there was someway to make a "backup" copy to hard drive and still honor the copyright of the DVD, then that would be great. But by just putting the original in a jukebox, that should solve any DRM issues.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    elronelron Posts: 126member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by philbutler


    I know that if it wasn't for DRM (something I know very little about), then just putting a 500+ gig hard drive on the "host system" would hold 100+ DVDs. If there was someway to make a "backup" copy to hard drive and still honor the copyright of the DVD, then that would be great. But by just putting the original in a jukebox, that should solve any DRM issues.



    I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think making backup images of your DVDs is illegal. You don't have to break the encryption to make an image, so there's no DMCA violation. If you were to transcode the video to XviD, then you'd be breaking the law. OS X's DiskUtility might even be able to make the images for you. If it can't, I'm sure there are plenty of applications out there that can.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    skwidspawnskwidspawn Posts: 66member
    DVD DRM blocks DVD copying at all. The issue is that you're allowed to have a copy of your DVDs, but you aren't allowed to break the DRM to get that copy. So no, there isn't any legal way of doing it.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    philbutlerphilbutler Posts: 62member
    So that gets back to a DVD jukebox on ethernet concept. Hopefully either Apple or a third party will come up with such a unit. If a unit would handle 100 or so DVDs, then one or two units would cover most situations. Yes, that implies that they should be daisy-chainable (and transparently).



    Now, if a more advanced unit had DVD +/- RW, then businesses could buy them for backup units - but that's another thread.



    Bottom line is - I would like to be able to select from the several dozen or more (I haven't counted them) DVDs that we have direct from Front Row without having to stumble through stacks of DVDs. I don't care if it's on a hard drive or a jukebox - I just want to do it. Of course the DRM/copyright guidelines have to be followed.



    Perhaps Apple ought to offer a service - turn in your plastic DVDs and get in return electronic iTunes downloads of the same. Maybe a third party could do this - send in a stack of DVDs and a hard drive and get in return the original DVDs (that have been rendered unreadable) and the hard drive full of movies ready to port into iTunes.



    Phil
  • Reply 4 of 5
    kishankishan Posts: 732member
    Aren't there already DVD changers out there for your home theater? I think it would be rather inelegant to have a giant box with 200 DVDs in it sitting next to a computer just for the sake of being able to stream video. The better solution would be to have all the movies ripped to a hard drive. There are solutions out there for this. Mac the Ripper allows you to get the Video_ts folder off of most DVDs and a person could use media central to have a frontrow-like interface to watch them remotely over a home network. True that it sucks to have to break the DMCA to do this, but if you aren't distributing copies I think you really wouldn't have anything to worry about. My ambition is ultimately to have video on demand in the all the networked rooms of my home using a setup similar to this.
  • Reply 5 of 5
    elronelron Posts: 126member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kishan


    Aren't there already DVD changers out there for your home theater? I think it would be rather inelegant to have a giant box with 200 DVDs in it sitting next to a computer just for the sake of being able to stream video.



    I agree with this. I have enough trouble remembering which CD is in which slot in my car's 6-CD changer. I can't even imagine a 200-DVD changer. I'd need a poster on the wall to figure it out.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Skwidspawn


    DVD DRM blocks DVD copying at all. The issue is that you're allowed to have a copy of your DVDs, but you aren't allowed to break the DRM to get that copy. So no, there isn't any legal way of doing it.



    Hmm... that's interesting. Are you're saying that if I'm make an ISO image from a DVD, the bits have to be decrypted first? I didn't realize it was necessary to circumvent CSS to make a bit-for-bit copy of the DVD. I thought you could basically make a back-up that, if burnt, would contain the same DRM as the original. Now that I think about it, that wouldn't prevent much of anything, so what you're saying makes sense. That's kind of a bummer. I have a large file server that I was hoping to use for media streaming. I guess it will be limited to un-DRMed CDs <<wink wink>>
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