I just want to watch my Movies on my TV!

[billmister]

Hello Guys, I know what i want is REALLY simple, but it seems difficult for some strange reason. I don't have ANY dvd players in my house. However i only have 2 Current HD TV's with HDMI and USB input to them.

I do NOT condone illegal duplication, or distributing or whatever of non purchased movies.

I PURCHASED REAL Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Videos that i like to go over and drill movies and techniques. Howerver i have not been able to because i don't have DVD player and i hate to keep moving my DVD in and out of it's box and they are starting to show a LITTLE wear since my last used 10 months ago.

What i want is to rip all my purchased dvd's of jiu jitsu (martial arts) and put the on a external hard drive connected to my tv. So in my basement when i my cage, mats, and people over to train i can say, let's go over this... and skim thru the video's and play them.

1-I KNOW apple TV can do this, BUT i have to have the video's imported into my iTunes... Which i don't have to have my computer on to do this, and buy another apple TV. Takes up to much space on my laptop.

2-I have a WD passport that i was able to rip 2 videos. Howerver, my TV samsung is picky which which type of video format it plays. it's like .avi and .mp4. IT has to be a FAT partition as well. And if that is not bad enough, every time i turn on my tv or unplug it, it sounds like i'm UNMOUNTING my HD without ejecting. I feel this will mess up my hard drive soon. (I tried for one day).

Before ripping more, i was reading on WD TV. How it can play almost ANY video format and connects to my TV. Looking at what i simply need. Is this a good option? I just want to play my video's on my TV. And my TV is being picky. Sure WD TV is like $100 just like Apple TV. But Apple TV will need my movies on my HD and my iTunes on.

Please let me know. I have off today and i can go to best buy and buy what i need today to get this to work. Thanks!

 

[ftaok]

Just get a USB thumbdrive and format it in FAT32. Put your jujitsu videos on the thumbdrive and play it directly off of the TV.

As for converting, just convert the DVDs to a format that the Sammy recognizes. Since you're not putting the jujitsu stuff on iTunes, it doesn't matter if it's not m4p or m4v.

Alternatively, I think jailbreaking the aTV2 and installing Plex will allow you to watch videos in more formats than just the iTunes ones. I think you can also link directly to an external HDD (or on the network).

Lastly, the WDTV should also work fine, right out of the box. But research the supported codecs as well, since there may be some incompatibilities.

One last option or two. Put the videos on your iPhone and Airplay over to an AppleTV.

Or you could upload the videos onto YouTube and use the aTV2 or WDTV to access the viedos on YouTube.

 

[convergent]

Alternatively, I think jailbreaking the aTV2 and installing Plex will allow you to watch videos in more formats than just the iTunes ones. I think you can also link directly to an external HDD (or on the network).

You don't need Plex. If you get ATV Flash Black for Apple TV (which includes the jailbreak), then the built in Media Player can support playing ripped movies just fine. My setup is the jailbroken ATV and the movies are on a network attached NAS. It works very nicely and can support any number of ATV's setup on the network. We have two.

 

[billmister]

Nice!

You know that thimb drive does NOT sound bad at all. This way I don't have to worry about improper unmounting of the hard drive and I can use 500gb passport something more usefull. Does anyone recommend another app to use to rip my dvd's? I use handbrake but it ONLY let rip to mp4 or m4v. My Samsung only reads .avi. SOME mp4 does not play sound. It says audio unsupported. I don't mind paying for an app that I can choose export file type. As long as its reliable. I've searche on google but there are so many apps with adds that I'm afraid to buy something that is not recommende or spam.

As for the apple TV idea that also sounds pretty good if I jailbreak it. Put the videos on my airport extreme and steam it. I wonder if that will be slow though. Also I'm afraid to update my apple TV and brick it. (I never jailbroke a appleTV).

The WD TV won't be streaming do I know it will be quick however it I will get the same thing accomplished, might as well get apple TV since I rent movies thru iTunes anyway. But the jailbreak in scares about and the speed.

 

[ftaok]

I use handbrake but it ONLY let rip to mp4 or m4v. My Samsung only reads .avi. SOME mp4 does not play sound. It says audio unsupported.

Handbrake can encode audio using a bunch of different formats. Most of the "apple" presets use AAC. Perhaps you could try a few short samples using different audio codecs that the Sammy TV might support. MP3 would likely be supported.

Ohterwise, you can try MPEGStreamclip.

 

[Sedulous]

As others have already indicated, re-encode the DVDs using Handbrake (you can use any preset; I'd recommend the "high profile" but others might have different preferences). If your television is made by Samsung, it should have a USB port and a built-in media player that will accept .mp4. However, before you start the conversion in Handbrake, make sure there is only one audio track (under the audio tab in Handbrake change the AC3 passthrough track to "none") because some versions of the Samsung media player will not play video files with more than one audio track. Furthermore, some Samsung media players won't recognize the .m4v extension but this is just a .mp4 and so you can easily change the extension from .m4v to .mp4. After the file is done in Handbrake, just put it on a USB drive and play on your TV.

 

[billmister]

GREAT! so i will go to best buy and buy a ....16gb thumb drive (i think that will be MORE than enough for my 7 video's). I have a 4GB now and i just feel like i will outgrow that soon because i am planning on buying a couple more videos.

Then i will use Handbrake and change the extension to mp4. (which worked) but also change the audio to what is mentioned here on the forum.

MAN aside from the great ideas, i am saving $100 bucks. My wife will be happy about that.

As for my WD passport, i will put all my apps that i have .DMG's of and keep it connected to the airport extreme. This way it will be a shared hard drive, and my wife can save files to it on her macbook air, iMac, or my macbook pro should she need to save a file somewhere else. This is awesome!