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Superbasic: How do I watch my ripped DVDs on Apple TV
- Thread starter Jaze
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Exactly this. I have used this solution for a few years now. Mac Mini, base 2014 model with SSD upgrade. Sitting in headless mode running Plex server with a 4TB HDD full of films attached. I can watch them anywhere I have an Internet connection. My home connection (serving the media) maxes out at around 1MBps upload IIRC, never have any buffering or stuttering.
Plex is free in it's basic form. Why not try it out?
No one suggested an excellent PAID app called Infuse on Apple TV to playback his rips?
The app is paid but the UI is awesome. Beats Apple even.
The app is paid but the UI is awesome. Beats Apple even.
Agree. This is the route I took for ripping all of my DVD's and Blu-Rays. Hands down one of the better products. I use MakeMKV for my rips and then load them up into my folders and have Plex load them up from the folder.
I finally broke down and bought the Lifetime pass and haven't looked back. I have a rather big collection of movies, music, and TV Shows that I have ripped.
I am now looking at the DVR functionality also.
I've been doing this for years. I first started this in 2005 with Windows XP Media Center Edition and have used lots of different solutions over the years (media center, iTunes, MythTV, a custom frontend I wrote about 10 years ago, various other frontends). I now use Plex and Infuse together for my 500'ish movies. Plex server runs on my Linux server in my basement and that's where all my media is stored. The server uses ZFS and I have 24TB setup in a raidz2. I use the Plex docker image and updating the plex server is simply a matter of restarting that docker image.
I use MakeMKV to rip movies. It took me a month or two to rip all the movies when I originally did it many years ago. I'd just rip a few in the morning and a few more at night. I've even heard of people loading up a PC with 5 to 8 DVD drives so they can rip multiple movies at once but that's a little extreme, lol. Just do a few every day and you'll eventually have them all ripped. If hard drive space is an issue, use Handbrake to compress them.
I use the Infuse client only on the AppleTV and when watching movies; it's setup to work against my Plex server (and they both work great together). I use Infuse on the AppleTV mainly so I can take advantage of HD audio (it decodes it to PCM and sends that to my receiver), which Plex doesn't support because AppleTV doesn't support DTA-MA and TrueHD. I also think Infuse has a better UI. The main reasons I still use Plex as a server is so I can centralize the metadata and use multiple different devices, some of which are not Apple devices.
All other devices (iPhone/iPad, web, Roku) use the Plex client and it's setup so I can watch things remotely.
I also have Plex setup to work with my HDHomeRun for live TV and DVR functionality. This it the only thing I use the Plex client for on the AppleTV. I prefer using Plex for live TV so I can pause/rewind/etc (I don't have cable).
Over all, I'm very happy with my setup. It's very stable and I never have any issues. I've been using Plex to do this for about 3 years now and only just recently started using Infuse as well. Those two, either separately or together, are by far the best and easiest ways to serve up movies IMO. I'm so happy with both Plex and Infuse that I happily purchased both of their lifetime subscriptions.
I use MakeMKV to rip movies. It took me a month or two to rip all the movies when I originally did it many years ago. I'd just rip a few in the morning and a few more at night. I've even heard of people loading up a PC with 5 to 8 DVD drives so they can rip multiple movies at once but that's a little extreme, lol. Just do a few every day and you'll eventually have them all ripped. If hard drive space is an issue, use Handbrake to compress them.
I use the Infuse client only on the AppleTV and when watching movies; it's setup to work against my Plex server (and they both work great together). I use Infuse on the AppleTV mainly so I can take advantage of HD audio (it decodes it to PCM and sends that to my receiver), which Plex doesn't support because AppleTV doesn't support DTA-MA and TrueHD. I also think Infuse has a better UI. The main reasons I still use Plex as a server is so I can centralize the metadata and use multiple different devices, some of which are not Apple devices.
All other devices (iPhone/iPad, web, Roku) use the Plex client and it's setup so I can watch things remotely.
I also have Plex setup to work with my HDHomeRun for live TV and DVR functionality. This it the only thing I use the Plex client for on the AppleTV. I prefer using Plex for live TV so I can pause/rewind/etc (I don't have cable).
Over all, I'm very happy with my setup. It's very stable and I never have any issues. I've been using Plex to do this for about 3 years now and only just recently started using Infuse as well. Those two, either separately or together, are by far the best and easiest ways to serve up movies IMO. I'm so happy with both Plex and Infuse that I happily purchased both of their lifetime subscriptions.
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No HD audio. If I were sticking with the free version I'd just use plex instead.
But even with using infuse you'll still want to use plex media server to make your media easily available and maintain watch/unwatched statuses.
I have a somewhat similar question as the OP, but my content is coming from downloaded .ts files via TiVo. When I convert the .ts file to a blu-ray and play on my blu-ray player, quality is as good as watching the original. However, when I convert the .ts to an .m4v using Handbrake, the video quality that's being streamed is just not the same. Handbrake is set to use the Super HQ 1080p30 preset.
Is this normal? Is there another way to convert a .ts file, stream it, and get the same quality as from a blu-ray disc?
Is this normal? Is there another way to convert a .ts file, stream it, and get the same quality as from a blu-ray disc?
No, you can use the free version. You just get some of the features like downloading to a device and the DVR functionality for example.
If you end up using it and you like it, the lifetime pass goes on sale throughout the year so you can pick it up for 75$ or so. It has more than paid for itself given how much I use it.
So to recoup I can use Plex [Server] on the PC (media source) and play back to Apple TV using Plex app on either the Apple TV or iPhone for zero cost?
Plex app on iPhone is just a remote without plex pass or in-app purchase.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/plex/id383457673?mt=8
Thanks, info appreciated. I've got Plex set up on the PC and will now experiment with Fuse and the Plex App.
Surely ripped DVDs are going to look really really bad in say five years time when you folk have moved on to 77" 8K TVs and upwards?
I can't believe the lengths and time people will go to just for watching a film. In comparison to ripping a low def DVD, an iTunes film may go from 1080p HD to 4K to 4K Dolby Vision/HDR with Dolby Atmos added this Autumn to 8K in five years time to 16K in 10 years maybe whilst that DVD rip is going to stay as a low def piece of yuck, providing the hard drive hasn't crashed out in those years. I can understand ripping five or 10 discs but anymore to me is just plain crazy unless you don't have anything to do.
Surely if you love discs then buy a £1000 beautifully made disc player like the new Panasonic due in the autumn or a Oppo/Pioneer and savor in its upscaling capabilities and high quality HiFi components but ripping hundreds to a hard drive...
I can't believe the lengths and time people will go to just for watching a film. In comparison to ripping a low def DVD, an iTunes film may go from 1080p HD to 4K to 4K Dolby Vision/HDR with Dolby Atmos added this Autumn to 8K in five years time to 16K in 10 years maybe whilst that DVD rip is going to stay as a low def piece of yuck, providing the hard drive hasn't crashed out in those years. I can understand ripping five or 10 discs but anymore to me is just plain crazy unless you don't have anything to do.
Surely if you love discs then buy a £1000 beautifully made disc player like the new Panasonic due in the autumn or a Oppo/Pioneer and savor in its upscaling capabilities and high quality HiFi components but ripping hundreds to a hard drive...
I would really suggest you check out Plex for your use case. Since you have established that you are going to rip your DVD's, and since you have two locations in which you would like to access your movies, Plex just makes sense. I have ripped my entire collection, blu-rays included. I built a PC that runs my Plex server and has several large drives built right in. That PC backs up to a Synology NAS, so I don't have to worry about drive failure. The Plex server has the advantage of being available from anywhere. I built this setup over time, and you certainly wouldn't need to do it all at once either. Plex can be run directly on several Network drives and Network attached servers. All's you would have to do is set up the server and put the Plex app on any device with which you would like to access your library. As long as you have access to a reasonably fast internet connection, you will be able to stream your movies at full resolution to your Apple TV. It also runs on just about any portable device. If the device can't play the movie in the native format, the Plex server will transcode on the fly. Since you are going to put the work into ripping all of the movies anyway, you may as well access to them whenever you want. It would basically be like having your own Netflix service that has everything you own available on it.
Another vote for Plex.
The only investment required is for the storage/server hardware. I'm using a 4-bay Synology NAS for that, which protects me from single-drive failures, too (happened twice already).
For mobile watching you can use the VLC app, it plays Plex content just fine, albeit without the nice UI.
The only investment required is for the storage/server hardware. I'm using a 4-bay Synology NAS for that, which protects me from single-drive failures, too (happened twice already).
For mobile watching you can use the VLC app, it plays Plex content just fine, albeit without the nice UI.
Maybe. But that movie could also be yanked from iTunes by the distributor, and if you don't have a backup it is lost. It's a personal thing, but I don't trust that an online movie service is going to have my movies (or even be around) in 5 years time. Feel much safer having a backed up hard copy rip (Blu-Ray for now) on my disks.
There is also the point of diminishing returns. Each of the transitions, VHS to DVD, DVD to Laser Disk, Laser Disk to Blu-Ray produced marvelous, orders of magnitude improvements in quality. I haven't moved to 4K yet, but looking at an OLED 4K in costco from a distance and comparing it a 1080p it is better, but not that quantum improvement you got from those earlier transition. Yes, atmos is nice, but it's not really a game changer. I can't hang speakers from my ceiling. When 8K or higher comes out we're talking about resolutions that may be greater than that which the eye can see. They will be nice, but I don't have a wall large enough to really use that resolution.
This time, the name of the game is HDR. This makes a visible difference. 'Coz you really can not get a decent 1080p HDR set, you need to be looking at 4K.
As for Atmos, I am also not (yet) ready to drill my ceiling. For the likes of you and me, there are those Atmos-enabled speakers available.
Next step would be to install 100% concealed (ceiling) speakers. Probably current cost point is just too high.
The options are already here, though:
https://uk.aminasound.com/
https://www.stealthacoustics.com/
Yes I'm looking forward to it. But it's not an order of magnitude improvement, which the first iPhone made. In television, as with phones, we are now seeing incremental improvements as they are maturing technologies. I love FaceID, but it's a convenience and security feature, doesn't improve the basics of what the phone does. I like to get inches away from a UHD display and see that incredible resolution, but it is only an incremental improvement at a distance:
"Most viewers sit too far from their TVs to fully appreciate the resolution of 4K, much less 8K."
from an article about 8K:
https://www.soundandvision.com/content/8k-la
Ill worry about the quality of the DVD rips in 5-10 years then. Multiple backups will keep them running for a long time. Eventually when flash storage is cheap enough I can invest in a couple of SSDs to eliminate the need for spinning discs. Right now I have roughly 4TB of content between TV series on DVD and/or BluRay and a number of different movies on DVD/Blu ray. With the data caps ISPs are starting to enforce more and more it is nice to know I have a lot of what I watch stored locally and can watch without any worry of it eating into my data limit. The DVD rips look just fine on a 65" 4k tv. Not everything needs to be viewed in 4K HDR, especially something like a tv show. It really isn't that hard to rip the movies to the computer either. Pop it in, do about a minute of work to get it setup and the computer handles it from there. Once it rips I rename it, toss it into my Plex folder and Plex handles it from there. It's really not a difficult or time consuming process.