Is There a Media Center to Which I Can Upload My Dvds
DVDs are then analog. Sure, they're digitally encoded versions of your favorite movies and TV shows, but they're trapped on physical platters. If you desire to spotter something, you accept to find the disc, slide it into a DVD player—or a computer with a DVD drive—and flip your Boob tube to the proper input.
As DVD players leave the market and DVD drives disappear from PCs, it'due south time to gratuitous your films from their shiny silvery prisons and so they'll still exist watchable in the role player-free time to come. As a bonus, ripping your movies off the disc extends your viewing options to your phone, tablet, Roku box, game console, and more.
Once you convert your movie library to digital files, you can store those files on a server and stream them anytime, from anywhere. Media companies are slowly waking up to how convenient this is and are building services like Flixster, Ultraviolet, and Vudu, which offering DVD-to-digital conversions: Pop a disc into your PC, and the service adds it to your online account—at which point y'all tin can stream it to an app or to a ready-top box.
Each such conversion volition cost yous a few bucks, all the same, and you won't exist able to convert some movies (owing to studio-imposed restrictions). But y'all tin take a more hands-on approach and accomplish the same thing yourself, spending little or no coin in the process.
Go ripping
To plow a real-world DVD into a digital file that you can stream to the viewing platform of your pick, y'all have to rip information technology from the disc. As with ripping CDs, you lot'll copy the contents of a DVD to your computer, and then convert those contents to a cloud-friendly format. In order for this to piece of work, obviously, you must have access to a PC with a DVD bulldoze.
One quick caveat: Though the police force won't break your door downward for ripping DVDs that y'all already own, the process does technically violate copyright law. However, every bit long as you're not sharing movies on BitTorrent or selling copies on the street, information technology qualifies equally fair use—only every bit ripping CDs (which is technically legal) does.
Digiarty Software That said, y'all'll demand a DVD-ripping utility that can remove the Content Scrambling System (CSS) or similar built-in protections that prevent straight-upward copying. You lot can purchase a commercial ripper like DVDFab DVD Ripper ($50) or WinX DVD Ripper Platinum ($twoscore), both of which circumvent well-nigh copy protection schemes and convert the discs to the mobile- or home-theater-friendly format of your choice.
But a free selection works well-nigh as well: perennial favorite HandBrake. Information technology, as well, converts DVDs, though it needs a lilliputian help to remove copy protection. Later on installing the program, yous take to obtain a file called libdvdcss-2.dll, which you tin can download from this public archive site.
After downloading libdvdcss-2.dll, copy it to the binder where you installed HandBrake—usually C:Program FilesHandbrake. That should exercise the flim-flam. On my organization, calculation that file enabled HandBrake to read all of the DVDs I tested, including Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Despicable Me.
At present you're ready to drift your movies into the all-digital future. Load up HandBrake, and insert one of your DVDs into the PC. Then click the Source push button, and choose the location of your disc—on my PC it's the D: drive. Exist patient—information technology may accept a few minutes for HandBrake to read the contents of the DVD.
When HandBrake has completed its preliminary work, the Source field should display the proper name of the movie, and the Championship field should list something with a runtime that matches the moving-picture show's length. If the runtime seems manner too short, open the Title drop-down card and look for an entry that has an appropriately movie-length runtime. Now selectBrowse, and choose a destination and filename for the video file you're virtually to create—a file named with the moving-picture show's original title in the Windows Videos folder would be the obvious choice.
Finally, choose a preset for the conversion. If you program to watch the movie mostly on mobile devices, select the formatting option that best matches what you have—or opt for Universal if y'all desire something that tin play just about anywhere. Click Start, and then be prepared to wait: The ripping and conversion process can accept some time.
Once HandBrake finishes doing its thing, play dorsum the terminal product to confirm that information technology looks okay. And so remove that DVD from your PC and park it in storage somewhere—you won't need information technology in the foreseeable future.
Get streaming
One time yous've liberated your picture show library, y'all'll desire to make it available for viewing anytime, anywhere—non just on the PC that houses the files. Y'all have a couple options at this point: You can upload everything to a remote-storage service similar Dropbox or SugarSync, and and then stream movies on demand to whatever devices support that service; or you lot can plough your PC into a media server and effectively host your own "cloud."
Using a deject service affords you a built-in remote backup of your motion-picture show library and lets you stream videos via the service'due south mobile app—a dainty option when you're traveling. Still, a free business relationship on Dropbox or SugarSync nets y'all only a few gigabytes of space, so program to pay a monthly fee for storage if y'all need lots of infinite. What's more, it takes time to upload a big batch of movies, and you won't be able to stream them to set-top boxes. The limitations aren't terrible, only I think most people would be meliorate off setting up a personal media server with free streaming software.
Plex A program like Plex offers the all-time of both worlds. Plex indexes all of the media on your PC, and then streams information technology to mobile and connected devices alike—and so you can sentinel movies on your smartphone or tablet while you're on the go, or on set-acme boxes similar the Roku, PS3, and Xbox.
The downside is that you lot need to leave your PC running 24/7, at least during the times when you want to accept streaming access to your movie library. The Plex software taxes your arrangement a flake, too, peculiarly when it's indexing files and transcoding them while streaming.
Back in Dec, PCWorld's Alex Castle detailed how to get started with Plex, and so I won't rehash that setup process here. Instead, let'southward wait at pairing Plex with a Roku box then you can enjoy all of your newly ripped movies on your big-screen TV.
First, you'll want to make sure that Plex has scanned the folder containing your ripped moving-picture show files. Right-click the Plex icon in your System Tray, and click Media Director. In the My Library department, click the plus sign, choose Movies, and then add the appropriate folder.
While Plex is scanning the contents, head to Roku'due south site and add together the Plex channel. Yous'll need to exist signed in to your Roku account. If y'all own a newish Samsung Telly, an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, or a Google TV box, you should be able to discover a Plex channel on that device as well.
Plex At present plow on your Tv, burn up the Roku box, and flip to the Plex channel. Yous should accept access to all of your movies! Keep in mind though, that new channels can take a few minutes to appear, and Plex tin have fifty-fifty longer to scan and itemize your pic folder. So don't exist alarmed if you don't see your full library right away. If yous take the fourth dimension to ready the Plex mobile device client, you should also be able to stream your movies to your smartphone or tablet with ease.
And that's information technology! Every bit long equally Plex is running, you lot can admission your movies via apps and set-top boxes. You've just given your DVD library a new, cloud-savvy charter on life.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/453065/how-to-put-your-dvd-library-in-the-cloud.html
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