Advice on a Blu-ray streaming setup at home

[ethana]

Here's what I want to do and I need advice on how to do it:

1. Rip my Blu-ray discs to exact copies. I am all about the menus, extras, and all of that stuff. I want all of it. I assume ripping it to a single ISO with AnyDVD is the best way to go here to get everything exact and easy to manage.

2. Storage for playback. I'm assuming the best way to do this is to have a computer with a large RAID with lots of storage. For playback I'm assuming any modern processor will do. It will be on a Gigabit network.

3. Here's the tricky part for me... how do I get this ISO to stream to my devices? I have mid-range equipment right now running my current setup with actual discs. Blu-ray players, Onkyo receivers, Apple TV, PS3, ect. My house has 3 levels, and each level has an HDTV on it. I want to be able to stream the ISO directly to these screens....

- Do I need to mount the ISO's on the machine first to make them act as a disc? Or will something like the PS3 be able to mount it directly from a file/folder structure that it can see over the network?

- Is there a cheap streaming device I can buy to hook up to each TV to just stream these ISO's as Blu-rays? I'd prefer not to have to have a home-built computer connected to each TV... I'd rather just have a device I can go out and buy at each.

- What about 3D movies? One of my TV's is a 3D TV and I'd like to be able to stream those as well.

4. I'd also like to have these available for remote streaming to my iPhone and iPad when my family and I are away. Obviously I'd need to compress these down for these devices. Would MakeMKV work? Or is there anything that can compress an ISO on the fly for streaming?

If someone can give me the best idea on how to do this that would be great. I will not compromise on trying to stream a direct copy of the Blu-ray though... having exact copies is critical for what I'd like to do here.

Thanks,

Ethan

 

[AdrianK]

For playback I'm assuming any modern processor will do.

Depends how you define modern Anything Core i3 or above will do. My 2.26GHz Core2Duo can handle a lot of BDs, but high bitrate stuff (particularly VC1) really starts to choke.

Blu-ray players, Onkyo receivers, Apple TV, PS3, ect. My house has 3 levels, and each level has an HDTV on it. I want to be able to stream the ISO directly to these screens....

No go on the ATV (unless it's an ATV1 running Linux w/ CrystalHD), there just isn't enough juice in it.
Although the PS3 can decode the content, I doubt the stock OS will allow you to stream the entire BD (with menus and all) since there's no ISO mounting mechanism, same with a BD player.

- Is there a cheap streaming device I can buy to hook up to each TV to just stream these ISO's as Blu-rays? I'd prefer not to have to have a home-built computer connected to each TV... I'd rather just have a device I can go out and buy at each.

There are a lot of generic set top boxes that will be able to decode blurays, but I'm not sure if they generally support disk images.

4. I'd also like to have these available for remote streaming to my iPhone and iPad when my family and I are away. Obviously I'd need to compress these down for these devices. Would MakeMKV work? Or is there anything that can compress an ISO on the fly for streaming?

Remuxing isn't enough, you'll need to re-encode to h264 for your iOS devices.



I'd say that if you want to do this, getting set top boxes for each of your locations is the best bet, if you can find something that can mount ISOs.

 

[ceraz]

I got an LG bluray that streams my BR rips from the NAS via Ethernet cable.

Motivations were:

(1) My DVD player died, so I needed a disc player anyway
(2) Unlike most other BR players, LG supports CIFS so it mounts the NAS. A lot of other devices support DLNA-only and have file retrictions (size/codec etc.)
(3) A cheap investment while waiting on an ATV that can stream fullHD (ATV3?)

Well all that is at the time or purchase 6 months ago

 

[CarolinaPen]

This sounds similar to what I have setup (DVD/BLURAY rips to ISO, Storage on Synology RAID NAS) and I use a Dune HD MAX media player to stream the ripped ISO images. As long as you have it on a GB network (not wireless), even the streamed Bluray ISOs (with HD audio enabled) play perfectly. I have been using this setup for over a year with MyMovies and am extremely happy.

 

[peterjcat]

If you want to play full BD ISOs with menus and special features intact over the network, your options are limited to the Dune (cheapest would be the Smart H1), the Popcorn Hours (A-210 or A-300) or the Netgear NTV550 (limited picture-in-picture audio support). For 3D BD ISOs with full menus over a network you will need a Windows machine for now.