I’m ripping all my DVDs at the minute and am going to buy a new hard drive to store them on. The question is should I be looking to buy a media server type drive rather than a standard internal drive that i’d put in a carrier?

I have a PS3 and Sky box in the cupboard under the stairs which link to the living room TV via hdmi cables under the floor. The wireless router is also in the cupboard linked to these. The only other TV is in the bedroom and iis not linked to these other devices. It is used for freeview via an aerial and we also have a google chromecast on it for netflix etc.

I’d like to be able to rip all my dvds and be able to stream them from the central server on my tablet, phone, chromecast etc. as well as play them directly through the PS3. Budget for the hardrive or media server is <£100 and I expect I’ll need no more than 1TB of storage for all my music and films plus a few photos.

I’m sure I could figure out something but a bit of advice would be very helpful to make sure I get the best out of whatever I do. Thanks.

Do you already have a media server?

If yes then I use WD Green drives in my Synology and have had no issues at all with them.

No I don’t have a media server. This is the sort of thing I was looking at but don’t really understand what it does differently to a hard drive in a carrier. I guess it’s just the fact that it can connect directly to the tv via hdmi.

http://www.3000rpm.com/acatalog/Sumvision-Cyclone-Primus-MKV-FULL-1080p-HD-Player-with-1TB-Hard-Drive.html

Plex is brilliant. It just works and is free.

The media server will host the films for you and also play them back when connected to your TV. If you get a good one it will be network connected so as you can watch the films on other network equipment like via your PS3 or your computer.

A drive in a carrier is just that a storage drive. If you’re lucky your TV will be able to play the movies or your PS3 with the drive connected to that but you will be limited by file formats that they support.

I have a Synology NAS drive as my media server and it’s fantastic. Means I can watch films on any of my TVs using XBMC or a chromecast and can even watch them when out travelling via my phone/laptop if I wanted.

Second the Synology if you don’t mind spending a bit of wonga.

I use Plex – Mac as the media server (think it’s on Linux and Windows too), Roku as the client connected to the TV. You can lash that up for nowt if you have an old laptop or something kicking around, try it out with the internal drive.. if it works for you buy a nice external USB3 drive for £50 (2.5″ so it powers on the USB) and you’re sorted.

You’d need a Roku (£10 if you get the Sky Now one), the Plex client for it (free), Plex clients on your phones/tablets (a few quid I think), Plex media Server (free) and the laptop / headless desktop (err.. can’t help there!)

I had briefly looked into Plex and it seems to do all I want but do I need to have a pc with Plex installed constantly running to allow me to instantly access my dvds in the house? I think you can upload to the cloud with Plex and stream via the internet so that might not be a problem. I’ve limited space in the under stair cupboard so don’t want a big pc kicking out heat and using up space.

Either way I’m going to need to buy a storage device large enough to keep all my dvds on. Confused now.

Either way I’m going to need to buy a storage device large enough to keep all my dvds on.

Make sure you’re ripping them to an efficient file format that is well supported, something like an x264 encoded MP4 or MKV. That will help keep the size down.

But you’re correct that to get a proper solution you do need a server of some form to host the DVDs.