Advice needed on home theater set up, DVD ripping, etc

[BigGroll]

So I have a few components, and a few things I would like to do, and I just need some advice on the best way to do things! So I come to the trusted MR community for help.

Here's what I've got:
47" LG LCD (no cable, hooked up to OTA)
Yamaha 5.1 surround
PS3 slim, Xbox 360 Elite
27" Imac (3.06 C2D)
And a whole bunch of DVD's and Blu Rays

Now, what I would like to do (I think) is put all of my movies and TV shows on an external HD. I work at Best Buy, so I get a pretty solid deal on them. Ideally, I would then like to hook up one or two ext. HD's to my 360 or PS3 (any thought on which would be better for this??).

My question is, is there a better way to get my movies in a digital format than simply ripping them to my Imac, using handbrake, and storing them all? Im also getting about 1 tb of movies and 1 tb of TV shows from a friend at school, so that will be useful as well

Now, I'm a poor college kid, so I'd like to do this relatively cheap if I could. However, Im also debating if I should get an older Mac Mini or even a newer PC based nettop HTPC to hook up to the TV, and just run all my videos/internet videos through that. Would an older Mini (PPC?) do fine with playing videos/music (not streamed, but stored on the external HD's).

As you can see, I have a lot of ideas, and I'm just not sure what the best way to do this is. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

 

[rdowns]

So I have a few components, and a few things I would like to do, and I just need some advice on the best way to do things! So I come to the trusted MR community for help.

Here's what I've got:
47" LG LCD (no cable, hooked up to OTA)
Yamaha 5.1 surround
PS3 slim, Xbox 360 Elite
27" Imac (3.06 C2D)
And a whole bunch of DVD's and Blu Rays

<snip>)

Now, I'm a poor college kid,

My heart aches for you.

 

[BigGroll]

Well, I suppose I should say I'm a poor college kid who works three jobs

But regardless, school is quite spendy so Im trying to save some cash

 

[brand]

Would an older Mini (PPC?) do fine with playing videos/music (not streamed, but stored on the external HD's).

I don't think that the PPC Mac Minis will be able to handle HD content.

I also work at BBY as a weekend job. During the week I am a network computer technician at a local community college. I have a Mac Mini hooked up to a Samsung 52A850 TV and stream all of my media from either my Mac Pro or OpenSolaris server. Most content gets streamed from the server that has 7 2TB hard drives setup in a raidz2.

 

[bearcatrp]

Your PS3 should be able to do what you want. Hook up an external drive to it to store your movies. Not sure if can rip your movies though. It has the power to do it.