4 ms·

Isn't this a device waiting to happen? A small form factor PC with a blu ray reader that lets you watch blu rays. But it also rips them (ideally while playing!)

Isn't this a device waiting to happen? A small form factor PC with a blu ray reader that lets you watch blu rays. But it also rips them (ideally while playing!) such that you never need to put the disc in again. Slap a couple 20T drives in there, charge $1k for it. Don't even let it connect to the internet.

tombert 3y ago
That would be cool but I suspect a legal nightmare. It's one thing to have a personal collection of movies that you painstakingly ripped on your own, but if you were to try and sell a machine that automatically circumvented DRM, I cannot imagine that I wouldn't get sued and/or arrested by multiple entities. This of course, makes me sad, because it would be nice to have a system that wasn't just a nerdy custom setup.
- Solvency 3y ago
  So why not a machine with everything but the ripping part (being pre-installed)? Why must running a media server be such a chore when it's just TBs of movie files?
  - aembleton 3y ago
    Because it's more than just some movie files. I think most media servers also have an operating system, software to transcode and serve the media files. You will also want a client to be able to read the served content and your server needs to stay up to date with the client.
    - account42 3y ago
      I think you misunderstood the parent post. No one is denying the complexity of a full-featured media server. The question is why there is no one providing a solution to manage that complexity for you (ideally by providing a pre-configured device) even if that couldn't legally include the ripping part of the workflow and you had to provide it with your own ripped media files.
- javajosh 3y ago
  > a personal collection of movies that you painstakingly ripped on your own I would argue that such a device does indeed represent painstakingly ripping your own movies. After all, it is slow - I think it's safe to assume it takes at least 1:1 to rip a blu ray. And it will take you a long time to watch your collection even once. There are two difficulties. First, the fact that people might never own, or stop owning the blu-rays they've ripped. This is in part mitigated by the fact that such a device would be expensive, and as such its a luxury item not a piracy item. Second, you'll have the stray ornery hacker who'll want to do something more with the device, and dammit I paid for it so its mine! They'll insist on seeding torrents with it or cloning the hard drives and selling them or something and honestly I don't think this is mitigable.
bombcar 3y ago
It exists or existed for high end home theaters years ago. I remember seeing it - something like $20k base starting price. Not sure what happened to it - high end $100k+ home theater is batshit insane.

tombert 3y ago

That would be cool but I suspect a legal nightmare. It's one thing to have a personal collection of movies that you painstakingly ripped on your own, but if you were to try and sell a machine that automatically circumvented DRM, I cannot imagine that I wouldn't get sued and/or arrested by multiple entities. This of course, makes me sad, because it would be nice to have a system that wasn't just a nerdy custom setup.

Solvency 3y ago
So why not a machine with everything but the ripping part (being pre-installed)? Why must running a media server be such a chore when it's just TBs of movie files?
- aembleton 3y ago
  Because it's more than just some movie files. I think most media servers also have an operating system, software to transcode and serve the media files. You will also want a client to be able to read the served content and your server needs to stay up to date with the client.
  - account42 3y ago
    I think you misunderstood the parent post. No one is denying the complexity of a full-featured media server. The question is why there is no one providing a solution to manage that complexity for you (ideally by providing a pre-configured device) even if that couldn't legally include the ripping part of the workflow and you had to provide it with your own ripped media files.
javajosh 3y ago
> a personal collection of movies that you painstakingly ripped on your own I would argue that such a device does indeed represent painstakingly ripping your own movies. After all, it is slow - I think it's safe to assume it takes at least 1:1 to rip a blu ray. And it will take you a long time to watch your collection even once. There are two difficulties. First, the fact that people might never own, or stop owning the blu-rays they've ripped. This is in part mitigated by the fact that such a device would be expensive, and as such its a luxury item not a piracy item. Second, you'll have the stray ornery hacker who'll want to do something more with the device, and dammit I paid for it so its mine! They'll insist on seeding torrents with it or cloning the hard drives and selling them or something and honestly I don't think this is mitigable.

bombcar 3y ago

It exists or existed for high end home theaters years ago. I remember seeing it - something like $20k base starting price. Not sure what happened to it - high end $100k+ home theater is batshit insane.