I like having my 500+ movies, home made movies,etc. Use netflix but when the connection is down, or satalite is bad from storms, just fire up the collection. We are being pushed to just rent (cloud computing) just about anything digital. One big problem is the bandwidth is not optimized yet in the USA. Big towns are but us folks out in the country are stuck with DSL until the telcos get off there arse and lay fiber optic. Itunes is painfully slow to rent. Netflix isn't to bad on good days. I'll keep buying what I like to rip/watch. Nice to have it on tap.
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How Big is your digital movie collection in iTunes?
- Thread starter Hail Caesar
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I have over 400+ HD movies and about 500 episodes of shows (good amount from Star Wars - The Clone Wars). I have a huge selection of cartoons that definitely got a huge amount of playback plus other movies I can watch over and over. It's not so much hoarding them, it's when I vacation, being able to take a bunch of them and play them on a tv somewhere else either via iPad or another device has always been a plus.
I've found that using a firewire drive connected to my imac provides the best reliability to my apple tv's.
I've found that using a firewire drive connected to my imac provides the best reliability to my apple tv's.
I have about 200+ bluray rips and a few dozen tv shows. The tv shows are deleted usually after I've watched them except for the kid's shows. About 60% of my bluray rips are for the kids and the other 40% are movies that my wife and I watch repeatedly. I horde (I prefer 'collect') music. I'm at 21k ALAC files and growing. As others have mentioned, this media collection is not used just by me. There are five of us in my house (three kids). This collection is accessed daily by 3 ATV's, 3 ipod touches, 2 ipads, 2 iphones, a mac mini, and a PC. So no, it's not a waste of my time. In fact, I actually get a little enjoyment out of maintaining my horde. (collection)
Yeah, I can understand keeping a small collections for the little ones. I used to have a handful of VHS tapes I watched just about every day of my childhood. I suppose selecting a movie on the Apple TV is just as easy (if not easier) than jamming a tape in the VCR.
Yes, my 5 and 7 year olds account for the 95% of my AppleTV / iTunes video viewing. They go through phases of replaying the same movie for 2 weeks on a literally daily basis. Then they eventually get bored and start obsessively watching something else.
There are other advantages of locally stored video content, that others have already pointed out. But all things considered - with NetFlix and Hulu HD streaming options, the benefits of maintaining large locally-stored video collections are slowly fading away.
I don't know about anyone else, but I'd like to know a few more details. Like, how much storage space you have, and/or percentage of storage space used, and what kind of storage device is being used. For example I have a movie library of 228 HD movies and growing. All stored on a 4 bay qnap, 8 terabytes formatted in RAID 10. So far I've only filled about 35% of it.
By comparison to some here, mine is a fairly conservative 52 in iTunes....My R4 has another 60 in MKV format though, and I tend to rip as I buy. My buddy next door will take some beating...He's a movie fanatic and I can't remeber a day I haven't seen that drive ripping since he got his iMac.
Count is 328 and rising...all stored on his T/Bolt drives except for those he wants to view...Just puts them in itunes to sync.
Count is 328 and rising...all stored on his T/Bolt drives except for those he wants to view...Just puts them in itunes to sync.
I currently have allocated 6TB of my file server to iTunes videos. It's a Mac Pro + several External eSATA 4 bay enclosures. I am more than happy with DVD quality the 6TB is only about half full (maybe 2/3) with 900+ movies and about 900 tv episodes. I have only a handful of movies that are blu-ray rips.
Apple TV rentals are 1080p/5.1 DTS. I was actually shocked at how good the quality was for an instant stream. I watch them in my media room with a 1080p projector throwing onto a 106" screen. To the naked eye, you can't tell the difference from blu-ray, and if I did desire to own/watch a blu-ray, I would just put the damn disc in the player. How long does it take to rip and convert a blu-ray disc? Just to watch it once or twice?
The quality of streaming rentals is only going to improve over time. I see you guys with these expensive NAS set ups with terabytes of of storage for your "hundreds of TV episodes." How useful have those been for you to keep around?
What you guys are doing is crazy.
Having had a digital clean out recently, i am currently running at a little under 9.8TB of TV shows (mix of HD and SD) and 3TB of movies (Again mix of DVD rips and HD-bluray rips, and also some 3D blueray rips)
Will shortly be upgrading from my Drobo, to a Drobo with 8 bays i think.
Will shortly be upgrading from my Drobo, to a Drobo with 8 bays i think.
Ironically, NMF has one of the largest media collections of all who post here. I'm not sure why he's so embarrassed by it.
Whats the bitrate on the video/audio streams? Saying it's 1080p tells us littlr about the actual quality.
How much of my time it takes to rip a blu-ray? About 10 seconds, pop it in and start it. Well worth it if I want to watch it later with friends or so.
The cost of a NAS setup isnt much at all.
I am a movie buff, so it is mostly movies that I collect and not TV shows. The number of movies has now exceeded 2,000 in my iTunes collection. In the past I used to buy and rip DVD's and Blu-rays, but ever since Apple enabled the re-downloading or streaming of purchased movies I have been mostly purchasing from iTunes.
Why so many movies you might ask? Partly it is the instinct to collect and curate. The more important reason is to go back and watch the movies or parts of movies. This happens often when you are discussing particular movies and someone points out something that you missed or when a reviewer makes a connection between a new movie and an earlier one.
Why so many movies you might ask? Partly it is the instinct to collect and curate. The more important reason is to go back and watch the movies or parts of movies. This happens often when you are discussing particular movies and someone points out something that you missed or when a reviewer makes a connection between a new movie and an earlier one.
I feel the need to jump in on this one as well.
First, I have 2500+ episodes of TV shows built up over ten years (not many movies, but I'm more of a TV watcher). In the first five years I bought/ripped probably 2,000 of those episodes. Shows that I liked as a kid or shows that I was currently interested in. Since then, I've purchased the current shows on TV that I like (about 6 or 7 shows over 5 years).
Now, I'll be the first to admit that there are some shows on there that I seldom watch. Though, I was sick the past two days. Did I watch cable or a some current TV show? Nope. I went back through the first two seasons of Bones.
On the weekend, I'll regularly fire off a full season of some random show because that mini-marathon is much better than the junk on cable.
So, of the shows on my system, probably half have been watched in 2012-2013 with the another 25-30% having been watched sometime in the previous two years.
As for old vs. new, that's a fun question. Does the fact that you have all the music you've loved since you were a kid on your iPod influence the way your purchase music today? I look at this the same way. Why would I watch a lot of the new crap on TV that's all just derivatives of the shows that I actually like (and already own)? What I own affects what I watch new and what I buy, raises the bar, if you will. I haven't bought a single TV episode in months, why? There isn't anything else out there that I want.
I don't buy new stuff just to watch once. I RedBox a movie occasionally, but typically, I only buy stuff I plan on rewatching several times. At which point, it is cheaper to buy than rent.
First, I have 2500+ episodes of TV shows built up over ten years (not many movies, but I'm more of a TV watcher). In the first five years I bought/ripped probably 2,000 of those episodes. Shows that I liked as a kid or shows that I was currently interested in. Since then, I've purchased the current shows on TV that I like (about 6 or 7 shows over 5 years).
Now, I'll be the first to admit that there are some shows on there that I seldom watch. Though, I was sick the past two days. Did I watch cable or a some current TV show? Nope. I went back through the first two seasons of Bones.
On the weekend, I'll regularly fire off a full season of some random show because that mini-marathon is much better than the junk on cable.
So, of the shows on my system, probably half have been watched in 2012-2013 with the another 25-30% having been watched sometime in the previous two years.
As for old vs. new, that's a fun question. Does the fact that you have all the music you've loved since you were a kid on your iPod influence the way your purchase music today? I look at this the same way. Why would I watch a lot of the new crap on TV that's all just derivatives of the shows that I actually like (and already own)? What I own affects what I watch new and what I buy, raises the bar, if you will. I haven't bought a single TV episode in months, why? There isn't anything else out there that I want.
I don't buy new stuff just to watch once. I RedBox a movie occasionally, but typically, I only buy stuff I plan on rewatching several times. At which point, it is cheaper to buy than rent.
I like collecting movies & TV shows
Some people collect baseball cards,comic books,sneakers ,watches ,coins
I collect digital movies
Oh and I only have TV shows & movies that I like. Not just any crap
Some people collect baseball cards,comic books,sneakers ,watches ,coins
I collect digital movies
Oh and I only have TV shows & movies that I like. Not just any crap
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jtrenthacker I couldn't agree more. I have 266 movies of which about 30 are blu-ray rips... just started doing the blu-ray rips.. wow what a difference in quality. I have over 10 k songs. There are 3 in our house with 3 iPhones, 2 iPads and 3 Apple TV's. Since the blu ray rips are so good using Make MKV and Handbrake I am just watching the rips now. It's so frustrating wading thru all the promos on the actual disk. Nice to just select your movie from a list using your iPhone or iPad as a remote and enjoying the show. It's fun creating music playlist that we listen to as a family on our trips. I've ordered a Corsair Voyager Air to carry some movies with us when we travel that can be streamed to phones or ipads while in the car, can't wait for it to arrive.
This is exactly my situation as well. The hassle for my wife to find a DVD and then load it compared to just choosing what the kids want is such a time saver. Before I set up my server and ripped and imported everything into iTunes my wife couldn't have cared less and yet now she can totally see the benefit.
Also, as I live in New Zealand, only have ADSL2 (15Mb down and 512Kb up) and have data cap restraints it totally makes sense for me to have a physical copy of my media and then rip it and import into iTunes as the cost of repeated downloads is prohibitive. Also, given the licensing issues raised by others who have found that their purchased iTunes Store media is suddenly not available for re-download, I prefer to make sure I have a local copy of everything even if I do buy it from the iTunes Store.
For the record, I have 12,267 songs (201GB), 1,156 Movies (4.95TB mix of DVD and BR rips and not finished ripping yet) and 323 shows (approx. 3300 episodes at 4.5TB) in iTunes and all stored on a WHS2011 server I built myself.
I started off a few years ago with simply having a PC that had 4 hard-drive bays and putting 4 1TB drives in and using that, however as time went by and I started getting more concerned about loss of files and a growing collection of media (doc's, photo's, home videos, music, movies and tv shows) I realised I would need to thing about something different.
So I looked at using Drobo, Synology etc. but wasn't totally convinced and was concerned at expansion, cost etc. so finally in 2008 I moved to Windows Home Server v1 using an HP EX495 home server with an esata 5 Bay drive tower enclosure using port-multiplier for extra storage space. This worked pretty well and I liked the "duplication" feature of WHSv1.
Late last year it finally got to the point where I needed further storage and as the HP EX495 only had one esata port I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my server. What I did was take an old PC that I still had, bought a new motherboard, i7 processor and some new RAM and built a new home server with a 256GB solid state drive on which I installed Windows Home Server 2011 together with Stablebit Drivepool (to replicate the old 'duplication" function under WHSv1). I now have 3x3TB drives inside of the Server instelf, 2x5 Bay Tower Enclosures each with 5x2TB drives and 2x3TB USB drives which are all "Pooled". That means currently there is 35TB of which 13TB is used and 13TB is a "duplicate" thereby leaving 9TB free (although really only 4.5TB due to duplication). Expansion capacity is huge as I can just keep adding drive tower enclosures.
I am easily able to stream full BR rips (30-50GB) to my aTV's or Boxee Box wirelessly. I have an ASUS RT-AC66 router and the streaming devices have dedicated access to the 5Ghz band - can't wait until Apple uses "AC" in the ATV and I get full speed out of the router.
One interesting note is that I run iTunes natively on the server and have no problems with that at all - some say you can't do this but I've had no issues. This speeds up streaming as the path is simply aTV-router-server-router-atv instead of atv-router-PC-router-server-router-pc-router-atv (if that makes sense
) and it means I can shutdown my PC whenever I want without worrying about cutting out access to the server from the aTV's or any other device. I still run iTunes on my main PC and that simply mirrors the iTunes on the server and I'll play music etc. from that in my office if I'm working (as the server doesn't have a soundcard and is not connected to speakers).All in all I'm very happy with the setup and it should be reasonably future-proof for some time yet - fingers crossed
I have 12 movies all HD (except the Star Trek bundle) and bought from iTunes. I got them when they were on sale, usually for $9.99.
Right now they have The King Speech, Inglorious Basterds, The Fighter, The Hurt Locker, Apocalypse Now on sale for $6.99 all HD (Canadian Store)
Right now they have The King Speech, Inglorious Basterds, The Fighter, The Hurt Locker, Apocalypse Now on sale for $6.99 all HD (Canadian Store)
I have around 415 movies, which 400 of them are in HD and I don't even know how many tv episodes. I have all my favorite TV Shows from AMC, HBO, Showtime.
I have about 1.75 TB worth of media.
I have about 1.75 TB worth of media.