Playing Ripped DVD's

[hucker]

I am going on vacation for a couple of weeks and want to have some movies for the kids to watch. I've already ripped them and have verified that I can watch them using mplayer.

I need something a bit more user friendly though. I have no problem spending a few bucks if watching the ripped dvd is 6-year-old-kid friendly. Ultimately I will be setting up a sage tv server with extenders in the house so if there is a solution that uses sage software even better. When I look at the sage stuff I don't see direct mentions of playing ripped movies but I know it must be there.

Anybody have a good suggestion on what software to get?

This will be on an XP machine for now and eventually I'll move it over to my WHS machine.

 

[pete_c]

Personally I rip the DVDs that I have to DiVx with DD 5.1. I set the size to around 700 megs or so. The picture and sound are decent on my LCD TV. Last vacation I brought my little mediaplayer and loaded it with movies and music. It is small, 1TB drive and has multiple outputs on it including HDMI, SVideo, Standard Video, Optical sound and regular sound. I also purchased a do all portable DVD player which plays DiVx and has a USB port on it. With a portable that plays DiVx you can load up a DVD with numerous movies.

With the right codecs installed you can play just about any movie.

 

[electron]

SageTV supports playing ripped DVD's, I can confirm that for sure I think there is a plugin which also adds support for .ISO DVD images. I would just get SageTV now, you'll like it, even without extenders. That said, I have also used:

MediaPortal: Worked very well, very nice interface. It's free, but it has been a few years since I used it.
GeexBox: Can be run from CD, while supporting popular remotes etc. Very user friendly, can load video from the network.

 

[TXFlatLander]

If you want to go from DVD (.VOB) to MPG, I use VOB2MPG from BadgerIT plus it is free.

If you want to go from DVD to DivX/XviD, then I use AutoGK plus it is free as well. It basically scripts all the conversions for you.

Both programs are very user-friendly and as long as you have the proper codecs (MPG or DivX/Xvid) installed, SageTV will play them. Also, VLC will nearly play anything as well.

 

[hucker]

If I get sage tv and install it on my laptop for my trip, will it be a pain to move it over (license wise) to my WHS machine?

I'll have a look at VLC as that might be a good interim solution.

 

[sic0048]

If I get sage tv and install it on my laptop for my trip, will it be a pain to move it over (license wise) to my WHS machine?

No, as long as you uninstall it off the laptop, you can install it on the WHS machine without any problems using the same key. It is not machine specific and you don't need to get the key reset like some programs.

Sage makes updating machines very easy.