DVD Solutions.

[theweaselking]

Everyone with any interest at all in such things already knows that the best available experience for watching TV and movies is also the cheapest, and the least legal. To the point where it's almost less annoying to take a season of TV on DVD, rip it, and play it on a TV connected to a media player than it is to swap the bloody DVDs.

However, disk space is still not unlimited, and so since I own the DVDs of Deadwood and had seen it, I deleted the computer copy.

Now I'm watching Deadwood again (because I felt like it) and *holy crap* it is UNBELIEVABLY annoying to have to swap disks, wait for menus, and be unable to simply queue up a season to play one after another.

Help me out, lazyweb: What are solutions for this, other than "download a pirated copy of Deadwood to go with my DVDs because the pirated version is better" or "swap disks and take hours ripping and encoding Deadwood"? Is there an easy way to make VLC Media player ignore the menus and go directlty to the .vob files, and enqueue those so at least I only have to swap disks every 2-3 episodes? Do people even *make* multi-disk DVD players any more, and if so is there a cheap one I can use for shit like this? And if so, it had BETTER be cheaper than a 2TB external disk to just store more AVIs on, I'm just saying.

Because right now, I'm swapping disks and dealing with the menus as an annoying-but-less-annoying-than-the-rip-process hazard of owning a legal copy of something. And that's just a pain in the ass.

Comments

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

Netflix/Hulu/whatever? I don't know how well their service translates into not-US places.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That involves paying more money for things I already own, and uses the same bandwidth that "pirating" a mostly-legal-in-Canada download would.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

It's not available here anyways. Our selection sucks*.

*There's enough to be worth $8/mo to me, but it's not about to become my primary source of TV anytime soon.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

[subscribing]

I know that there have been DVD players on the market that 'accidentally' didn't respect the no-skip tag on previews, FBI warnings and the like. There's got to be a way to get a computer to do the same.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

VLC ignores no-skips. However, it doesn't bring up the menu any *faster*

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

mplayer dvd://1 doesn't work because .. you use the w0rng OS?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

What does mplayer get me that VLC doesn't?

(The machine that is currently the immediate problem runs 7, but there's a Ubuntu machine with the same issue in the next room.)

[rbarclay.livejournal.com]

You can specify the title to play directly, and fuck everything else.

dvd://1
dvd://2
etc.

Or even dvd://2-5.

So, in essence, you look at the structure once, figure out your options (-fs -vm -zoom -alang=en dvd://2-5), and then go watch your content.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ah. It looks like VLC can do that - you just locate the .vob files directly, right-click, and enqueue. And that's a LITTLE annoying because you have to pick the episodes out from the features and the menus and whatever, but that's not hard - very few of the features are an hour long.

[andrewducker]

Annoying, isn't it?

Sadly, I have no answer for you. DVDs are just less handy than watching downloads.

How long does it take to rip an episode to AVI? Because by the sounds of things you could do that faster than it takes you to watch an episode, which would make it easier than using the stupid menu systems.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Dealing with the menus adds about 30 seconds per episode, with a disk swap every 2-3 episodes.

Ripping the disk takes about 5 minutes per disk (and requires disk swapping), and then encoding to AVI takes about 30 minutes per episode.

It's still faster to watch the DVDs as DVDs. But it annoys me that I need 30 seconds per episode and a disk swap every 2-3 episodes when I could set, say, the entirety of Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law to play in order without needing to every interrupt myself.

[andrewducker]

There are some DVDs that have a "play whole disk" option. But it is frustrating when some don't do that.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Yeah, The Lost Room has that. You can play each ep individually, or play every ep on the disk seamlessly.

Deadwood, nope.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

handbreak for macos will rip a whole dvd as a continual stream. you still get end credits and that, but no other gubbins.

no menu, nothing. just the episodes back to back

I use handbreak whenever MacTheRipper gives me disc error warnings.

check it out here [multiplatform]
http://handbrake.fr/

I don't have a TV or proper internet, so this is how I watch all video at home

[jsbowden.livejournal.com]

Cocksuckers. The whole of the MPAA, every last cock sucking one of them.

[fearmeforiampink]

Mmmm. I was discussing with a friend today that what I really want is an equivalent of Steam for TV shows and films; I buy a thing once, I can download, watch, delete and redownload to my hearts content, and for it to be someone that I'm happy isn't going to fuck me over, isn't going to go out of business in short order and either doesn't pile on DRM, or just keeps things sufficiently seamless from my PoV that I don't care about it effectively being DRM (like Steam)

[negumi.livejournal.com]

While we're dreaming ;p I'd rather have something like OnLive and be able to buy it, rent it, or pay for a monthly pass that lets me see a bunch of stuff.

[fearmeforiampink]

The additional options would be good, though I think I'd mostly stick with just buying, unless it was something I was unsure of, or certain things where I'm sure I only want to see it once.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I would pay for that service.

[fearmeforiampink]

For me, it's less the trouble of switching discs, and more the fact that I'm good at losing discs, and good at damaging discs, which why I really love Steam; even without the special offers, the fact that when I got my new laptop I was able to go "Right, that, that, that, and that" then left it on all day or all night, and came back to 25 gigs of various games ready to play.

'cause of the new security feature, I had to click a link in an email to say 'Yes, the new computer is me", but even that was quick and easy — no 'five computers authenticated maximum' or stuff like that.