To Compress or Not To Compress?

[MowingDevil]

So I'm already about 75 movies into my digitation project and using a combination of MacTheRipper, RipIt and Handbrake, I've only taken up about 130gb from my 2tb drive. As I probably only have 150 dvds or so I'm thinking I'm going to have a helluva lot of space left over.

Perhaps I should just backup my discs w/o any compression whatsoever as I'd still have room to spare. Any have any experience w/ that? I'm wondering how much quality is lost when compressing the films, is it noticeable?

So far on my computer the compressed movies look close enough but I'm open to rethinking my archiving method. Once you rip the film how would one go about turning it into a format that my media center will play it w/o using any additional compression? If it doesn't make any difference I'll just keep rolling along as I have been (files are generally 1-1.8gb in size and I'm using mp4s).

 

[GoCubsGo]

don't you kind of have to compress to be playable on ATV?

 

[skunkworker]

Storing them as h.264 isnt a bad option as that is now playable across a large number of devices, and as the source isnt that great (MPEG-2) you won't get any additional quality past about 1800 kbps video which results in about a 1.8-2.2 gb file.

 

[MowingDevil]

don't you kind of have to compress to be playable on ATV?

Not sure about that one but DVDs are compressed to begin with...so I'm just wondering what all this additional compression is doing to the end product and when it gets to the point that its noticeable.

I'm not using an TV, my TV has a built in media center so I just have to plug a USB drive to it and I'm in business.