Mike Benson’s Blog

After a lot of time futzing around I found a solution to my problem and thought I would share it. It’s still not as simple as I thought it should be.

First the background:

What I wanted was to watch my movies on the xbox 360 with little to no quality loss. Also, I did not want the conversion process to be painful (read time consuming or too many processes). I am currently in process of ripping all of my DVDs to hard disk. My current method is to rip the vobs as a DVD VIDEO_TS folder so I can watch them through TheaterTek. The problem is, in their infinite wisdom, Microsoft decided that the XBOX 360 should not stream DVD video, what a bunch of idiots.

They are worried about DRM etc… Well, dammit these are my DVD’s I purchased every one of them, if I want to go and play Frisbee with them I can. If I want to melt them onto my forehead I can. If I want to rip it to my hard drive to protect my property (the source media) then dammit I can. If I upload the rip or burn it and give it to my friends that’s breaking the law.
(more…)

For those of you who have been to my house, you know that I have over 1,000 DVD movies at my house (yes I bought them all over the years). The DVD’s take up two bookshelves in my front room, two bookshelves in my basement and there are some DVD’s in boxes. It was time to reduce clutter and make it easier to play a movie. (more…)